Updating Your Bathrooms Without a Major Renovation

As many of you know, this past summer we made a major move from South Dakota to Texas.  For the first time in our nearly 20 years of marriage we’re now living in a home that’s more than 7 years old.  The home we purchased was built in 1987.  What appealed to us about the home (besides the price, layout and location obviously), is that the original owners were the ones selling it, and they maintained it pretty well.  They had just recently replaced the roof, furnace and air conditioner and not long before put in new kitchen counter tops and tile in the home.  Of course with any home more than 25 years old, there is always going to be something that needs to be done to upgrade it for necessity, functionality or aesthetically.

You can change the look of your bathroom incredibly just by updating your faucets, shower heads, towel bars, cabinet pulls etc.  It may not be cheap, but it certainly is A LOT more affordable than doing a major renovation project.

The bathroom sink faucets in our home were an older pull out knob style.  Certainly not my taste in looks or finishes, but more than that they weren’t really functional.  They had two settings; on or off.  Which meant that to brush our teeth we had water flowing full blast just to wet the toothbrush.

Knowing that our decision to replace them meant that we would have to upgrade all the other hardware in our bathrooms focused us in one brand direction.  Pfister.

Sink faucets are pretty easy to choose any brand you like because all the piping is underneath.  Showers and tubs on the other hand…not so much.  So the key here is when you’re replacing a trim kit for aesthetic or functional purposes and you don’t want to rip your walls open – you must use the same brand that’s already installed.  Because each brand has their own proprietary valve system.  In other words you can’t replace a Delta shower faucet with a Pfister one or a Pfister with a Moen, unless you want to bust a wall open (which we did not!).

We were instantly attracted to Pfister’s Tuscan Bronze finish of bathroom hardware.  Our options were limited because unlike most newer showers and tubs we have two handles to control the water temperature rather than just one.  But we found that we liked the Avalon line and decided that’s what we’d use for our bathroom sinks and handle rebuilds.

We ordered the sink faucets from Lowe’s and had them install them.  Replacing sink faucets is generally an easy task that most homeowner could do themselves, but because our home has copper piping and the shut off valves needed to be replaced we had to have a plumber do them.

Being a Friends of Pfister blogger I was able to secure an Avalon Roman Tub faucet kit for our master bathroom at no charge.

It took a while for the order to be delivered, so in the interim we decided to change out the cabinet pulls.

We found some oil rubbed bronze pulls at Walmart made by Amerock in their budget Allison line that we thought would match the faucets.  Brought them home and sure enough they matched great.  Although they weren’t horribly expensive at Walmart ($5.94 for 2), I searched online to see if I could find them elsewhere and got them on Amazon.com in a package of 25 for $28.94 a significant savings considering we had almost 100 knobs in our home to replace!

When our tub trim kit arrived we made an appointment with our plumber and purchased our shower handle kits from Build.com and an Avalon Trim Kit and a Saxton Trim Kit in the Tuscan Bronze from HomeDepot.com. Free Ship to Store or Home. Now Available on Over 400,000 Items.

(Amazing how lighting can change the color of something, one photo was taken during the day with sunlight the other at night with the electrical lighting!)

Remember I told you that if you don’t want to take things apart to change a trim kit you need to purchase brand for brand?  Well that’s true, mostly LOL.  One exception may be if your fixtures are older, then even staying within the same brand may not work.  Which is what happened with us and our Roman tub.

The step and front panel needed to be removed so that the plumber could access the pipe fittings, it was a work around we weren’t expecting, and we have to put it back together now.

But we have a beautiful new faucet set for our tub!

We ordered a number of the Pfister Redmond Collection Towel Rings in the Tuscan Bronze from Amazon.com to help pull together the look.

We have used a few different lines from Pfister to piece the bathrooms together partially due to pricing and because of design.  We chose the Saxton shower head for our bathroom because my husband is tall and it seemed that it would better suit him so he wouldn’t have to bend to get his head washed.  We chose the Redmond Towel Rings because the Avalon ones were an open rod and we preferred a ring.  But the great thing is because they’re all made by Pfister even though they are from different lines the finish color remains the same so everything matches.

We still have a couple of things to get to complete it.  24″ towel bars and toilet paper holders are on the list to upgrade yet.  We also want to frame out the bathroom mirrors similar to what A Mom’s Take did in her bathroom.  Plus eventually we’d like to paint the light fixtures and the vanity cabinets.

So with parts and labor, having sink faucets, tub/shower trim kits and valve replacement for the Roman tub, towel rings and cabinet pulls upgraded in three bathrooms the cost was about $1,700.  Now that might sound like a lot, but a major bathroom renovation generally on the low side would cost minimum $5,000, with $10,000 being a more average price.  I think that makes our 27 year old bathrooms updated to a more modern look, budget friendly.

If you’re interested in seeing all the bath fixtures that Pfister offers visit http://www.pfisterfaucets.com.