Mum & Son Duo Create Stylish Bathroom On £120 Budget With B&Q Charity Hack
- Nick, 23, worked with his mum to transform the downstairs toilet on a £120 budget
- They saved money by reusing supplies and buying from IKEA and Wilko
- To save money on wood they used a charity bin in B&Q to pick up scraps
- An old scaffolding board was salvaged from a skip and they used tile stickers to save time
If your house has a downstairs toilet in a small room, it’s easy for this space to become abandoned or cluttered. However, one savvy DIYer has come up with the perfect solution to turn an area like this into a stylish feature room with smart storage.
Nick Richards, 23 from Harlow, Essex who is a part time retail worker and part time home improvement YouTuber, told money-saving community LatestDeals.co.uk: ‘We had originally done a makeover on a £50 budget but we wanted to do a slightly bigger one this time with a £120 budget.
‘With the original makeover we improved the plain white room by adding some hanging plants and picture frames on the wall. However this room has always lacked storage space and it was quite a cluttered area. Also, having the bare toilet system on show is not the nicest thing to look at, so we wanted to make the downstairs toilet look a bit smarter and more stylish.
‘My mum and I saw a photo of a really nice looking grey and white themed bathroom online, and ever since seeing that image, we both agreed that that was the sort of interior design aesthetic we wanted to achieve for this makeover.
‘The big plan for this makeover was to get some kind of storage solution. We also knew we wanted to change the colour of the tiles, box in the toilet and create a little feature wall. We decided to keep the wall colour because we have a lot of that colour paint left over and we like the light grey on the wall. We got a new mirror but kept the towel rail as it was nice and secure on the wall. We also had really bright blue turquoise tiles in the bathroom and this didn’t work with our overall colour scheme so we had to figure out how to change it on a budget.
‘The first step was to remove the screws and nails from the walls which had been holding the shelves up. We got rid of the shelves because everything was on show and there wasn’t anywhere to hide anything. We got some Polyfilla on the holes left behind, then painted over it before starting on the main bulk of the makeover.
‘The main decorating supplies we used, like the paint, paint brushes and roller were all supplies we already had left over from our other projects. I always recommend to people to try and reuse and clean all your supplies so you can save money.
‘We used Leyland standard white emulsion, which was originally bought for £12 for 10L. For the wall colour we used Dulux Rock Salt in silk (I actually got this on clearance last year for only about £5!) We also painted our bathroom tiles white with some tile paint we picked up from Wilkos in their own branded paint for £15.
‘To make the physical box to hide the toilet, I picked up a sheet of scrap MDF and a couple of lengths of wood from a B&Q store from one of their wood charity bins. B&Q stores sometimes have charity bins of scrap wood where you give a donation to their charity and you can take whatever scrap wood you want, result! Good tip for anyone who just needs the odd piece of wood and doesn't want to spend a lot of money.
‘To make the tiled feature wall we bought two packs of self adhesive subway tile sheets, in grey, from Amazon. These were £32 a pack. It sounds quite pricey, but compared to buying actual tiles, adhesive and grout, this method is so much cheaper and it is so much easier just to stick the tile sheets straight onto the wall.
‘The rest of the supplies were mainly bought from IKEA. We bought a nice new bathroom cabinet which was £30 (IKEA ENHET oak effect cabinet) and a nice big mirror which was £15 (IKEA Lettan 60x96cm mirror). To save money on buying decorative pieces, we used some fake plants and family pictures in frames that we already had to make the bathroom a bit more homely!
‘Other than the painting and general decorating, the main process was making the toilet box. We did this by making two 'L' shaped brackets out of wood, which were placed on either side of the toilet system to act as the main structure - these were screwed to the wall. Then a sheet of MDF went in front of the bracket and toilet with a couple of screws in each corner. The main challenge was to make sure that the box we built around the toilet was easy to remove in case we had any problems with the plumbing within the toilet system.
‘To cover the top of the toilet we found an old scaffolding board in one of our neighbours’ skips that we cut down and placed onto the brackets. We did not screw the shelf down as this ensured we could still have easy access to the toilet system by just removing the shelf. We covered the entire box and wall with the self adhesive tiles and job done!
‘There's nothing major that I would change now that the makeover is complete, but one little job would be to have some soft closing hinges or a hinge adapter added to the bathroom cabinet. Nothing is wrong with the cabinet, but because it's not soft closing sometimes you can make quite a big bang when closing it. Cheap and easy fix for that, though!
‘Also, to improve the toilet box and shelf, we have to try and make the toilet button more accessible. As our toilet system's push button is on top of the system, we cut a hole into the shelf so you could still push down on the toilet, however it can be a little bit difficult, so we will change and improve that in the future.’
Tom Church, Co-Founder of LatestDeals.co.uk, said: ‘Nick and his mum have done well to achieve such a professional result on a budget like this. Hopefully it will provide some inspiration for those who are struggling with storage space in their downstairs toilets - and I’ll be looking out for a B&Q charity bin!’
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