Before and After: Master Bathroom

This is a really fun one. This bathroom was so awful. We will start with the realtor walk through pictures and then show pictures of present. We just completely gutted and updated the bathroom this year. In the middle are pictures where we put down some vinyl and updated it a little and that is the way it stayed until this year, 2015, with all new plumbing, flooring, closet, etc.

Yes, there were swinging bar doors to the toilet….

Here are a few pics of what I tried to do to make it look better.

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Then, my brother ripped out the toilet, flooring, lighting,  bathtub, etc. and put it all back together again. We lowered the ceiling a couple feet so you didn’t feel like you walked into a cracker box every time you passed over the threshhold. We also added a fan, new beautiful ceramic flooring in a chevron pattern. We also gutted the closet and put a new door in and re-engineered the shelves.

Before and After Bathroom

Ok, yes, so it has been since May that I have worked on this silly bathroom.  We worked on small pieces at a time.  We had to tear out the bathroom surround, level the floor, put down tiles (they will have to do for now- on a college girl budget), create a vanity (yes we did, from an old 1950’s Sears sewing table), put down the baseboard shoe, caulk everything up and then paint the trim white (was ivory).  I put up two mirrors I had in the attic and, voila, here you go!

Yes, I always mix gold/silver/wood/brown/black/white.  I go for the lived in shabby chic flea market look. 

BEFORE

Pulling out all the old

AFTER old moldy sheetrock and surround gone, new shower surround put in!

AFTER:

After

After - these mirrors came from the attic. Needed to see...looking for a nice black frame plain mirror.

AFTER- this mirror needs to go, anyone want to donate a black framed one???

I had some bird decals left over from my dining room project and thought they would look good here.  However, my brother teases me about having legless birds…..

I know I won’t win any BGH awards or anything, but my feet are happy that they do not have to walk on nasty plywood anymore.  My feet are enjoying the nice plush red rug placed in front of the tub.  My eyes appreciate this redo just as much.  Until the day we can create a larger bathroom, this will just have to do.

Andrea

Even my dog hates this floor

I was sitting at the island in my kitchen, doing coursework on my laptop, when I heard a crunching sound.  I looked over and not only had my dog chewed a floor tile in my kitchen, he had it in his mouth and was walking (although quite awkwardly) away with it.  All I could do was laugh. 

My dog ate it

Apparently he has had enough of this floor too. I was not joking when I said my dog was half goat.  I have the replacement flooring sitting in my hall waiting for install day.  I picked out a nice oak laminate flooring.  We are going to redo the kitchen.

The bathroom is almost finished.  The new vanity we constructed is in the kitchen waiting on the plumbing parts to arrive.  Hopefully, we will be able to install it next Saturday and I will have the TA DA pics to post.  I know I have been working on this crazy bathroom for three months!  I am ready for it to be finished.

Happy Saturday!  Oh, before I leave, here is my random Vivian pic of the week.

Cowgirl Viv

Andrea

Remodeling supplies taking over the house

One day, I am going to reclaim all of my catchalls and cabinet space.  It seems that the paint cans and screwdrivers creep in one by one from the shed and never make it back to the nice cozy home we made for them on nicely organized shelves.  In an effort to keep all of the various “things” from being left in the house, Steven and I, last Spring, spent an entire Saturday sorting everything into rubbermaid containers and Vivian labeled them all for us.  Unfortunately, this has not stopped the items from encroaching.  Just like unruly kids, I already have had to chase the caulk out of the bathroom….

I am trying to coax the nail gun from its resting place in the hall, but the ladders are rooted to the floor and wont budge.  Hmmm…..

Andrea

Hair Spray and Caulk…Can They Co-Exist?

Only in my bathroom!  I thought this looked funny.  We have so many remodeling projects going on that items like this caulk gun start blending in with regular household items.

Well, well, I guess since I am showing you this picture, I will have to let you know that we did start remodeling our bathroom.  It is not exactly what we wanted to do.  We really wanted to take a wall down and move the plumbing around.  However, due to my decision of going back to school next Fall, we have decided to save our money and just update the bathroom.  We are not finished.  We still need to put shoe around the baseboard and I need to sand and paint the doorway and window, but this will give you an idea of what it is starting to look like.

BEFORE bath area. Notice the awful surround.

The floor was horrendous. We pulled up several layers of old tile and plywood.

Pulling out all the old

AFTER old moldy sheetrock and surround gone, new shower surround put in!

AFTER new floor

BEFORE

AFTER not sure why my pictures are fuzzy.

Bye-bye ugly!

I pulled all the old flooring out, Steven tore out the shower surround and sheetrock and stuff and then he repaired the wall and we both liquid nailed the new surround in.  I then caulked and siliconed it (do NOT want a mildewed shower later!) very thoroughly and Steven laid the floor.  I am proud of it!  Not exactly what I want at the moment (this is what I really wanted), but it looks a WHOLE lot better than it did.  It started getting be very embarrasing to have guests over…especially overnight guests!

I am so busy with finishing up the school year, that I have not been able to do the finishing work.  When I do, I will post pictures of the end result.  Until then, my caulk gun and hairspray will need to learn how to get along….they may be there a while!

