Rental Bathroom Upgrade Part 2

Hello again! I’m back!! Just a casual 3 month hiatus from doing anything blog-related. There were a few reasons for this – 1. I was uninspired and suffered some post-holiday blues. 2. I changed my blog name and in the process, lost my website for about a month (very upsetting/frustrating). 3. I got a little defeated by the social media world. Comparison is the thief of joy, but sometimes it’s hard to avoid. 4. I’m a little lazy? There, I said it. So here we are 3 months later with my rental bathroom upgrade part 2! You can find part one here. This bathroom was in my Philadelphia row house and just like the rest of the house, it needed a LOT of help. We left off last time after the bathroom had gotten a fresh coat of paint, a new mirror, and towel bar.

I could have stopped here. The bathroom looked nicer and I had bleached the crap out of it to make sure all the germs were gone. But the floor always looked dirty despite all the bleach. And I couldn’t stop thinking about the literal WOOD box around the bathtub. What purpose did it have? And more importantly, what was it hiding? Best case scenario, it was a clawfoot tub. Worst case scenario, it was a family of rats. This is Philly, so there was an even 50/50 chance. I took the chance.

SCORE! It was a clawfoot tub. Happy dance all over the gross vinyl floor! The box took me about an hour to deconstruct. The wood was super moldy and basically crumbled in some areas. Definitely not something you want to be living around. I’m still annoyed at the person who decided that building a wood box around a tub was a good choice. Moving on!

If you can see in the previous picture, someone had run the vinyl floor up the side of the box. By removing the box, I unearthed (much to my displeasure) 5 layers of flooring. NOT IDEAL. I thought about just taking out the first layer, but there was a very slim chance that the other 4 layers would be level. It took an entire 8 hours on a Sunday, but I managed to rip out all the old vinyl to reach the subfloor.

So much better and cleaner! Before putting in the new floor, I tried cleaning up the tub. It was peeled and rusted and yellowed, but SO much better than the box. I used spray paint to spruce it up. Is that the best option? No. If you are really invested, I would not recommend spray paint. But I had done enough work at that point and this was just a rental bathroom upgrade. I sprayed the tub white and the feet gold. Here’s a look at the tub. Sorry for the bad quality photos.

Next up was installing new floor. I decided to go with a peel and stick option from Lowes. It was relatively easy to install. A little time consuming, but at this point the whole project had taken more time than expected so why not add more? I would highly recommend getting wire cutters and a sharp box cutter to assist in the installation. You’ll need the wire cutters to cut into tight corners and the box cutter to make clean cuts to fit your space.

So fresh and so cleannnn. I lived in this house for an additional 8 months after installing the peel and stick floor and it held up perfectly in that time. The bathroom didn’t have a fan, so it held up to steam daily. To clean it, I used warm water with a tiny bit of ammonia. Again, if you’re investing in a home, this is probably not the best option. But it was certainly a great low budget fix!! Overall, this DIY was lot of work with a big reward. Here’s a look at the finished room:

Project Costs

• Peel and Stick Floor: $78 at Lowes
• 4×6 Rug: $22 on Amazon
• Wire Cutters: $14.98 at Lowes

Thanks for sticking around during that HUGE break. I hope you enjoyed this rental bathroom upgrade and that the Spring weather is inspiring you to start some home projects. Have a good weekend!