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The project:
We completely refreshed our tired powder room to make it brighter, cleaner and much more modern. The makeover included replacing the old toilet with a TOTO bidet toilet, new floor tiles and splashback, a new vanity and basin, and a new light/extractor fan with built-in heater. We also repainted the entire room in a fresh, bright colour, which made a huge difference to the small space. Itâs gone from a fairly basic and dated powder room to a much more comfortable and functional space that feels completely new.
- Materials:
Mostly the same from our Ensuite Renovation , that is a full list of items, just slightly different sizes. I'd copy and paste it into here but it doesn't seem to work.
- Tools:
â Gloves
â Dust mask / respirator
â Eye & Head protection
â Hearing protection
â Knee pads
â Boots
â Hammer
â Jackhammer Trolley
â Sander
- Step 1:
The Old Room
The powder room was probably the most basic room in the house.
There was nothing technically wrong with it. It had a toilet, a small vanity, a mirror and a light, so it did exactly what it was supposed to do. But that was also about as far as the thought behind the room seemed to have gone.
Everything was very white. White walls, large white floor tiles, a small grey-and-white vanity and a standard toilet. It was clean and functional, but it felt cold, dated and a little bit like a room that had been included because the house needed a powder room rather than somewhere anyone had actually spent time designing.
Because it is such a small space, there was nowhere for any of those finishes to hide either. When you walked in, you basically saw the entire room at once.
The vanity in particular felt undersized for the wall it was sitting against, and there was plenty of unused space around it. The floor tiles were also quite large and stark for such a small room, and there wasn't really anything adding warmth or texture to break all of the white up.
It wasn't a room we hated. It was just⌠a space.
And after finishing our ensuite renovation, it stood out even more. We now had this warm, modern ensuite elsewhere in the house, while the powder room still looked exactly as it had when we moved in.
So eventually it became the next room on the list.
- Step 2:
The plan
The good thing about this renovation was that we didn't need to solve a layout problem.
The toilet was already where it made sense to have a toilet, the vanity was in the right place, and in a room this size there wasn't exactly a huge number of alternative layouts available anyway. Moving plumbing around would have added cost and complexity without really giving us anything in return.
So the plan became pretty simple: keep the footprint and make everything within it better.
We wanted the room to feel like it belonged with the rest of the house, particularly after completing the ensuite, without simply copying that room.
The starting point was a larger floating timber-look vanity. The existing vanity left a lot of dead space around it, so going wider would give us more storage and bench space while the floating design would still keep the floor visible and stop the room feeling too heavy.
From there, we started building the finishes around it.
We wanted to move away from the cold white floor, so we kept the warmer neutral tiles that would work with the timber vanity. We also decided to add a tiled splashback behind the basin rather than leaving that wall completely plain. It was only a relatively small area, but it gave us somewhere to introduce a little more texture and make the vanity feel like an actual feature.
The rest of the room would stay deliberately bright and simple. Fresh paint, clean white walls and a fairly restrained colour palette meant the timber and tiles could do most of the work without making such a small room feel busy.
We also decided fairly early that if we were going to pull the room apart, we may as well improve the things you couldn't necessarily see in a before-and-after photo as well.
The standard toilet would be replaced with a TOTO bidet toilet, and the basic ceiling light would make way for a combined light, extractor fan and heater. Neither of those changes altered the layout, but both would make the room considerably nicer to actually use. Replacing the mirror with a massive splashback to ceiling mirror also meant the room would look larger, and brighter, when in use.
So while this wasn't going to be the same scale of renovation as our ensuite, we were still replacing almost every major fixture and finish in the room.
The challenge wasn't figuring out how to fit everything in.
It was taking what was essentially just a toilet and sink in a small white room and making it feel like a space we'd actually chosen to create.
- Step 3:
THE Demo & Prep
Once we had a clear idea of what we wanted to do, it was time to get rid of everything that was standing in the way.
The old vanity and basin came out, followed by the toilet, and then we turned our attention to the floor. Because we were keeping the basic layout of the room, there wasnât any complicated demolition involved, but the tiles still had to come up properly and the floor needed to be left smooth enough to give us a good base for the new ones.
All up, it took us about six hours to completely strip and prepare the room.
And this is probably the biggest thing Iâd recommend to anyone doing the same job: hire or buy a jackhammer with a trolley attachment.
Seriously.
I donât care whether youâre doing your first renovation or youâre the worldâs greatest DIY-er, this thing makes tile removal about 100% better.
You can absolutely remove floor tiles with a hammer, bolster and a lot of determination, but after using a jackhammer on a trolley I donât know why you would voluntarily put yourself through that. Instead of spending hours bent over the floor chipping away at individual tiles and adhesive, the trolley lets you work across the floor while the machine does most of the hard work.
It made particularly short work of the old tiles, but the really useful part came afterwards.
Once the tiles were gone, we could change the angle of the attachment and use the jackhammer to work over the remaining adhesive and high spots. That meant we werenât just removing the tiles quickly â we were also able to leave the floor considerably flatter and smoother ready for the next stage.
