Potential Savings Goal: Bathroom Makeover

creepy bathroomWith the new year quickly approaching and us finally being mostly settled in our first house; I felt it was due time to decide on some financial goals for 2013.

I’m going to share both potential savings goals with you and see what you think. The bathroom makeover is the first of the two.

Even before we moved into the house, we knew the bathroom would need a makeover, so I’ve been expecting this one.

Our house only has 1 full bathroom, the master only has a sink and toilet. So of course, the tub/shower is the devil! It’s one of those walk-in tubs for handicapped and old people that is meant to keep them safe.

I really want to give our evil little bathroom a bit of a makeover. You can’t even take a bath in it unless you sneak down in the area that isn’t a huge seat (the floor cubby) and hug your knees.

It’s not very comfortable to do that. You know what else doesn’t work for taking a bath?

  • Lock the bathtub door from the outside and fill it halfway with hot water
  • Wait until the hot water tank is ready to go again (about 50 minutes)
  • Add additional warm water until the tub is almost full
  • Get the step ladder out of the garage and bring it into the bathroom
  • Stand on the step ladder and try to reach the step from a couple feet away (because the toilet is in your way) and don’t fall
  • Try to pretend you’re taking a real bath in a 4 1/4 foot long and 12 inch deep tub. (Just for fun, pretend you’re 5′ 11″ like me)

In addition to the bathtub just making me mad, the panels on the outside were just magnetically resting on there. Ants (I really hate ants) were actually crawling out of them from the crawlspace below because there isn’t any actual floor under the creepy tub and it wasn’t sealed up. I don’t know if all creepy tubs are that way, but it seems weird to not have flooring under there, doesn’t it?

Oh and the tub leaks when you try to take either a floor cubby bath or the double-fill stepladder bath. I’ve just had enough with it all, I want a real bathtub and a shower that I don’t keep getting injured in. I know that I should probably be grateful that we even have a shower, but I wouldn’t buy a house without one anyway. Yes, I’m ungrateful and whinny.

Originally, we were going to try to sell the tub to help pay for the bathroom makeover. Unfortunately, I think I would find it much more pleasurable to demolish that SOB with a sledgehammer. It’s also a bit older than we thought it was and we would more than likely have to remove the entire door frame, possibly part of the wall around the door frame, the toilet and the sink to actually get it out in one piece.

We will also have to tear out all the tile in the bathroom and retile because the current tile is nowhere to be found. Not that I’m particularly fond of it, I’m not really a big fan of orange and brown colors, but it would save money to just get the same tile.

Unfortunately (or is it really?), the guy who flipped our house must have gotten a ton of it on closeout somewhere and just uses that for the many houses he flips. I’m sure we’ll be happy with an inexpensive tile we find somewhere.

On top of all that, we will most likely have to hire somebody to do all this because of the time it would take us. Having only one shower means that we can’t shower until it’s all done. Neither of us has done anything like this before, so it would take us probably close to a week if we’re being honest. I don’t want to go a week without showering, not even close.

We haven’t gotten any quotes yet, so we have no idea how much it would cost to get it done. But I’ll take a very uniformed guess just for fun. I think aside from the price of the tub and new tile, it would probably cost about $2,000 to hire somebody to do it. I could be way off though. Then for the tub and tiles that we would buy ourselves, it could run us anywhere from $500 to $1,000.

I’m fairly certain that putting in a Jacuzzi tub in there is unrealistic, but it would be nice to get a soaking tub—they’re a lot more fun than standard tubs. I would also like to put in two niches for the shower so that we have a built-in place for all of our stuff. I probably should have added that in my guesstimate above, since they seem to run around $40+ each.

Obviously, my next steps should be to get a few (free) quotes and figure out what tub and tiles we want and how much they will cost us. It’s much easier to gauge your saving progress when you know how much you need to save.

So right now, getting a bathroom makeover is potentially going to be one of our 2013 goals. I’m not sure which we’ll choose, but I’m working on the next post for the other potential saving goal. I’ll try to get that posted in a couple of days.

Would you want a bathroom makeover too if this was your only full bath?
Or do you think I’m just being a spoiled brat?

About Jen Perkins

Likes: saving money, being debt free (aside from our house), zombies, travel, getting money, blogging and dogs. Dislikes: debt, being broke, bunnies, wasting money, not having enough money to travel the world and paying interest. Facebook  ♥  Twitter  ♥  Google+  ♥  RSS

Comments

Potential Savings Goal: Bathroom Makeover — 20 Comments

  1. I understand it is a priority for you, it has to be annoying to take a bath when it should be enjoyable. Tiling is quite easy and you may look into doing it yourself, the price should be about 1/3 of what a contractor quotes. I recommend you keep about a dozen tiles just in case once you are done.

  2. Our master bath has the Jacuzzi tub and separate shower! I want to remodel the bathroom anyway. I want to replace the tile, cabinets , sinks etc. There are 2 additional baths and kitchen I want to remodel also. There is always something and my plan is to do the bathrooms over the next year or two. The kitchen to follow. I will probably just do one at a time though.
    krantcents recently posted..2012 New Year’s Resolutions UpdateMy Profile

    • Yeah, our kitchen is amazing. If only there was an inexpensive way to make the master bath larger and have another full bath. We don’t have enough room in the master bedroom (it’s really small) to just increase it. We would have to do an addition, which I’m assuming is still really expensive for a small space.
      Jen Perkins recently posted..Changing Our Christmas Ways To Get AheadMy Profile

  3. Wow, my head hurt reading about what you had or needed to do… lol.. I don’t blame you. Yes I would reno the bathroom if I wasn’t happy with it. Infact I’m doing 2 renos our master bath and the upper level full bathroom. Our master has a full laundry center, seperate shower,vanity, toilet and jacuzzi. I’ll be tiling from floor to ceiling, in floor heating, building a full tile shower with glass doors. Our relatives ask why when they say it is fine. It’s not to us and we have to live here so we want to update it. If that’s what you want to do and you have the money saved, go for it. You know your priorities and it sounds like you want to make your space an enjoyable one which it’s not at the moment. Looking forward to reading about it. Mr.CBB
    Canadian Budget Binder recently posted..New Year’s Resolution:Canadian Debt and Tackling Personal FinancesMy Profile

  4. Redoing the bathroom is on our list of projects as well. Unfortunately its currently buried a ways down that list!

    From the looks of that tub I don’t blame you at all for wanting to re-do your bathroom. We all have things in our house that we can’t stand and really want to change. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. The beauty of owning a home is we can change anything our heart desires!
    The First Million is the Hardest recently posted..The 99 Best Personal Finance Posts of 2012My Profile

  5. Oh, yes. Bathrooms are very important and having the one you really want make you feel so much better (and the house fell like a home). We just finished renovating the last bathroom (we have three) and it feels good. We did find that one can save loads on buying the material and fittings but it is always worth it hiring the best builders around.
    maria@moneyprinciple recently posted..‘Tis the season to de-clutter…and make some cash doing it!My Profile