I typically concentrate on a million and one ways to save money, but lately I’ve found myself in a spend, spend, spend frame of mind. After nearly nine years of living in a sixty year old house, with sixty year old bathrooms I really want to remodel.
We have old-school bathrooms, you know the kind with tiny tiles on the floors and mid-sized tiles half-way up the walls and all around the shower. To be perfectly honest the bathrooms have never looked clean. Even when we first moved in there was a certain amount of dirt and sediment in between the cracks that I just couldn’t scrub away.
Now here we are nearly nine years later and I’m afraid to say the bathrooms are an absolute mess. While I clean the rest of the house from top to bottom I absolutely hate cleaning in between those tiny tiles. I hate it so much that I’ve practically stopped cleaning them all together.
I either need to bring in a cleaning service to fix the problem or simply remodel the bathrooms. We really don’t have the money to spend on a remodel at this exact moment in time. We spent quite a lot of money at the end of last year between the holidays, vacations and refinancing our mortgage, so I know I really need to buckle down and focus on building back my little nest egg.
I wonder if the mere fact that I shouldn’t spend any money is what’s driving me to want to spend. I know at the end of the day I should buy a whole bunch of vinegar and just spray down the showers. I know that I should dedicate a few hours to cleaning out the grout work. I know that I should do all of these things, but regardless of what I should be doing I’m still in a spend, spend, spend frame of mind.
Jessa Irene (Holiday-Haven) says
Me too! Think those after Christmas sales did me in, got me spending. Remodeling always takes money. There is a way to fix the grout, you can buy already mixed grout or calking or sealers to possibly fix any problem areas till you can remodel. -Just an idea I had while reading your post, good luck whatever you decide to do!
Clare says
You could also pay someone to re-grout the tile in your bathrooms, which would cost a heck of a lot less than a remodel, and buy you years of bathroom happiness.
And if you got a white bathtub that needs a deep clean, I know just the trick …
kathy says
We bought a 180 year old house many years ago and the bathrooms were the worst. Filthy and ugly and impossible to clean. I ignored them for the most part but we finally did a remodel. By using a lot of stuff others had discarded and doing the work ourselves, we managed to create pretty, clean, functional bathrooms (2 of them) without borrowing money or breaking the bank. I feel your pain. A clean bathroom is on of life's little pleasures.
One Frugal Girl says
Thanks for the suggestion on repairing the grout. I guess my concern is paying money for a temporary solution, when I know I ultimately want to remodel. Still it's certainly worth looking into. After all, it might bide me enough time to really save up for the fix-up.
@kathy – I'm not sure how much of the work we could do ourselves. Did you just read books on how to remodel or did you have some experience with it? I know we could perform most of the demolition but I'm not sure about the rest of it. The bathrooms are unbelievably small so it's really a one man job.