Our Biggest Undertaking

I'm not really sure where to begin when it comes to the story of how a single room in our house went from a semi demolished bathroom (when we first saw it when touring the house) to a very simply/cheaply finished bathroom (when we had the inspection) to a completely gutted bathroom (during the renovation) to a stunning one of a kind bathroom that truly represents who we are. There's a lot to tell in that story! I think the best way will be to break it down in a bit.

I will let this post act as a summary of my feelings from beginning to end. Hopefully I can get Glenn to detail his experience as well because he certainly had a much different experience than I did.

When we first saw the bathroom while touring the home it had a gross blue toilet, a sink (I'm not positive on that) and a gutted shower/tub area with the lath showing. The owner assured us that they would finish it if we were to buy the house. Ideally we would have rather them not finished the bathroom because we wanted to redo it anyway. It seemed such a shame for someone to spend time and money on something we would rip out. Unfortunately our loan required the bathroom to be finished in order for the house to qualify. The bathroom got finished. On the cheap.

During our inspection the inspector noted that there was basically no water pressure but that he wasn't sure what the reason for it was. Glenn was almost certain that it had something to do with the mixing cartridge and I was certain that this was all way over my head. Just a short time later and the house was ours and we would eventually start thinking about what we wanted to do to the bathroom. And then it sat.

Fast forward to the middle of August and you will find Glenn ripping out the shower. A week or so later Glenn pulled the sink out and I finished pulling up the sheet laminate flooring. We also got Freyja at that time :o) Not much longer after that, Glenn pulled out the toilet, much to my disgust. We stuck all the fixtures in the atrium and attempted to get rid of them via Craigslist, which we did. At this point we had found ourselves relegated to using the downstairs bathroom only. It was annoying, but it was doable.

If I'm completely honest with myself, I can't really recall a whole lot of what happened while doing the bathroom and in what order things happened. It seems like such a blur, and really it was. Once our friend Ashley informed us she would be visiting we had a deadline. The bathroom simply HAD to be finished by October 13. With maybe a month to go we kicked it into high gear.
We ordered a beautiful acrylic claw foot slipper tub online (SCARY!) and began a relentless search for the perfect piece of furniture to turn into a vanity.
On one fateful weekend Glenn lined up a handful of yard sales for us to visit and we began searching. We had no idea what we were looking for, but we were positive that we would know it when we laid eyes on it. Thanks to Glenn's hard work and persistence we found exactly what we were looking for and to this day we still don't know what to call it. I later finished the vanity with a good coating of polyurethane to give it some durability.

Next on the list was to find a sink and a faucet to go on top of the previously mentioned vanity. We found a nice looking inexpensive faucet on Amazon and we got a nice vessel sink at Lowe's.
Lastly we needed to find a toilet. We were pretty adamant about getting a highly efficient dual flush toilet, but all the ones we had seen up to this point were pretty ugly and not as efficient as we would have liked. Finally we remembered a very cool place we had once visited in Seattle called EcoHaus. Sure enough, they had the most perfect toilet for us at more than half off! So basically we got the most efficient dual flush toilet commercially available for a steal.
Now we had everything we needed for the bathroom except for the flooring. At this time we were walking on plywood, but we weren't in there all that often. Again, we made a trip to the big blue home improvement store to find what we needed. They had cute little hex tiles that I just loved. Best of all, they came with a mesh backing, and if I have learned anything from Holmes on Homes it is that a mesh backed tile does not need to be "buttered" with thin set.
I feel like tiling should be a separate post, as this one is already pretty lengthy, so I will just finish with we bought the tile and we laid the tile.
My next task was to paint the walls. We chose a deep cobalt blue called Bottle Blue from the Eddie Bauer for Valspar collection. It really is a beautiful color that plays quite nicely with the rich warm wood tone and the bright white of everything else. Painting was a breeze.
Finally everything was getting installed! Somewhere in between we made a trip to Target and Bed Bath & Beyond to pick up some bathroom necessities like a shower curtain, bathmat, hand towels, and curtain hooks. The bathroom was really looking like a bathroom now! Not only is it functional, but oh my goodness is it beautiful!
On the last day of our deadline I ran to Lowe's, at this point we were extremely familiar with their employees, and picked up a big white framed mirror to go above the vanity. The previous bathroom had no mirror so we didn't realize that the lights were installed too low to allow the mirror to hang at a proper height. Being too exhausted too care and too happy with everything else to worry about it, we hung the mirror as high as we could and called it complete.
The very last thing we did a few weeks later was reward ourselves, as promised, with white huge, luxurious, expensive, fluffy bath sheets that I had my eye on at Macy's. We only bought two because they were so expensive. We also splurged and bought some pretty luxurious guest towels (not sheets this time) so our guests can bathe happy too.
This has been a pretty long post for a pretty long and tiring project, but I think you get the idea. Until next time!