Master Bath Update

Now that our home has a big "Sale Pending" sign in the front yard, sharing home improvement projects feels slightly out of place.

I knew it was bound to happen. While we did manage to complete many, many projects on our home, there were still quite a few we always meant to get to. The thing I desperately didn't want to happen was to postpone those projects until right before we sold our house, so that we could actually have some time to enjoy the results of our work.

Obviously, that exact thing I didn't want to happen happened.  Although we had the plans and most the supplies for our master bath renovation for nearly a year, we didn't actually tackle the project until a month before we listed the house on the market.

We even hemmed and hawed about doing it at all. We could have saved ourselves a little money and quite a few weekends by just re-caulking the shower and calling it a day. But every time we would look at the brown shower tile and the grey vinyl flooring, we felt we just couldn't leave the bathroom looking like that.

Our master bath is quite small. I wanted to make it something special to somewhat compensate for the small size.

This project was much more manageable than the hall bath renovation. We only had to redo the floors and the tile in the shower. The sink was perfect, the shower doors and base presentable.

Just like the hall bath project, this started by ripping everything out. Unlike the hall bath project, I got so excited, I completely missed a before picture.  I did manage to snag one small picture of the ugly linoleum, of which there ended up being two layers.

I also didn't take a picture of the nearly gutted bathroom. I was too focused on just getting things done.

Because the bathroom is on the small side, we used nicer finishes. I really wanted to use marble, but it was still cost prohibitive. So we got a porcelain tile with a marble-esque pattern. 

So much nicer than the dark, yucky linoleum.

In the shower, we used the same white subway tiles we used in the hall bath. Here, however, I splurged on some glass tile for an accent.  The tile ended up coordinating perfectly with the existing turquoise wall color (almost as if I had planned it, which I didn't. I just gravitate towards the same things.)

After having done a bathroom just weeks prior, we were hitting our stride. Everything went very smoothly. With only one tiny hiccup.

We were so determined to completely finish on a Sunday evening. Until we realized we were one single tile short.

That meant we had to drive across town to the hardware store and buy a single $0.70 tile. We couldn't think of a single other thing we needed at the hardware store to make the trip seem worth while. In hindsight, with that being our only hangup, it was nothing. At the time, after hours spent cutting tile and applying mortar and spacers, it felt terrible.

We opted for gray grout to accentuate the grey marbling in the floor tiles and to highlight the beautiful subway tiles. There were moments that I worried I had made a bad choice, because the grout seemed so dark. But after it dried and was a lovely light gray, I was extremely glad we chose that color.

Watching every come together made me so glad that we decided to refinish the bathroom. 

Yes, we will only enjoy it for a few months. But those are a few months of getting ready in the morning and taking showers in a very pretty bathroom.