The first thing I realised when we moved into our flat was our bathroom was hideous. We’d done a quick once-over at the viewing – the polite viewing where you don’t look too much into things – but after we got the keys I popped inside for a proper look. The kind of smell you get when you first enter bathrooms that haven’t been updated since about the Butler years.
Oh my god, the suite was avocado. And the grout had turned this horrible brown-grey colour and there was wallpaper with ducks on wearing sailor hats. Like who did these back in the day?
My immediate reaction, naturally, was to chuck it all out and start from scratch. Which is probably exactly what I would have done if my girlfriend hadn’t intervened with some common sense.
“Marcus,” she said sternly, eyebrow raised, “What budget have you got in mind?
Not the budget you have as a teacher imagining you’ve got all the holiday money in the world. Actual budget.” Touché. Teaching doesnt really afford you the opportunities to splurge on grand renovation projects.
So I sat down. Got out a proper notebook (my default mode for thought is into my phone these days) and made a plan. Actually made a plan before I went crazy on Pinterest and Instagram, like I probably should’ve done first.
Listed everything I could think of we’d need to do to the bathroom – walls, floors, fixtures. Made myself a ridiculous spreadsheet with everything we wanted to include in bathroom number one and how much it would cost. And that, my friends, was the beginning of my renovation survival guide.
First lesson? Separate wants and needs. Easier said than done when your bathroom currently falls into the realm ofNeedsallonsown.
The shower was leaking behind the tiles – we found this out when it started leaking through the ceiling of the kitchen downstairs. Excellent. The toilet rocked when you sat down, which is never a great sign.
And the medicine cabinet had basically died a sad death, door hanging off at a shocking angle. Those weredesigned as Priority Ones, things that clearly weren’t working or could cause damage to the rest of the flat. Everything else – my dreams of rain showers and heated towel rails and beautiful metro tiles – got filed under Want for now.
Heartbreaking, but necessary. When I sat down and crunched some actual numbers my eyes nearly popped out of my head. Minimum we were looking at about £800 to repair pipes and what-not, probably more if they found other nasties when they started digging around.
New bathroom suite would be another £600 – £1500 depending how low or luxe we went. Tiling and labour would be at least another £1200. Paint, new mirror, all the bits and bobs another £400.
Grand total, for a stripped-back bathroom where we managed to keep the floor we were looking at £3000 – £4000. And I’d been comfortably assuming a budget of £2500. Didn’t maths teach at school?
Why wasn’t I winning at this? Thankfully I stumbled across the concept of phasing renovations. Essentially, you don’t have to do everything in one go.
Mind= blown. Instead of trying to knock the bathroom out in one go (and potentially end up thousands over budget) we would take approximately six months, and split it into phases. Phase One would be practicality – fixing what wasn’t working like the leaks and loo.
Phase Two would be cosmetic things we would notice – tiles, paint, fixtures. Phase Three would be all the nice to haves once we’d recovered from phases one and two. Made myself a timeline and put it on the fridge.
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January was always for measuring up/getting quotes/finalising exactly what we wanted done. Ripped up the “we’ll improvise as we go along” lesson I’d learnt from renovating our bedroom. February was for ordering things with long lead times – because clearly everyone else wants to renovate their bathroom at the same time as me.
March would actually be bathroom renovation month. Gave myself some buffer in-between too because living with a construction site and two tonnes of teen is exhausting enough without teaching Year 9 about continental ice sheets whilst climbing over a tile hatch in the hallway. That pricesheet became my bible.
For everything I wanted I wrote down three prices. Budget – things I could probably DIY myself or spend a lazy Sunday afternoon banging together. Middle option – stuff I wouldn’t need to physically begr_build but were from decent, known brands.
Dream option – stuff that would make my Designer wife cringe at how expensive they were. Vanity unit? £150 for a basic IKEA one I could bodged together myself. £400 for something halfway decent from B&Q. £800 for the beautifully solid wood one that made my heart soar. Eventually everything fell into middle category with some budget sacrifices and one or two frivolities where it truly mattered.
Really started to think about what would improve my life vs what would just look good on blogs. That underfloor heating I was salivating over? Yeah, kinda useless when you need the bathroom to actually work first.
Heated towel rail on the other hand made the cut for phase two because there is nothing quite like trying to scrape the sleep from your eyes on a grey October morning in a cold, damp bathroom. It’s not luxurious when you can’t feel your toes, it’s just plain sad. Buffer time became buffer money too.
Added on about 10% to my overall budget and allowed myself a couple of weeks spare on each timeline. Hate it when I have to stick to those but it saved my life when the tiles we ordered turned up in the wrong colour and had to be sent back. And when we found out the floor needed underpinning because, ya know, it’s a Victorian conversion.
Obviously plans changed as we went. That geometric floor tile I fell in love with online was actually too busy once I saw it in real life. Rainfall shower head looked great but we have about zero water pressure so it would’ve served no purpose.
Floating vanity was stunning but totally unrealistic given the position of the pipes etc etc. But thanks to having a plan to begin with, they felt like calculated decisions not panic ones. Could veer off course without completely losing track of what we wanted to achieve or, more importantly, how much we could afford.
Because I actually wrote it all down and costed it out. Allowed me to feel like I had some control over the madness that was renovating a bathroom rather than blindly watching our savings disappear. Eight months later and I’m actually pretty proud of our execution.
Not just the finished bathroom – bloody love our bathroom, it actually feels like a room you want to spend time in rather than just gotta use kind of room – but how we did it.
Even our morning routine feels different. Better.
Our bathroom works for how we live now, not against us. The icing on the cake? We came in under budget for phase two.
Turns out my thorough planning actually paid off, despite having minimal experience in projects that don’t involve thirty teenagers trying to submit their coursework on time. Splashed the spare change on some actual towels and – miracle of miracles – a plant that’s still alive. Despite me.
Legend. We’re currently saving for phase three – turns out those brass taps aren’t going to purchase themselves on a teachers salary – but that’s okay! Knowing I have a plan and exactly what I’m saving for (and why) is so much better than just hoping everything will sort itself out.
Let’s be real here, it never does.
