Master Bath Update

We sincerely hope to wrap up the bathroom remodel this weekend. We have only been working on it when it's convenient so it's taken longer than some other projects but it has given us time to contemplate some things and make some changes. Here's what's going on so far:

Paint!

Both shots are the same paint, and that paint is the same one seen in the kitchen so be your own judge about how dark or light it really is. I did learn that I don't like Sur-Line rollers because apparently I'm a heavy handed painter which results in them leaving alot of bubbles which made the walls look like ostrich skin and I had to lightly sand them before the second more carefully applied coat with a lighter napped roller (also Sur-Line but I made it work). I hate having lots of paint cans hanging around and I had about a gallon of this left and not alot of money in the budget to blow on paint. Besides, I like this color and we thought it would look nice in here. We debated using the same color as the living room/hallway (which we have part of a 5 gallon bucket of), but thought that the darker would add a little richness to this space. We are really digging the tile in the shower. The color looks great with this darker brown paint, it looks great with the white tub and trim, it even makes that stupid floor tile look good which is totally an added bonus! Oddly enough, the tile has all of these colors in it (except the white) so it was an awesome happy accident that is totally working in our favor.

Now I'm going to give a few sneak peeks at things to come.

Like this light above the vanity, and this mirror under it. And how about this sexy sink? It really is slick looking and totally worth the hassle it was to find it. We still have to install the tile backsplash that will match the accent tile in the shower, grout all of the tile (including painting the floor grout with one of those nifty pens), install the sink, light, tub faucet, and mirror, caulk everything, and purchase and install a sink faucet, towel holders, and a toilet. Speaking of toilets, remember that I said we were installing the toilet from the master bath in the hall bath upstairs because the toilet in there was really bad and didn't flush right?

We did get the toilet in there and the old one out and then we gutted the crappy crapper (bahaha) so that we'd have spare parts and put that bad boy on the curb for the trash guys. That was a great plan except that it wasn't because the trash guys didn't pick it up. So now we have this suburban outhouse in front of the fire hydrant. I'm just waiting for the neighborhood kids to start using it and insisting that they didn't need to come inside to pee (or worse) because there was a toilet on the street. If you're my neighbor and you're reading this, I'm sorry about the toilet on the street and we'll get it taken care of soon. ~Kellie~

Master Bath Renovation

This post could have also been called "Crap Rolls Downhill", but that was a little graphic for the title so anyway. Ok, so I'll cut to the chase and let you know (if you don't already know) why we are remodeling the master bath. It all started with a little crazy looking grout and a few loose tiles that popped off way too easily when we investigated things.

So we took off all the tile, found water damage, and ended up taking everything back to the studs to find THIS------>
The black section on the left is actually house wrap paper stuff, but the second section is in fact mold. After a few days we finally had all that mess cleaned up.  As an added bonus, we found another beer can in the wall. This is a joke and a theme in this house, open a wall, find a beer can. It explains alot of what we find, it really does.

So anyway, we had a few decisions to make and one of them was to tile all the way up to the ceiling in the shower. We put up some cement board so that we could avoid that whole ugly mold issue in the future in the even that our tiling job sucks, or the grout job fails or something else.

 












So this project just kind of keeps going. As I think I've said before, our neighbor says that "Nothing is ever more permanent than that which is meant to be temporary" so we tried to think of how to get the biggest bang for our buck while we were there, and had things torn apart. That list included removing the popcorn from the ceiling, fixing some places on the walls, replacing the counter top on the vanity (which was a cheaper alternative to replacing the entire thing) and most recently replacing the toilet, more on that later.

 This  is not a job for the faint of heart. In fact, we have both learned that we have zero Hispanic heritage because if we did, we'd have had the drywall, painting, and tiling done ages ago.  Here's a shot of our poor bathroom floor, and a little shot of the tile going up.

 

So at the end of the day after multiple set backs and yet another design change (that's gonna be pretty darn cool I think), here's what we have done. Remember that we have 4 kids, all of which are home while we're doing this so things are going slowly. Add to that the fact that neither of us have ever tiled a bathroom and things are at a down right crawl thanks to the learning curve that comes with this. We're pretty happy with things though. We're trying to take our time and think things through because this unplanned renovation bumps this bathroom to the bottom of the list. You might notice that we are using 12x12 tiles. We just liked them, no other reason really. Ok, well if you want to be technical, they are easier and faster to put up than smaller tiles and since we're learning as we go, we liked the thought of easier.

Now you might be wondering what we're doing for a bathroom since ours is out of commission, and the answer to that is that we are all sharing the hall bath (aka the kids' bath) upstairs. It has allowed us to take our time and work on the bathroom when we can. I have to admit that I used to avoid that bathroom like the plague but since I've been using it I have spiffed it up a tad. For starters, I added that white cabinet above the toilet. It was a freebie from a friend, yay for saving a little money! I also moved some of the decor around to make room for said shelf, and replaced the nasty floor vent with a new clean white one. We took the toilet from our bathroom which flushed fairly well (and needed to be moved anyway for the renovation) and put it in this bathroom in place of the toilet that was in there that flushed TERRIBLY!!! There's a whole other story there, but it'll have to wait for another day. There was no window covering in there (because the kids are short and the neighbors can't see their little naked bottoms), so I added one so that the neighbors didn't get flashed by our much taller bodies. I have to say that while I do love having a master bath, I could live with sharing this one if we didn't have it. It feels very homey since the little upgrades it's gotten since I've had to use it, and though it's only about 1/2 the size of the master bath (crazy, right?) it's big enough not to feel like you're in a closet.

So that's where we've gotten to so far. It kinda sucks that this renovation wasn't planned because we won't be able to to everything  that we wanted to do in there, but we're doing most of the things that we had on the list so it's ok. I'm very thankful that we are both able to generate a little extra income to help fund this project. The only things that we are not going to do in there that we really wanted to had we planned to renovate are replacing the floor tile, replacing the entire vanity, and taking out the tub and making it a huge shower. Maybe someday. ~Kellie~