Bathroom Redo

Right after I made my New Years Resolutions to run more and be more present, Hubster and I decided to start tackling some much needed home projects. Those home projects, like every project we decide to do ourselves, took much longer and became more involved than we initially anticipated. All of that meant that I didn't run and I definitely wasn't present, because in order to keep my boys out of buckets of paint and grout, they were allowed to watch as many movies as they wanted.

When we first moved into our home, we did so many projects. We redid all the floors, replaced all the light fixtures, painted every surface. Each project made our home prettier and more our home. But after several months of constant renovation, we burnt out. I was also in my intern year and exhausted from that.

Since then, we've done a couple small little projects. We refinished our deck, replaced our shed roof, did some very minor landscaping.

But some projects we always meant to do just never got started.  Mainly our bathrooms.  Both our bathrooms are rather sad, with old tile and worn vinyl flooring. We painted them and called it a day. The main hall bathroom was especially awful. Mostly because of one main, very large thing.

The blue bath tub. 

 

It's very blue. It's very old, with some lovely chipped, rusted spots.  It's very embarrassing. Every time I want to share cute pictures of my babies in the bath tub, I always change them to black and white, because of the blue tub. Every time we had over night company and they used the bathroom, I cringed.

Three weeks ago, Hubster and I decided that it was time. It was time to say goodbye to the blue tub and the matchy-matchy blue tile and the gray-blue linoleum.  It was time, finally, to redo the bathroom.

Here was our hall bathroom before we started, in all it's bright green walls and blue tub and tile glory.  (I painted to walls that color 5 years ago, trying to make the bathroom a little cheerier and distract from the blue monstrosity.)

Tearing out the floor was kind of exciting. So exciting that I didn't think to take the before picture until I had already started pulling up the linoleum.

After the floors came up, it was time to rip out the tile. Behind the tile had been regular old, non-bathroom-approved sheet rock. Luckily, there no mold or water damage, but this just gave us another opportunity to shake our heads at those 1970s building codes.

There were a couple of times during this project I wondered what on earth we had gotten ourselves into. That maybe this was actually all a terrible idea and we should just nix the whole thing.  One of those times was when all the time was out and the walls were torn down to the studs. 

It was panic-inducing. But at that point, there was no going back.

After the walls were down, it was time, finally for the tub to come out. I had been waiting years for this moment. Carrying that tub out of the bathroom and out of our house was one of the best feelings of any home project we've ever done. Granted, now the tub is sitting in our backyard, awaiting a trip to the dump. But at least it's no longer in our bathroom.

In place of the old, yucky tub, we put in a beautiful, clean-lined, deep white tub. 

I love that tub (even though in most of these pictures, it's still blue, because of a protective liner that we left on until every last thing was done.  The look on our kids' faces when they saw our new "blue" tub was priceless.)

For the floors, we chose a neutral tile in a large rectangle, to play off the subway tile we had planned for the tub surround. I didn't hate the tile when we picked it out; for our budget it was pretty much the only one I liked. In the bathroom, I love the tile. I love the color and pattern. 

We went with a classic subway tile around the tub, something I'm hoping will be in style longer than the blue patterned tile that was there. Although I'm not sure that old tile ever was in style.

To replace the old vanity, we found this lovely vanity with two faucets at IKEA. It gives the bathroom more storage. The dual faucets mean that my duelling older boys no longer have to share. 

I had been hoping to finish the whole project in two weekends, because I'm crazy.  Of course, there were all sorts of hiccups along the way, like when we found out our water shut off valves to the toilet and sink were broken and had to be replaced. It ended up taking us three weekends to finish. Considering we did all the work ourselves and learned a lot of new skills along the way, I think it's pretty good.

Now, our bathroom is so pretty and shiny. No more being embarrassed. No more changing the color of my photos to hide the color of the bath tub.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

When every thing was finished this weekend, I claimed the first bath in the new tub (before it was dirtied up by three boys using it.)  It was wonderful!

Now, we're giving ourselves one weekend to recover, and then we are on to redo the master bathroom.