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~