When my partner and I moved into our home three years ago, the bathroom and toilet were separate and while we have since relocated the bathroom to a larger room to accommodate a toilet within it, we knew how handy it would be to keep the downstairs cloakroom.
We're undertaking a significant renovation in our home, and I'll admit that the downstairs cloakroom wasn't top of the list. While the room was pretty inoffensive, with pale walls, white sanitaryware and black tiled floor, our other renovation work in the surrounding rooms was coming to an end and so it seemed like the ideal time to give it a bit of attention. And compared to some of the work we've done to our house so far, I was excited to shift to an easy DIY job.
Day 1: Removed wallpaper, sanded and repainted
First things, first, we set to removing the wallpaper and sanding down the walls. This whole part of the house (a 1970s extension) has a really great quality concrete render instead of gypsum plaster. Because of that, even though the decor hasn’t been touched at least since the later 1990s/early 2000s, the walls are in great condition and barely have any chipping or denting, which we found an absolute godsend when we were cleaning the walls before painting.
Once the walls were keyed and free of wallpaper paste, I used a sugar soap solution, £3.50 from B&Q, and sponged off the residue and dust. I sometimes get annoyed with all the prep work, especially if I am looking for a quick and fuss-free weekend project, but I remind myself that it seriously makes all the difference when it comes to the end result.
We were doing this on a budget, trying to use up scraps of whatever we had lying around from the rest of the renovation work, so I mixed up different paints to create a colour I was happy with – kind of a warm, deep navy.
The cloakroom is about 2m2 so it only took about 45 minutes to give a first coat to the walls and ceiling (I chose to do it in the same colour as it is such as small space and colour drenching would look really impactful). After about 30 minutes, it was dry enough that I was able to do a first pass at the woodwork in Green Smoke by Farrow and Ball, which we have used as an accent colour throughout the house. Then I did a second coat of both.
The entire process took about 3 hours and cost be approximately £41 in materials and tools.
One bottle of this goes insanely far and for the price, it is so worth spending the extra 20 minutes using a diluted solution of this sugar soap and a sponge. You'll be surprised at how much comes off after sanding.
We didn't buy these brushes specifically for this job, but the 'variety pack' is really useful to have on hand for all kinds of painting jobs. I quite like the Harris brand for their affordability and decent quality. The plastic handle is really comfortable, too, and I don't find my hand cramping on long painting day as much as I do with wooden handles.
This is the exact shade I chose for the woodwork in our downstairs cloakroom and was thrilled with the result. As it's such a small room, I didn't need much and it didn't take long to do.
Day 2: Retiling the splashback
This is after the splashback had been tiled, but before the new taps were in place - you can see how much of a difference it made making these small changes
Next up was the sink. The WC didn’t have a splashback and despite this room being used fairly infrequently, I always notice the watermarks on the walls from washing hands, so I knew I wanted to tile the splashback during this makeover. To help keep costs low and reduce waste from other parts of our renovation, we used left-over tiles from our main bathroom remodel. If we hadn't had leftovers, the number of tiles we needed was so small that we could have just asked for samples from our chosen company for a minor cost.
I also used an all-in-one grout and tile adhesive, available at Amazon, because we’re not being fussy here - it’s cheap, cheerful and easy to use! I gave the adhesive a really thorough mix and used a small tile adhesive applicator (£4.45 from B&Q) to spread it on the wall evenly. Then, I took my tile and gave it some ‘back butter’ which is just putting the tile adhesive on to give it extra grip when securing it to the wall.
Although I was able to use mostly the whole tiles, I did have to make a few cuts so I made sure the rougher edges were on the inside so a nice finish would be on the outside. I finished by creating a neat grout line around the tile, which doesn’t look quite as good as when you use proper edging, but it meant we could keep costs down.
The splashback took me about 2 hours total (including drying time before grouting) and cost £17.
For the very small bit of floor, I bought some floor tiles from Facebook Marketplace for £10 to replace the black tiles in place. I gave the floor a good clean up and found they actually looked a lot better than I thought after 60 years and the footfall of countless people.
I wanted something fairly neutral as we had chosen a fairly dark wall colour and these tiles have a slight texture to them to create visual interest.
As we were working with such a small area, this little tub of an all-in-one solution was just what we needed. I found it super easy to work with after a decent mix and would definitely recommend for smaller tiling projects on a budget.
Although you can use a tiling trowel, I found that this smaller applicator was better suited for working in small corners and especially around the taps.
Day 3: New fixtures and fittings
Finally, with most of the work being complete, I turned my attention to upgrading fixtures and fittings. The paint I'd mixed had really warm undertones, so it made sense to me to replace the existing chrome versions with brass.
The towel and paper holders were really easy to replace. I simply moved the old ones (before painting), drilled a pilot hole, inserted the rawl plug and followed the instructions on the replacements. This and the paint made the biggest difference in feeling to the bathroom. I still would like to swap out the cistern flush handle to match and complete the look.
For lighting, we opted for a pendant on a short cable and chose something that gave off a decent amount of light without taking up too much headroom.
The taps were a little trickier to update as I had to cut off water supply and drain the taps in order to replace. At this point, I also found that the previous owners had soldered the old taps in place (I will never tire of the surprises and bodged jobs we've come across as we renovate the property).
In the end, we replaced the pipework entirely. This was definitely more time-involved than I anticipated, but I should know by now that plumbing in this house will always take at least triple the time and effort.
This part of the project was definitely where the budget went, with the cost at £72. The fixtures took about 40 minutes to put in place, but the taps unfortunately took about 2 hours with faffing and replacing.
We went fairly budget with the towel holder (and paper holder in the same range), but the difference when you walk into the bathroom is instantly more luxurious.
Changing the taps has made a massive difference not just to how the bathroom looks, but also how nice it feels to wash hands. The old ones were stiff, drippy and, to be honest, a bit gross from years of grime.
This light was an absolute bargain and it really works in the space. The window faces south but rarely gets decently light so a shade that cast shadows would have been fairly annoying.
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