DIY — Mint & Muslin

Cost Breakdown:

PolyBlend Grout Renew in Natural Gray ($13)
Hobby Lobby Pulls ($12)
Basket ($24)
Light Kit ($16)
Edison Bulb ($8)
Plastic Washer ($3)
Matchstick Blinds ($20)

Total = $96!

My First DIY as a Homeowner

We purchased our home in October of 2015. It is truly the sweetest and most encouraging story of God's goodness, grace, and provision. I can't wait to share the story with y'all soon, but for now I want to show you how I inexpensively changed the whole look of our guest bathroom.

Bye Bye Dirty Grout!

The first step in my madness to freshen our bathroom on the cheap was to clean the grout on the floor tiles. The black and white tiles had me at hello when we first walked through the door, but the discoloration was driving my perfectionistic, yet lazy, self crazy. Well, cleaning didn't touch it. I don't think I'll ever understand white grout for a floor. Maybe you're super diligent about keeping your white grout perfectly bright. Not me.

The area of darkest discoloration gets the most foot traffic.

So I searched Pinterest for answers, duh. I found a product called PolyBlend Grout Renew. It seemed to get great reviews, so I headed to Home Depot to get some.

I stood in the isle for way too long trying to decide what color of Grout Renew to get. I went in thinking that I wanted Delorean Gray, but it didn't seem right in the store. I even searched through the tile isle to find our flooring to try and help me make a decision. I eventually chose Natural Gray. Here is the exact product I used: PolyBlend Grout Renew in Natural Gray.

I got home and I got to work. I found a great blog post that gave me step by step directions on how to apply the Grout Renew. If you want to see exactly how to use the product, I recommend checking out Sherry's post linked HERE.

I used a small paint brush and painted one 6 inch square of floor at a time. Paint on, wipe off with an old washcloth, and that's about it. It was super easy. The Grout Renew only sticks to the grout, not the tile, so it didn't take much elbow grease to wipe any excess off. Our guest bathroom is small, so it took me around 6 hours total from start to finish. The most labor intensive portion of the whole project was shimmying up under the clawfoot tub. I wasn't able to reach every bit of grout under there, but I'm pretty sure no one will ever stick their head down there.

Here you can see the difference between the old white grout, and the grout that has been treated with PolyBlend Grout Renew.

One of the darkest stained portions of the grout. On the top right of the diamond you can see the Grout Renew before I finished the area.

Please pretend that our toilet lid is closed!

$13 is all it took to make our tile look modern, fresh, clean, and funky!

Next: Mirror Revamp

This old mirror has been repurposed many ways for over a decade. It was originally white and in the house my dad and stepmom bought when they first got married. I took it when I got married and moved out of the house. I had painted it to match a quilt we used in our first apartment and it no longer fit the direction I was heading for our guest bath.

The previous owner of our home left all of the leftover paint from the house in the garage. Our kitchen cabinets are matte black, so I used some of that paint for our mirror! I sanded, primed with Kilz we already had, and used 2 coats of black paint. $0 for this update!

The black changed the whole look of the mirror and really made the "hot" and "cold" stand out on our faucet!

Switching out hardware

Our home was built in the 1930s, and storage space is sparce, but we do have some great built-ins in our guest bath. Although I like the black pulls that were on our cabinets when we purchased the home, and I'm keeping them to use on another project somewhere down the line, I have had my eyes on a fabulous set of copper hardware from Hobby Lobby.

I'm a real penny pincher, and couldn't stand paying full price at Hobby Lobby. I needed four knobs, so I had a plan to be patient and make two seperate trips to Hobby Lobby with Jarrod so each of us could buy one knob with the 40% off coupon. Luckily, they were already 50% off when I went to get them! So I spent $12 total to update our hardware! Click here if you need copper hardware like I did!

Another free and super easy update was touching up all of the trim, cabinets, and walls with left over paint that was in our garage! It makes the whole bathroom look clean. *The above picture was taken before I touched up all of the paint.* You'll get to see the whole shebang by the end of the post!

Basket Pendant

I love funky light fixtures. An old milk bucket? Perfect laundry room pendant. Three kelly green colanders? Might as well be the bees knees of kitchen island lighting. So our standard bathroom light fixture was holding my creativity back in a major way.

I've been obsessing over basket pendants lately. I had a perfect basket in my mind to DIY into a light fixture, but of course I couldn't find exactly what I had dreamed up. I came pretty darn close though. I found a $24 basket at TJMaxx that made my heart go pitter-patter and I got busy Pinteresting.

I couldn't wait to get home to show Jarrod my find, so I snapped him a picture!

I'm pretty sure Jarrod thought I was crazy, but I was a girl on a mission! I read several tutorials on how to turn a basket into a pendant, but this one was by far the most helpful. Sherry is the same blogger with the Grout Renew post I linked up top. She's doing fabulous things, y'all.

A real nice man in Home Depot helped me round up the supplies I needed. I purchased this light kit, Edison bulb, and a small plastic washer to use on the underside of the basket as a reinforcement to distribute the weight more evenly.

I took my pretty basket down the street and asked my very handy house-flipping neighbors to kindly drill a hole for me. They also cut the pendant wires to the length I needed. Shout-out to Shelly and Steven!

I twisted the arm of the man we bought our house from, who, along with his wife, also happens to be one of our best friends (and a contractor) to come hang our new light fixture!

One Last Thing!

To put the cherry on top of my DIY (with the help of sweet friends) bathroom update, I needed a new window treament.

Home Depot came to the rescue again with matchstick blinds! They'll were crazy easy to hang, inexpensive, and completely polished the look of our bathroom!

Our guest bathroom has easily become one of my favorite rooms in our house! It didn't take much money, or time, to give the room a whole new look.

I bet you have a room that could easily transform with just a little bit of money and effort!

What's on your DIY to-do list?! Comment below to share!