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Back in January, my sister asked me to help her redo her bathroom as a surprise birthday gift for her husband, and of course I jumped at the opportunity. They had had a hard year, and I really wanted to do whatever I could possibly do to make it even the slightest bit better. After the planning stage, we started gather materials, and quickly realized it would be a difficult task to keep it a surprise. But, none the less, without the surprise part, we aimed to get the project done for his birthday. That proved difficult as well, since I homeschool my boys, and really had no solid block of time to set aside for the project until summer. So we pushed it out a month-ish to when he would be out of town for a few days, and kept scouring stores for materials. She wanted to keep costs as low as possible and finding the best deals took a lot of day shopping at Lowes, Home Depot, and Floor and Décor. She had a general idea of what she wanted style wise, but had no real vision for the space. We dubbed her style as “modern cottage”. So, we sourced items that fit that genre. Clean lines with a bit of whimsy thrown in to keep it cozy. She also wanted a larger format subway tile so there would be less grout to clean. The patterned encaustic tiles stole her heart, so we had to find those on the cheap! Thankfully many places sell porcelain and ceramic versions for much less than the real thing. The first purchase we made was the vanity.
Click the link below to see the info on this vanity!
It had a modern look and clean lines, but it also felt warm and cottage-y because of the distressed wood look. With that checked off the list of things to buy, we moved on to faucet fixtures and tile. Once all that was purchased, we just had to wait for the week we had planned to actually do the renovation.
Here are the before shots, thanks to my sister for reminding me to take them!
It was dark, dingy, and falling apart. The inside of the cabinet, the bottom was totally warped out from a faucet leak and wasn’t very functional for storage space. The vinyl peel and stick tiles had gaps, the baseboard next to the shower had rotted out, and none of the shower faucet handles were useable and fell off all the time. She had been using pliers to turn things on and off! So, it was definitely time to tear it all out and bring in a whole new look.
Demo day is one of my favorite days when I do a project. Destruction is cathartic for me, however, cleaning up the mess is not my favorite. I just want to smash, bash, tear out and move on to rebuilding. No clean up, please! It never works out for me that way… bummer. The toilet, cabinet, and vinyl tiles came out with no problems. The shower walls were a bit more work, but I got them down all the same. Now, her original wish was to keep the tub since it would keep costs down, but as I was tearing off the walls of tile I realized if we kept the tub it would stick out like a sore thumb against all the new, shiny things we were about to put in. So, I had a discussion with my sister, and she agreed with me and began perusing tub options as I finished up demoing. While browsing all the tub options, she asked if we could just turn it into a stand alone shower and not have a bathtub at all. With this being the only full bathroom in her house I told her it would really be whatever her preference is, especially since they plan on living in the house for a very long time. If her husband agreed, we decided we’d go for it. He didn’t even hesitate when she called and asked. He said a shower would be way better and loved the idea. Since we made this decision on demo day, we had to go out and buy more tile. And while we were there we also bought the shower pan and a new toilet, cause we couldn’t leave the old toilet now that everything else would be brand spankin’ new!
31 Downing Street 