Welcome to the most intensive and longest bathroom reno I have done so far, with my ever trusty hubby-sidekick, of course! This was the very first bathroom remodel in our house, as it needed the most attention right away. The actual renovation spanned 2 years. “What!?! 2 years!” you say. I know… craziness. It was mostly due to a bad situation hiring out for our shower glass, and NOT because we work that slowly. I promise, we don’t work at a snail’s pace… usually. We also choose to pay cash for our projects, vowing not to go into debt! So, saving up to do this bathroom took a while, and we would collect things as we could afford them. We started buying tile a year or two before we even began this project. Side note, if you do this, be sure you buy plenty more tile than you think you will need!!
I, again, almost tore it all out without remembering to take before shots! But alas, I have the “mostly” before pictures, so here’s what we were dealing with:
Brass and pink everywhere, with rotting carpeted floors! Oh joy! Carpeted floors in a bathroom should be against the law. And, we had the same drywall detail running around the perimeter at the ceiling, like in the other bathrooms we have remodeled. It made the ceiling feel so low, and in the shower, the drywall would get wet and mildew would form in little droplets off the cornerbead. The can light above the tub didn’t work, and it was dark, even though we had the famous bar lights that seem to be the trend when these homes were built. The countertop (not pictured due to over-eagerness to get started) was 2×2 magenta tile, and a nightmare to clean with all the grout. Gross. Ultimately, the only things we kept were the cabinets, which we were going to repurpose for our vanity. The layout also stayed the same, mostly because I MUST have a bathtub, and when we brainstormed how to get a bigger shower AND keep the tub, it didn’t work any other way without driving up the cost extensively and losing closet space. No biggie for us, as we don’t need to run laps inside our shower, so a smaller shower stall worked fine for our purposes.
We began by tearing off the drywall detail and the tile walls. We then realized how the lazy electrician had ran the wiring inside the framing where the drywall detail was (to save on staples?), and therefore Dean had to rewire the entire bathroom. We added a can light above the vanity and swapped the two bar lights out for a single sconce that would go between the mirrors. After we tore out the carpet, we realized that at any moment we could have been stepping through the floor into the ceiling below because it was so completely rotted out. Hence why carpet in bathrooms should be outlawed. It traps and holds all the moisture in the padding, and mold was growing all over our subfloor and even up the wall. So, we had to replace the subfloor, and tear out all the drywall, thankfully it hadn’t gone into the studs. While that was happening, we also had a water leak in the exterior wall that took a couple days to sort out. Turns out it was actually condensation from a steel strap bracing the studs, since it was so hot in the bathroom with freezing temps outside. Crisis averted!
31 Downing Street 