BE SURE TO CHECK OUT THE VIDEO AT THE END OF THE POST!
When we were getting our Airbnb off the ground, speed was the name of the game. Well, sort of. It still took about six months from the time we closed until the time we actually started hosting, but we were moving as fast as we could with two full-time jobs and a toddler in tow!
After purchasing the house, we didn’t have a lot of money left over to work with for renovations, so the plan was to do what was absolutely necessary to start bringing in income ASAP and make more improvements down the road once we’d started making money.
Our upstairs bathroom is the perfect example of this.
(I apologize for the horrible photo quality. The only ones I have are stills pulled from the video I took during our walk through–yes, all this stuff was in the house when we took possession of it!)
It needed help. A gut renovation would’ve been the ideal scenario, but that definitely wasn’t in the budget. We’re about ten months into hosting now and we’ve only just started to save for that.
So, in the meantime, I started making some minor cosmetic improvements that would make the bathroom a little more appealing.
I painted the walls. I tore down the gross old plastic tub surround and installed a fresh new one. And I put down peel and stick floor tiles.
Choosing Peel And Stick Floor Tiles
When you Google ‘peel and stick floor tiles,’ there are a few options that dominate the big-box stores.
After comparing the designs, I decided to go with these ones from FloorPops.
Side note–I’m surprised by how few designs there are and how there aren’t more basic ones, like plain colors. I probably would have ordered something less busy if it were available, but I thought this was the best one from the selection available online.
They come in boxes of ten tiles. I ordered eight boxes at ~$12 each.
This was a little more than I needed, but between having to cut some odd size end pieces and making a few mistakes, I wound up using all of the boxes. If you order them on Amazon like I did, you can always return any extra.
Installing FloorPops Peel And Stick Tiles
When you first start sticking the tiles down, your first instinct will be to stick the corner of one of the tiles in the corner of the room and build outward from there. Don’t do this.
Why? Because there’s a good chance that you’ll get to the other side of the room and be left with an awkwardly small strip for the last row of tiles, which looks weird.
Or, the more likely situation is that the walls of your room are not perfectly square, and as you move down the wall, your tiles will start to slant.
So, instead of starting with one full tile in the corner of the room, you want to start in the middle and work your way toward the corners.
I saw a mathematical equation somewhere for how to determine exactly where to start based on the size of your tiles, but it was so confusing. Since we’re using peel and stick tiles and not the real thing, I think it’s perfectly acceptable to just lay them out and eyeball how it will look best.
Ideally, you want to have the pieces on the edges of the room be somewhere between ¼ to ¾ the width of a full tile, like this:
I hope that makes sense.
Listen, if you get to an edge and it’s an awkwardly small strip, it’s not the end of the world. It’s much easier to cut these FloorPops tiles into thin pieces than it is to cut real tile. Believe me, I tried to cut thin tile pieces during this project. It was next to impossible and almost caused me to have a mental breakdown 🙂
Once you have the layout decided, you literally just peel off the back of the tiles like a sticker and stick them into place. I stuck mine down right over the existing vinyl flooring.
I HIGHLY RECOMMEND adding some additional sticking power using a product like this Gorilla Glue spray adhesive. While the tiles stuck pretty well on their own, I did have a few that started peeling up at the corners that I had to re-glue.
I used the Gorilla Glue linked above on a peel and stick backsplash in my kitchen and have had no peeling!
As for cutting the edge pieces, the instructions recommend scoring the tile with a utility knife and breaking them. This works, but I think it’s a lot of effort for this kind of project.
I used a piece of paper as a template, drew a line on the tile and used these heavy duty scissors to cut them. You can kind of get an idea of what I mean in the video that accompanies this post, in the part where I’m stenciling around the toilet.
Again, I am plugging these scissors. Buy them. You will not regret it.
I bought them at the start of the pandemic and they continue to be the most useful purchase I’ve made since. I whip them out for everything: DIY projects galore, cutting open that crazy annoying clamshell packaging on products, breaking down cardboard boxes, you name it. Using them brings a smile to my face.
The Verdict
Are these peel and stick tiles going to fool anybody into thinking they’re real tile? No. It’s very clear they’re vinyl.
But for the price–under $100 for a bathroom–they’re pretty darn good. For a cheap bathroom makeover, I don’t think you can find a better option, and you can do the whole room in a day.
If this were going to be a long-term update, I might have taken the time to use tile spacers and grout in between the tiles, which really takes the look up a notch. But at that point, you probably just want to go for actual tiles, which aren’t that much more difficult to install.
I love that they were so inexpensive, so I won’t feel bad if we do end up gutting the bathroom within a year. And they made a dramatic improvement in the look of the room for minimal effort.
While I don’t love the status quo of this bathroom, it works for the time being. So far no guests have complained about it, so it’s a win in my book!
Find the FloorPops tiles I used on Amazon here.
No Comments