Bathroom remodels are notorious for being expensive, messy, and time-consuming. A quick internet search for bathroom remodeling costs will show you numbers ranging from $5,000 to $20,000 and construction timeframes ranging from 3 to 6 weeks. Let's avoid that with our 5 Cheap Ways to Remodel Your Bathroom ideas below.
These cheap ways to remodel your bathroom don’t need to take that long to achieve a shiny new porcelain throne or a beautiful shower. If you’re willing to roll up your sleeves, watch some tutorial videos, and put in a bit of elbow grease, there are many ways to update your bathroom for a fraction of the price and time. You'll learn valuable skills along the way too! Let's transform your own bathroom without breaking the bank today.
1. Paint Your Fiberglass Tub or Dated Shower Surround With Marine Paint
If your tub still performs well but is ugly, dated, discolored, stained, or dingy, you might think that the only option you have is to replace it, but you’d be mistaken! Replacing a tub is a huge undertaking and will cost you anywhere from $300 to $1,500 just for the tub, alone. Add to that the cost of labor and the cost of disposing of your old tub, and you’re looking at a bill of $2k to $3k just to replace a tub!
What if I told you that you can get your tub looking brand new for only $40 in materials and a couple of hours of your time? Sounds much better, right? We thought so too. This is possibly the absolute cheapest way to remodel a bathroom and we’re excited to tell you about this trade secret.
If your manufactured tub or shower pan was installed or replaced any time after the 1960s and the tub is not made of cast iron or acrylic, there is a very good chance that it is made of fiberglass. Do you know what else is made of fiberglass and is designed for high-moisture conditions? Boats! Why does this matter? Because you can refinish your tub with the same paint used to refinish a boat. It’s durable, it’s inexpensive, and it makes a massive difference in the appearance of old and cheap tubs and shower surrounds.
Marine paint, also known as “topside boat paint” is engineered to hold up against the tough, wet conditions of lakes and oceans, so it will certainly be able to handle your daily showers. The best part? A can of this paint costs about $30. Throw in some 240-grit sandpaper to prep your tub, a small foam paint roller, and a paint pan, and you’re all in for around $40. Here's a helpful article showing you the best
bathroom fiberglass marine paints out there.
2. Replace Your Basic Shower Backing With Custom DIY Tilework,
Many new DIYers tend to shy away from tiling, especially when tiling vertically like on a shower wall, but the process is not nearly as complicated as it might seem to tile newbies. It is true that tiling is labor-intensive. This also means that learning this skill will save you loads of cash on any tiling project you might take on in the future. Not only that, but removing cheap vinyl, acrylic, or fiberglass tub walls will have a massive impact.
Replacing the old surrounding walls with custom tile walls is an easy and affordable way to quickly boost both style and equity in your home.
Rather than paying for someone else’s labor at a possible project cost of $2k to $5k, you can do the work yourself, learn a new skill, and have a beautiful new shower for $200 to $500 worth of materials and tools. Your own tile wall installation is a great cheap way to remodel your bathroom.
You might not even have to replace the concrete backer board, purple board, or green board that’s likely underneath the fiberglass surround. If you do, though, this skill is also priceless to learn and the task is easier and cheaper than you might think. If you choose to take on this project, be sure to watch tutorials on the best ways to waterproof your shower before installing your tiles. Then, get to work!
3. Replace Your Bathroom Flooring With An Affordable, Durable Alternative
You don't have to DIY a bathroom install to save a lot of money. Changing the floor is almost necessary to get a fresh new remodel look in your bathroom. Nothing impacts the overall look of a room quite as much as the flooring does and we obviously couldn’t write an article about cheap bathroom remodeling ideas without incorporating what we’re best known for: really cheap floors!
Do you currently have dated linoleum, salmon pink porcelain, or everyone’s favorite 70’s trend of shag carpeting in your bathroom? Consider replacing your flooring for an instant upgrade. Replacing your bathroom flooring is a very DIY-friendly project. A homeowner flooring installation is always the cheaper route.
The best value flooring options for cheap bathroom remodels are roll-out sheet vinyl,
luxury vinyl plank, or
luxury vinyl tile. These flooring options are ready for you to pick up cheaply, installed easily, and look amazing!
As long as you choose an inexpensive flooring option, replacing your bathroom flooring can even be a relatively affordable project to hire out or partially hire out. That’s because flooring jobs are generally estimated based on square footage, and bathrooms are typically some of the smallest rooms in a home!
Redoing a bathroom floor will likely run you anywhere from $10 to $20 per square foot if you were to hire the work out to a flooring contractor. Considering that the average bathroom is around 50 square feet, this project could cost around $500 to $1,000. Alternatively, you could do the work yourself and pay only for materials. This option would likely cost somewhere in the ballpark of $2 to $7 per square foot, depending on the flooring you choose, for a total of $100 to $350. Not too shabby for a massive improvement to one of the most useful rooms in your house!
4. Replace Your Entire Vanity Or Swap Out Your Vanity Countertop And Sink
Many people think that updating a bathroom in an impactful way is always complicated and messy, but that’s not necessarily accurate. The truth is that remodeling your bathroom could be as simple as swapping out the glorified nightstand that is your particle board bathroom vanity. Instead, you could choose something prettier, more solid, and more practical.
It can be something new that was built for this use, it can be an old dresser that you picked up from the thrift store to refinish and modify, or it can even be an old wine barrel. Maybe you don’t want a vanity at all and would rather have a pedestal sink - the point is that there are no rules. “Beautiful” does not equate to “expensive” and “common” does not equate to “correct”. This is the part of your bathroom remodel where you can get really creative if you want to.
Refinish The Bathroom Vanity Instead?
If you like your current vanity or can see potential in refinishing it, but the vanity top has seen better days, consider keeping your vanity and replacing the top or the sink. This is generally a very quick and cheap project and you might even be able to find a vanity top on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist at second-hand prices for even more savings.
Because there are so many variables when it comes to replacing your vanity, it is difficult to give an accurate cost range for this project. Typical costs associated with hiring out this project come in around $600 to $3,000. However, it can cost as little as $0 for a thrifted dresser that you install yourself or it can cost as much as $8k for a Carrara marble double-vanity you have shipped in from Italy. The choice is yours!
5. Replace Your Old Toilet With A Modern Porcelain Throne
If your toilet is any shade of yellow or green, you might want to consider replacing it and updating your toilet to something from this century. This project doesn’t even have to cost you a pretty penny or more than a couple hours of your time and a long, hot shower afterward to get that image of the used wax ring out of your mind. If you are anti-toilet-touching, you can always hire this job out to a plumber for a relatively reasonable cost, assuming you don’t choose an exorbitantly expensive high-tech toilet as its replacement. A new toilet typically costs between $99 and $450. If you hired this job out, your total cost would likely be somewhere between $200 and $700.
What Do You Think?
With these five cheap ways to remodel your bathroom we’ve discussed here, you can remodel your entire bathroom for under $1,000! Of course, this would require that you do much of the work yourself. The DIY way is the most rewarding way to complete home projects if you ask me. When it comes to being a thrifty renovator, some might view the work as a negative and some might view it as a positive. You might decide that your time is more valuable than paying for efficient, skilled labor. Or maybe you’ll decide that the added value of a remodeled bathroom would be worth all of your efforts and more.