Andrea

Gearing up for a bathroom remodel

So, it is finally here!  We are putting our ducks in a row to gut and remodel our only, yes, I said ONLY bathroom in the entire house.  Since this house was built in 1907, the bathroom was an afterthought.  We have the original bathroom that you can access through a door on the porch (believe it or not, we do not use this one 🙂 ) 

original bathroom door on the back porch

and then you have a very small one on the inside built from the same room as the one on the porch.  We are going to take down the wall in between the porch bathroom and the inside bathroom and make it one large room.  At least, that is what we plan.  It seems that every time we get the sledge hammer out, we find something we were not expecting and then, we are delayed, or the project comes to a complete halt.  Hopefully, this is not the case with the bathroom.  I am tired of walking on plywood floors in there.

bathroom now

bathroom now 2

bathroom now 3

The plywood?  Let me tell you how that came about…  Shortly after we moved in, I was curious to see if the original wood floor was underneath the very ugly peel and stick tiles that lined the floor at that time.  So, I bought a crowbar and pulled them all up.  I found more peel and stick tiles, so, I pulled them up too!  By about that time, my husband came home and found me over my head in peel and stick tiles.   I guess he decided, if you can’t beat them, join ’em….  He grabbed the crowbar and helped me pull up the plywood.  What we found?  MORE peel and stick tiles.  Sheesh!  Under those peel and stick tiles was another subfloor of plywood and then the original floor.  The condition of the original floor was not bad, except around the tub.  Whoever the genius was who installed these multi layers of tiles and plywood, did not caulk around the tub.  So, all of the flooring around the tub was rotted.  I was wondering how in the world it was holding up my very heavy cast iron tub.  I imagined myself one day enjoying a nice bubble bath when all of a sudden CRASH and I am peering up through a five foot hole, visiting with the cats who live under my house.

We deliberated on several projects to move forward with this summer.  We decided on the bathroom in the hope that if we invest money there and, when that is complete, spruce up the kitchen, we may be able to get the bank to take a second look at our house.  As I said in previous posts, the appraiser told the bank that our house only has a 20 year life expectancy and that even after we complete the necessary repairs, our house would not appraise for enough to cover our loan.  Frustrating!  The main reason for this is, the bank made us tack on projects that we did not want.  But, they convinced us that it would make the appraisal value higher, thereby it pushed the contractor’s fee up to around $80k (in his pocket), plus the material costs.  What mainly frustrates me about this is, I don’t need a contractor to make the repairs to our house.  I need a roofing company, a plumber and a carpenter…the rest of the work we can do ourselves (we have pretty much done it already anyway).  This is our third house redo.  I guess the politics of the whole thing aggravate me.  To read more about it, visit some of my previous posts on the subject.

So, back to the subject at hand.  Here is a picture of my bathroom, and here are pictures of the fixtures, tub etc. that we will be adding to it.

Tile:

Bathroom Tile

 

 

Clawfoot tub from Lowes

Pedestal Sink

Inspiration:

Inspiration

Inspiration

Inspiration- love the mirror!

Chandelier, for over the tub

 Andrea

So, Where’s the Drill At?

“So, where’s the drill at?”  I asked my husband smiling sweetly as I entered the living room.  I know that question is the one he hates to hear coming out of my mouth.  Steven peered up at me over the top of his laptop screen and replied “It is in the kitchen”.  I scurried off to retrieve it before he asked me any more questions.  As I made my retreat, I hollered out his second most hated question “Do you know where the leveler is too?”  I am surprised he did not follow me into the kitchen.  He must have either chalked it up to: 1) She has her mind set on doing something and I am not going to interfere; or 2) I am going to ignore her because if I show interest she will involve me somehow.

I retrieved the drill, two screws, an extra shelf I had lying around and the leveler and headed to the bathroom.  I had just finished cleaning out the bathroom cabinet. I know when you think of a bathroom cabinet, you envision a small little chrome and white thing with two little glass shelves.  No, no, no, that is not my bathroom cabinet.  It is a full cabinet with a laundry hamper behind a closed door on the bottom, and a HUGE open, deep cabinet at the top.  I got tired of rifling through everything looking for Tylenol, a sheet, an extra handtowel, my toothpaste, etc. that I decided to organize it — TODAY!  After I was finished pulling everything out and putting it in stacks, I noticed the reason things became so disorganized.  I have so many little prescription bottles and medicines, tubes of Neosporin, etc. that kept getting lost in depth of the cabinet.  So, I decided to put up little shelf inside the cabinet to set all of the small things on.  I put the shelf on the wall, leveled it, marked it on the wall and used two screws to put it up.  Voila!  Done!  The next step is painting the inside of the cabinet.  I will post an “after”  picture when I am completely done.

Now, my cabinet is organized, everything is neatly labeled, stacked, folded, on a shelf and within easy reach.  My husband finally got around to come and see what in the world it was I was getting into and he swears that when he opens the cabinet door, he hears the heavenly voices sing: “Ahhhhhhhhhhhh” with lights shooting from the depths of the cabinet!  It is that neat, clean and organized.

Andrea