This week The Builder and I were discussing what project to tackle next. We had several points to consider:
- We still need to order a shower door for the new shower
- We need to build a new double vanity for the bathroom
- We have plans to tear out the garden tub and replace it with a soaker tub (and goodbye leaking jacuzzi jets that don't work right and are crazy loud!)
- We plan to redo the toilet area as well.
- The entire bathroom needs to be textured correctly and repainted
It's a fair amount of work and the vanity alone is going to cost several hundred dollars more once we build it and buy new sinks, faucets, and hardware.
We both agreed the next project needed to be simple and low cost. There is no money tree growing in our backyard (lots of weeds, but that's another story). So what did we choose?
Yep, another bathroom renovation. Of course.
Yes, I'm moderately tired of bathroom renovations. But The Builder assured me this one would be simple, done in a weekend, and maybe $40 tops. Sounds good, right?
You may remember that several years ago, when we were still renting, we re-painted and put new faucets in the powder room downstairs. It didn't start off well. I tried to do it while The Builder and the boys were camping, ended up peeling off wallpaper I didn't know was in the bathroom, and The Builder came home to quite a mess.
It was a simple re-do since we had no plans of buying the house at that time. We were just really tired of the worn paint and the 80's faucet. After my modest bathroom re-do we haven't touched it since. It's ok. But I've come to hate the blue color. There's no light in the bathroom and after almost three years of that color, I've realized the color is too cool for that space. It's washed out and blah. Because of the size and lack of natural light, the flash added more color to this photo than what it had in real life.
So how is this relevant?
Let me backtrack just a bit. As I mentioned, we want to put in a new soaker tub in our master bathroom. To do this, we need to remove the current bathroom vanity. Since we had planned to build a new vanity anyway, this isn't really an issue.
You may recall when we re-did the hall bathroom last year, we put in a temporary vanity until The Builder could finish that vanity (vanities are crazy expensive and I am thrifty to a fault). We knew then we wanted to tear out the vanity in the powder room downstairs. It's boxy and dated and too large for the small space. Since we finished the bathroom upstairs, the small vanity has sat in the garage. So this was the weekend to tear out the powder room vanity, repaint, and install the smaller vanity. Particularly since we stopped in at ReStore this weekend and found our soaker tub on sale! The thought process is that we would update the powder room to have a nice functioning sink when we're ready for the next phase of the master bathroom redo. After all, The Builder assured me this was a easy re-do.
Famous last words.
Do you remember what happened when I decided to repaint this same powder room? I inadvertently pulled off a whole strip of wallpaper hiding under the texture that I had no idea was there. It required The Builder to re-mud the entire wall and then texture before we could paint. Well, guess what happened this weekend? Yes, you guessed it. When The Builder removed the baseboard to paint, there was a small strip of the old wallpaper. And when he went to pull it off... a huge piece that was hiding under the horrible texture came up too. So long story short, he has now re-muded that wall, sanded down the horrible texture, skim coated it and re-textured it. Needless to say, a lot more work than what we had anticipated. Here are some quick shots from the work this weekend:
Yep, it's yucky. This is the best representation of what the paint color looks like. This is where the sink and vanity were. Even with the vanity out, it's a small space. My thought is that the new vanity will center nicely on the wall and the "extra" space will give the allusion of more space.
We'll be using the same mirror we had before as well as the vanity light. I'd love to put sconces in here, but I can't justify the expense. There will be some modest updates to some of the decor and some big changes down the road but this is a good first step.
Quick shot of the peeled up wallpaper. Oops. Glad it wasn't me this time!! And here is The Builder cutting in with the new paint. This was at 6pm tonight. No final photo's tonight, the evening light is even worse for taking photo's in this windowless bathroom than the daytime light. And even though this update is going to take longer than a weekend, we're on track to have it done in just a few more days.
Then we get to the really good part. Installing the soaker tub!!
So how is this relevant?
Let me backtrack just a bit. As I mentioned, we want to put in a new soaker tub in our master bathroom. To do this, we need to remove the current bathroom vanity. Since we had planned to build a new vanity anyway, this isn't really an issue.
You may recall when we re-did the hall bathroom last year, we put in a temporary vanity until The Builder could finish that vanity (vanities are crazy expensive and I am thrifty to a fault). We knew then we wanted to tear out the vanity in the powder room downstairs. It's boxy and dated and too large for the small space. Since we finished the bathroom upstairs, the small vanity has sat in the garage. So this was the weekend to tear out the powder room vanity, repaint, and install the smaller vanity. Particularly since we stopped in at ReStore this weekend and found our soaker tub on sale! The thought process is that we would update the powder room to have a nice functioning sink when we're ready for the next phase of the master bathroom redo. After all, The Builder assured me this was a easy re-do.
Famous last words.
Do you remember what happened when I decided to repaint this same powder room? I inadvertently pulled off a whole strip of wallpaper hiding under the texture that I had no idea was there. It required The Builder to re-mud the entire wall and then texture before we could paint. Well, guess what happened this weekend? Yes, you guessed it. When The Builder removed the baseboard to paint, there was a small strip of the old wallpaper. And when he went to pull it off... a huge piece that was hiding under the horrible texture came up too. So long story short, he has now re-muded that wall, sanded down the horrible texture, skim coated it and re-textured it. Needless to say, a lot more work than what we had anticipated. Here are some quick shots from the work this weekend:
We'll be using the same mirror we had before as well as the vanity light. I'd love to put sconces in here, but I can't justify the expense. There will be some modest updates to some of the decor and some big changes down the road but this is a good first step.
Then we get to the really good part. Installing the soaker tub!!