That preparation is worth taking the time to get right. New tiles are only ever going to be as good as the surface underneath them, and this was one of those jobs where spending a little extra time now was going to save us headaches later.
There was still plenty of sweeping, scraping and cleaning as we went, because apparently no renovation is complete without creating several times more dust and rubble than seems physically possible in such a small room.
But by the end of the six hours, everything we wanted gone was gone and the floor was clean, smooth and ready to start rebuilding.
The room had essentially gone from a basic powder room to four walls and a floor again.
Which, strangely enough, felt like progress.
- Step 4:
Plumbing & Electrical
With all of the demolition and preparation out of the way, the next job was getting the room ready for everything we had actually bought.
This was where the plumber and electrician came in.
We werenât trying to reinvent the room or move everything to completely different locations, but the new fixtures werenât simply like-for-like replacements either. The floating vanity was a very different unit to the small floor-mounted vanity that had been there previously, and the new TOTO toilet was noticeably larger than the standard toilet we were taking out.
That meant the existing services needed a bit of work to make the new plan actually work.
For the floating vanity, the plumbing needed to suit where everything would sit inside the new cabinetry. This is one of those details that becomes much more important with a floating vanity because you donât have a big cabinet running all the way to the floor to conveniently hide whatever is behind it. We wanted the finished installation to look clean, so the plumbing had to work with the vanity rather than the vanity having to work around the plumbing.
The plumber made the necessary adjustments and also checked everything against the new basin and vanity before we got anywhere near installing them permanently. It was a relatively small part of the overall renovation, but getting it right here meant we werenât later cutting into a brand-new cabinet or discovering that a pipe was sitting exactly where a drawer needed to go.
The TOTO bidet toilet also needed a little more consideration than the toilet it was replacing.
It is a larger unit, so the plumber needed to make sure the existing plumbing would work with its dimensions and get everything positioned correctly for the new toilet. Again, it wasnât about moving the toilet to another part of the room â it was simply making the existing space work properly with a much different fixture.
The electrical side was fairly straightforward, but there was one important new requirement: power for the bidet.
Understandably, our old toilet didnât need to be plugged into anything.
The electrician installed the new powerpoint in the correct position for the TOTO so that it would be accessible where needed without becoming something that immediately caught your eye when you walked into the room. That was the only additional powerpoint we needed for the renovation; the rest was about getting the existing electrical points where they needed to be for the finished room.
We also had the electrician install the new ceiling unit.
The original setup was very basic, so we took the opportunity to replace it with the new light, extractor fan and heater combination. It was one of the less visually dramatic upgrades in the renovation, but probably one of the more practical ones. In a room this small, having the lighting, extraction and heating all handled neatly from the ceiling made a lot of sense.
This stage was also a good reminder of why it helps to have your major fixtures chosen before you bring the trades in.
We already had the vanity dimensions, knew exactly which toilet was going in and knew what we wanted in the ceiling. Rather than asking the plumber and electrician to prepare the room for some vague future purchase, they could actually work from the products that were going to be installed.
It removes a lot of guesswork.
A floating vanity might look roughly the same size as another one online but have completely different internal drawers and plumbing clearances. Likewise, a bidet toilet has requirements that simply donât exist with a standard toilet. Having those details sorted early meant everyone knew exactly what they were working towards.
There wasnât a huge visual transformation at the end of this stage. If anything, the room still looked very much like a construction zone.
But behind the scenes, everything was now where it needed to be.
The new vanity would fit properly, the larger toilet had been accounted for, the bidet had its power supply and the new ceiling unit was ready to go.
Not the glamorous part of the makeover, but definitely one of those stages you want to get right before you start putting all the pretty stuff back in.
- Step 5:
Sealing, waterproofing and floor tiling
With the plumbing and electrical work sorted, we could finally start putting the room back together.
Before any tiles went down, though, the room needed to be properly prepared. We patched and sealed the walls where work had been done, cleaned everything up and made sure the surfaces were ready for the next stage.
For the waterproofing, we decided to get our tiler to do it.
We could have taken on more of that preparation ourselves, but there was one really practical reason we chose not to: by having the waterproofing completed professionally, we could get a waterproofing certificate for the work.
That was important to us.
We aren't planning on selling the house any time soon, but whenever we renovate we try to think about the long-term impact as well. If we do eventually sell, having documentation showing that the waterproofing was completed properly gives us one less thing to worry about.
Rather than relying on us saying, "Yep, we waterproofed it," we have the paperwork there if a future buyer, building inspector or anyone else ever wants to know how the renovation was completed.
For the relatively small additional cost, it made sense to us to have the tiler handle it and have that peace of mind.
Once the waterproofing was finished and had properly cured, it was time for the floor tiles.
The original glossy white tiles were probably one of the biggest reasons the old room felt so cold and basic. We wanted something warmer this time, so we went with a larger neutral-toned tile that would eventually tie in with the timber-look vanity and the rest of the finishes.
Even though the powder room is small, the tile layout still mattered quite a lot.
