Advice on rehabbing bathroom?

I am thinking of remodeling the bathroom to increase the resale value. Do you think I can just leave it alone or go ahead and remodel it? I would like the keep cost down as much as possible. Any advice would be appreciated.

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what would you guys do if you wanted to sell the house? Is it even worth remodeling the bathroom?

Perhaps just changing the paint color would go a long way?

The two biggest areas for home remodeling ROI and the biggest rooms for buyers are the Kitchen and the Bathrooms.

As to what you should do, that is a loaded question. What is the value of the home? What is the style you have or are going for? What do the other rooms look like in comparison? What is the area like?

For example, in my area, that bathroom would have to be completely gutted and rebuilt. However, in another area it might have a chance. If the rest of the home is looking up to date, that bathroom needs a good deal of work. Perhaps the rest of the home is a old sort of feel, then perhaps some touch up. If the home is worth like 50k, I would not do too much myself. If it was worth 200k, more is needed.

There is a square shape of tile that is off-color from rest of wall. If this is not just lighting, might look at that. Touching this room up can go a long way. The home looks older. Maybe update the door handle.

As to paint, you could go with a softer green, like the one in the stained window. It would still match white and black. It would be inviting verses a shock when you walk in. Some people will love the color, others won’t. You want to appeal to the masses. Perhaps you could replace the black tile with white or the new color of paint. You could try to leave as is too. All depends on the factors I mentioned.

I am sure others will chime in. I just am giving some things to ponder, but don’t know the full situation. Paint and some touch-up (IE replace a tile, a light fixture, etc) can indeed go a long way.

Iam guessing by the doorhandle, this house is 60+ years old. With that said, the bathroom looks OK (except that purple has to go). I always paint with white in kitchen and bathrooms and off-white everywhere else. Boring, sure, but I have never heard of house not selling due to being painted in shades of white.

The black and white tile is OK in my book. Plus, to shart messig with it, you either need to know what you are doing or be prepared to spend $$$ to make it right.

If you want to spend a few more dollars my priority would be

  1. Medicine cabinet (looks dated)
  2. vanity (looked OK, but hard to tell
  3. fixtures in shower (if old and crappy).

If you do #1 then you rpobably should do #2 so they match. You are probably looking at $300 (in material cost) to do #1 and #2. #3 would be another $75 or so.

Bottomline, at a bare mininum the purple paint has got to go. Anything past that is probably more dependant on what the rest of the house looks like and what is typically for that area.

I’m with evergreen here, there are a lot of unknowns in your post to assist you with an exact decision. The town I live in personally, the bathroom would have to be gutted and you’d start over, however, this town has zero personality and your home has personality :slight_smile:

Where I invest (you’re house is too nice for where I invest though :D), I would paint, change the vanity top, fixtures (including lights next to the mirror), regrout the shower, and remove the medicine cabinet altogether and replace with a mirror that is framed.

It also appears the tile was replaced by the toilet with the wrong color tiles. If you are in a higher end area, that you’ll want to give some consideration to correcting it.

I’m also not a big fan of carpet in the bathroom, but your home is so well maintained it’s not an issue I would deal with to sell it, but be parepared for potential buyers to ask you about it.

Good luck to you and thanks for the photos! That was fun to see.

Carpet in bathrooms is not only ugly, it is a health concern. Carpet will retain all the fun things that live in the water and that you drip off as you come out of the show. Mix in a little time and you have a bacteria cocktail.

If nothing else, drop some vinyl flooring in. Will make a huge difference. As was said above, if you don’t know how, it could get costly. Still, your bathroom and kitchen are your money points in upgrading.

Replacing the tile should be simple for you. Remove the grout around the ones to replace. Break them out. Put in new tile and re-grout. The hard part will be matching the grout exactly.

Hard for me to tell but looks like you have no grout lines, tiles are end to end. Also you would have to make sure you can get matching replacements otherwise nothing would change.

As I said originally, far too much not known.

What city is this in? :smiley:

This is a 68 year old home in St. Louis, MO in a nice neighborhood. Everything has been updated except this bathroom and the basement is only partially finished. The house has 4 bedrooms 1 bathroom 1684 sq ft. and was purchased for $210,000. House was appraised at $220,000.

I was planning on fixing up this bathroom and adding a 2nd bathroom in the basement. My wife and I will live in the house while fixing it up and then sell it next year.

Off topic but I was thinking of adding a 2nd bathroom near the washer and dryer in the basement


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I’d go one of two ways on this:

  1. “Retro is in” - ditch the purple in favor of a slate grey, or something neutral. Put some nice looking drawer pulls on the vanity. Tami had an excellent idea to ditch the medicine cabinet! They make some excellent wall mirrors that look old but are new.

  2. Ditch the tile. Scrape it all off and recover the affected areas of the walls with beaded board panneling. It would go niceley in the house from what I can see of your pictures.

I’d get a Pottery Barn catalog for ideas on this bathroom. Depending on how handy you are you could really make your $$ go a long way. A pedistal sink would look awesome in there, but you’re treading on thin ice as far as getting a return on your investment.

I would NOT take out the medicine cabinet AND the vanity, it takes away most of your storage in the bath.

Keith

put your money into an updated medicine cabinet, light fixtures, shower spray, and paint (maybe white). oh, and matching curtains when done — why not?

good luck