Last month I opened the bathroom door of our little bungalow and saw it: a crack, running through the middle of the floor. The click-and-lock tiles — the kind with no grout to save them — were done. The product was discontinued, so there was no such thing as a matching replacement. I stood there in my house slippers while my cat sat on the vanity, judging me, and the reality set in. We had a couple of weeks before the new tenants moved in.
That’s the part of renting people don’t warn you about. The rooms can age out on you fast, and when your deadline is a moving day, you stop decorating and start problem-solving.
What Was Actually Wrong
My husband and I bought this bungalow about eight years ago — he’s the one who did the very first bathroom renovation, back when we closed on the house. Since then we’d made a few updates: we painted the walls green, we swapped out the hardware here and there. The floor was the one thing nobody had touched.
Those old tiles had been fine for a while. Then they cracked — the specific problem with click-and-lock tile is that there’s no grout line to flex, so once one tile goes, the damage runs. And because the line was discontinued, the only real option was to rip it all out and start over.
So that’s what we did. In about two weeks, taken from the gaps between work and our usual life, we went from tired green room to something I’d actually want to put in a portfolio.
The Two Tiles That Did the Heavy Lifting
I want to be honest about how this mostly happened. I do most of my project planning in the store, standing in front of actual shelves, not Pinterest boards. That’s where this bathroom decided its own direction.
The floor first.
I walked into The Tile Shop for this project and I was smitten with the moment I saw it: Kasbah Cross and Star tile in Terracotta. I’d seen similar tiles before. But this one was a great price, and it has a porcelain finish that mimics clay. Porcelain is the right call for a bathroom — especially a rental bathroom, where durability is everything and renters don’t owe you anything.
It looks worn and handmade, and it isn’t. Laid out across the floor, it reads so much warmer than the cold, cool-toned tiles we had before. I keep being surprised by how much glass — or in this case, tile — changes the mood of a room.
The Wall Pattern: We Let the Comments Section Decide
For the walls I went bold with subway tile. I’m a bit obsessed with affordable tile in an unusual pattern — it’s the closest thing I have to a buying philosophy in the home department. I chose Villa subway tiles in white and warm gray and sketched a few patterns before I asked my followers to weigh in. I shared four of the options, you all voted, and the winner was a plaid layout with vertical and horizontal stripes.
Heads up, regulars: if you follow along anywhere, my husband’s first tile attempt ended in a small, very instructive disaster. We fixed it fast. The final wall, especially around the toilet, has a ton of visual interest without ever feeling loud. The plaid pattern is the single biggest reason this bathroom photographs well — it gives the eye somewhere to land that the paint color alone never could.
Small Bathroom, Big Tricks
I’ve spent enough years at a buying desk to believe the small-room rule is simple: keep the big things light and let the small things be loud.
Wall color: the walls went from drab green to Behr Even Better Beige — I prefer the idea to the wall, and in a room this size it’s the cheapest transformation there is. Beige against the terracotta floor and the warm gray tile is what makes the room feel cozy instead of cold.
The vintage green toilet from Kohler — the Aspen Green, if you want the model name — is the kind of surprise a small room can carry. One saturated fixture, everything else neutral, and suddenly a tiny bathroom stops feeling small. It’s the closet-edit equivalent of the one statement piece that does the work of five. Above it, I hung a mini gallery wall with art that ties the sage, terracotta, and warm gray together so nothing in the room feels like it wandered in from a different project.
The vanity is a Kohler unit with deep pull-out drawers — the kind that swallows a full week of laundry supplies. We found a matching tower cabinet that sits right beside it for towel storage and keeps the counter clear. I leaned into lighter woods throughout, because in a small bathroom, light wood reads as air, not clutter. A squiggly mirror does the rest — one playful shape, and the room stops feeling like a hallway.
The Shower: The One Thing We Didn’t Do
Two-week schedule. We did not have time to replace the shower surround, and I’d rather under-promise a room than half-do its most expensive part. What we did do: we lifted the curtain rod as high as the wall allowed and stopped using a boring standard curtain. In went a block-print curtain, hung high, and the ceiling line in that corner stopped being the first thing you notice.
That’s a rental-sized fix. It costs almost nothing, it takes twenty minutes, and every time someone walks in, the first thing they register is the shower looks taller — which, in a room this compact, is doing the work of a much bigger project.
Style Math: The Tile Question
People ask me if porcelain tile is worth it over ceramic for a bathroom. Here’s the math I’d actually run for a rental bathroom:
- Porcelain, at the price this Kasbah tile came in, fits a two-week budget because you’re buying it once.
- Ceramic that looks identical at first glance will need earlier replacement in a wet, high-traffic room.
- One durable floor in a rental is a deposit-saver and a re-rental story. One cracked, discontinued click tile is a photo of exactly why you shouldn’t.
The version of this renovation that skipped the cheap floor is the version we’re living with today. That’s the whole argument.
FAQ
Did we keep the original shower surround?
No — two weeks wasn’t enough. We lifted the curtain rod to a higher point and swapped in a block-print curtain, which is the cheap, fast fix we’d recommend first in a small rental bathroom.
Where did the striped wall tile come from?
Subway tile from The Tile Shop, white and warm gray — set into a plaid layout with vertical and horizontal stripes. I shared four pattern options and my followers voted; the plaid won.
Can this pattern be made more affordable?
The floor tile itself was a great price in person, and I kept everything else in softer tones — light wood, beige — so the pattern can do the decorating without the rest of the room competing. If you’re working a smaller budget, the tile is the one place I’d spend.
A Note From Maya
I didn’t grow up inside a house I owned. Everything I know about what holds up is from standing in front of replacement shelves, trying not to buy the sad, cheaper version. This floor — terracotta on the surface, porcelain underneath, a two-week deadline to get it right — is the project that taught me that. And yes, my husband and I argue about tile layouts sometimes. We ended this one with a vote.
Related reading: How I Reworked a Tired White Kitchen for Under the Cost of One New Sink and The 10-Piece Edit: One Statement Fixture, Eight Neutrals, Done.