In some ways, I think a small room is actually less forgiving. You can see almost the entire floor as soon as you open the door, so an awkward cut or a strange grout line doesn't have anywhere to hide.
Our tiler worked out the layout before laying anything so we weren't left with tiny pieces of tile around the edges or an odd-looking finish around the toilet waste and floor drain.
Once the tiles started going down, the room changed very quickly.
It was the first point in the renovation where we really started to see the new look taking shape. The warmer tile immediately softened the space and made it feel much less clinical than the old white floor.
The photo from this stage probably sums up renovating pretty well â buckets everywhere, levelling clips across the floor, tools in every available corner and absolutely no chance of using the room.
But underneath all that mess, things were finally moving in the right direction.
Once the tiles had set, the levelling clips were removed and the floor was grouted. We kept the grout fairly close to the tile colour because we didn't want the floor broken up by really obvious grout lines.
In such a small room, that helped the floor read more like one continuous surface and kept everything looking clean and simple.
By the end of this stage, the waterproofing was certified, the floor was finished and the room finally had one of its major new surfaces in place.
The vanity, splashback and fixtures would all come later.
For now, though, after spending so much time pulling things out and preparing what was underneath, it was nice to finally be putting something permanent back in.
- Step 6:
Completing the Room
Once the floor was finished, we could finally start putting the room back together.
VANITY
The vanity had to go in before the toilet.
Because it was larger than the original and wall-mounted, we wanted as much clear space as possible to get it positioned, levelled and secured properly.
Once it was in, the room changed immediately.
The wider floating vanity made much better use of the wall, gave us more storage, and the timber-look finish added the warmth the old room had been missing.
SPLASHBACK
With the vanity and basin fixed in their final position, we could install the splashback.
Doing it in this order meant we were working from the actual finished vanity height rather than trying to guess where everything would eventually sit.
This was especially important because the mirror was going to sit directly on top of the splashback.
That meant the top edge of the tiles needed to be perfectly level and finished cleanly, so the mirror could meet them neatly with no awkward gap or uneven transition.
MIRROR
Once the splashback had set, the mirror could go in directly above it.
This was one of those small details that made the whole wall feel much more finished.
The vanity, splashback and mirror all read as one continuous feature, with the lines meeting cleanly and everything sitting flush rather than looking like three separate elements added at different times.
TOILET
The TOTO bidet toilet was the final major fixture to go in.
Leaving it until last gave us room to move while we were installing the vanity, tiling the splashback and hanging the mirror. In a room this small, having the toilet in too early would have made every other job harder.
Once it was installed, the room was essentially complete.
- Step 7:
Finishing touches and final walkthrough
With all of the major work behind us, we were finally down to the finishing jobs â including giving the whole room its fresh coat of paint.
We deliberately kept the paint simple and bright. There were already enough different finishes in a very small space between the floor tile, timber vanity, splashback and fittings, so we didnât want to introduce another colour just for the sake of it. The aim was for the walls to almost disappear into the background and let everything else stand out.
A fresh coat made more of a difference than you might expect. The original room had technically been light already, but new paint gave everything that clean, crisp finish you only really notice once the renovation around it is complete. It also covered the last signs of the work that had happened along the way, patches, marks and the inevitable knocks that come from having tools and trades moving through such a small room.
Once the painting was finished, we worked our way around the room taking care of all those little jobs that are easy to leave until âlaterâ and then somehow never get done. We placed the toilet roll holder onto the hidden side of the vanity, it's an easier reach than what was available before, we also placed up our small hand towel holder on the door wall.
Silicone was finished where required, we went over any small imperfections, cleaned off the last of the grout haze and construction dust, and made sure the edges and joins looked as neat as the rest of the room.
Then we gave everything a proper clean.
And I mean everything.
The floor was vacuumed and mopped, the vanity and basin were wiped down, the mirror was cleaned, fingerprints came off the fixtures and we finally got rid of that fine renovation dust that somehow manages to find its way onto every surface no matter how careful you are.
After that, we did a proper walkthrough of the room.
This is something weâve started doing at the end of projects because when you have been staring at the same space for weeks, it is surprisingly easy to stop noticing things. We stood back at the doorway and looked at the room as a whole rather than focusing on whatever job we had just finished.
We checked the lines around the vanity, splashback and mirror, made sure the finishes looked clean and consistent, and looked for anything that suddenly stood out now that the room was otherwise complete.
We also tested everything.
The basin was run and checked for leaks, the toilet was flushed a few times, we worked through the functions on the TOTO bidet, and tested the light, extractor fan and heater to make sure everything was working as intended.
Only then did it really feel finished.
Looking back at the before photo, the biggest difference isnât that we radically changed the room. We didnât move walls or dramatically change the footprint.
We just stopped treating it like âthe little room with the toilet in it.â
What had originally been a very basic white space now felt like an actual part of the house. The warmer finishes gave it some personality, the larger vanity made better use of the room, and the upgrades to the toilet, lighting, heating and ventilation made it considerably nicer to use.
For what is probably one of the smallest rooms in our home, it ended up being a surprisingly satisfying transformation. Now we just need to style it, and suggestions? đ
