Our Bathroom Remodel

We have lived with an embarrassingly ugly bathroom for eleven years so it was overdue for a remodel. I disliked our old dusty rose shower tile and matching cast iron tub so much that I didn’t take many photos of it. However, I did post our bathroom when we re-tiled the floor in 2011. Liv gets a week off from school in October for “ski week” so we skied off to my Mom’s house while poor Antz was stuck at home without a bathroom for seven days. Luckily, he survived with the help of friends and family. After going through thousands of photos I somehow found one shot of our pink tub in action.

Our kid loves bubble baths. We both laugh at how hideous our taste was when we first bought our house back in 2006. Orange and lime walls looks so juvenile but I thought I was rad with my Jonathan Adler Seven Sins bathroom set. I still have that shower curtain for some strange reason.

We attempted on our first DIY home remodel project when Liv was just under a year old, installing tile on the bathroom floor and painting the room grey. It only took about four days (two for work and two for drying) and I thought we did a pretty good job however, the pink tub and shower wall constantly annoyed me.

The new tile floor was an improvement, but the pink tile shower wall and tub stayed hidden by our shower curtain of shame. I originally planned to remodel our bathroom last October when we remodeled the living room but an unexpected new air conditioner system caused us to go over budget which meant we had to postpone it. By the time we were ready to start the bathroom job my friend Rene was no longer available. He’s so busy with other jobs I would have to wait until next year and I couldn’t wait any longer. It took awhile but I found a replacement contractor. The guy we found was reasonable and nice but he doesn’t compare to Rene. It was extremely stressful because I was away for a majority of the project and Antz was at work most of the day. The workers didn’t speak English and drove us crazy making little, sloppy mistakes. So unlike me but, I forgot to take a before picture the morning they started working but you see how it looked above.

After demo, we discovered that most of the wood in the walls was rotten and needed replacing. The demo took no time at all but one of the workers checked the floor and… surprise!

Wheee! Look at those lovely black holes. Turns out we aren’t the greatest contractors we thought we were. The shower was leaking water under the tile floor for years and the subfloor was rotten. As every house project, our unexpected expense showed up right on time. I was just looking at buying a glass door for the shower but new floors were priority. I was preparing myself for a huge estimate because my guy wouldn’t give me a price but after two days of holding my breath, it turned out to be much less than I thought. Whew! Antz bought affordable floor tile and the project added two more days for the floors to dry. The workers installed new floor joists, every 4 inches and now you can breakdance on the floor without falling through.

I was so happy the walls were open so I could finally build a much needed shelf to hold our shampoo and stuff! It’s huge, I can fit my giant size bottles and no more falling bottles from the bathtub ledge.

Buh Bye pink tub!!

Hello new, straight floor! Shout out to Antz for choosing a classic style of tile that fits our 1923 house so well. One of my favorite elements of our bathroom is changing the paper in our medicine cabinet. This is a cute way to add color for less than ten bucks. I used this lovely wrapping paper from my friend Samantha Santana rad wallpaper shop. Her amazing home was just featured on Design Sponge.

Those Jonathan Adler orange lacquer tumblers are still hanging around along with Antz CK One cologne. We decided to squeeze a new sink/vanity into our budget after seeing how beat up our old sink looked. Ikea had this Hemnes two drawer sink that fit in our small space and provided us more storage. I found these cute rabbit knobs on sale at Anthropologie.

We chose black for our walls to contrast all the white tile and trim. I am so happy to finally have a wall-mounted mirror to use in the shower. We previously had a mirror with suction cups from Target and it would fall in the middle of the night and scare the heck out of us! I stayed up until 1 am when I came home, putting everything away and editing our toiletries. It’s insane how much junk you amass in ten years! I threw away half full bottles of shampoo and only added the essentials.

I love our new shower tile so much it took me three days to put up the shower curtain. We took down the old toys on the shelf and added these quirky planters from Anthro. I need to go plant shopping soon. I also bought a new pretty toilet paper holder. I’m happy to have such a grown up bathroom to display my Unicorn poop spray!

I ordered this flush mount light at the last minute when I saw how awful or our old light looked. It was $50 from Lowes and similar to the fancy ones over at Schoolhouse Electric. All these house projects has taught me how to make quick decisions and work with a limited budget. The finishing touch is a piece of artwork. I love art of Emily Winfield Martin but Antz is concerned about the print holding up to the moisture in the bathroom. So we are waiting to find something waterproof.

That first shower I took was pure heaven. We finally have a showerhead that we fit our tall asses under. I love our new bronze fixtures and the clean, white tub.

Here’s the finished Salle de Bain, everything including labor was a little over $4,000!