Bathroom Redo Part One!

Well, since the day we bought our house, we have loathed the master bathroom.  In fact, if I have ever talked to you about it, you have heard me say that it is "horrible.." and it "smells like poo poo".  It is all those things.  The previous owners added this bathroom in the early 1990's.  While it's awful, it IS there and it IS big.  We knew the moment we walked thru the house that this puppy was getting torn up.  Here are some reminders of the black and brass bathroom beauty.

Beautiful hexagonal sink..

No one needs this in their bathroom..

Cat hole. That is the previous owners' hamper and bedroom wall color. I promise.

The sign on the shower door says "CONDEMNED". It's been there for a couple months..

You can really see the nastiness here.  And where we tried to caulk the ginormous leak.

Every time I came in this bathroom, I could smell the faint smell of rotten.  The laminate counter top of the vanity had been wet for probably 10 years due to a bad caulking job, and it would leak brown water all the time from under the sink.  The shower was used out of necessity when we first moved in, but once the other bathroom upstairs got all fixed up, it was retired.  I have never stepped foot in the bathtub.  The once-brass jets had permanently turned green.  Are you grossed out yet??? :)  Well there was only one thing left to do-- RIP IT OUT!!

I felt like the prep here was super important.  We weirdly but luckily have two ways into our bedroom- you can go in thru the closet in the hall- which is a huge bonus right now.  We started with taping off a new hallway to keep all the nastiness from getting into our bedroom. There isn't a window in this bathroom, but there is a skylight, which we were very thankful for.

It was all taped off tightly

Sealed off all the vents in the room.

We got the vanity and sink out first, and to our surprise, there was plumbing already for a second sink-- we will be utilizing that later!

Then we turned our attention to the shower.  It was quickly apparent that the tiles would not come right off (cause that would be too easy).  After a couple swings of the hammer, we discovered that the tile was put on this 1.5" concrete and mesh board stuff.  This was going to be interesting....

The only thing that was ironically helpful was all the rot.  When I got to the bottom, along the shower basin, the wall was so wet, the tiles just busted thru to the other side when I hit them.  And oh, that smell! It was so moldy, it was so nice to get all that junk out of our house.

We got the tub all unhooked, but it weighed approx 4000 pounds, so we had to call 1-800-GOT-JUNK to get some big guys to come haul it away.  WELL worth the little extra cash.  Here is the shower and tub today!

 

Bye bye nastiness!!

This took us a full day of solid work. The floor tiles (sticky vinyl tiles) will be coming up next, followed by the shower basin.  We are so excited with the progress we can hardly stand it.  It might sit like this for a little while, but it sure does seem a lot better already! Stay tuned for more updates!!

Bathroom Redo Preparation!

So we're about to  rip out our master bathroom-- WOOHOO!-- but so many things needed to be done before we could tackle this gigantic project.  We have another bathroom upstairs that was in pretty good shape, but it needed to be in better shape since it will be our main bathroom for a while.  Brent redid all the caulking around the tub and some grout repair, we got an exhaust fan added, and we had to get the shower plumbing replaced.  The valves were original to the house, and they were shot.  Luckily we have a linen closet right behind all the plumbing so we could simply change out old for new. 

It didn't just drip, it had a steady stream of water all the time.

Serious corrosion.

New valves!

We had a limited selection for the new fixtures since we wanted to keep things simple and stick with a three piece set, but I really like the new ones and they are growing on me!

Shiny and new!

Now for the next step.. DEMOLITION.  We had planned to start ripping things out on Easter weekend since it was a long one.  I looked into dumpster rental, but those things cost a fortune, so I found these things called Bagsters that you buy at Home Depot and waste management comes and picks up. Here is our cart of supplies, and we used every last thing in there.

Contents: work gloves, masks, crow bar, another cheap hammer, 5 gallon buckets, drain removal tool, sawzall blades, shower pipe cap, plastic sheeting, and Basters (2 just in case).  Things we already had: wrench, drill, screw driver, sawzall, respirator, drywall saw.

Here Goes Nothin'!!

Sun Room Complete!

The sun room is done!! We were really good weekend warriors and finished this whole room.  A reminder where we started...

The day we bought the house

How it has looked for the past 9 months..

We bought a ton of carpet tiles to lay down over the terracotta floor.  We decided this would be a good option since this is an indoor/outdoor room.  It's the only good way out to the deck and the yard, so it will get a lot of traffic.  This way, we can replace tiles as needed rather than having to replace installed carpet.  We also liked that the tiles won't damage the original floor in case we ever want to go back to that.

Ready to start!

We marked out the center of the room, laid 4 tiles in the middle, then worked our way out.  We ended up with A LOT of tedious cuts along the edges since the room is not exactly square.  Luckily, I am married to an architect and a perfectionist who pulled out his T square and carpenter's square to make perfect cuts (yes, literally).

And, drum-roll....

View from the kitchen looking in

I'm still not really sure what to do with the hideous A/C unit.  We do use it in the room, but something needs to be done with it.  That's for another day though! The squares photographed kind of funny.. you really can't see much of a variation in the squares. Here's a close-up of the pattern:

BUT, the big test? Did Moses like it? We'll let him decide :)

Sun Room Continued

We decided we would paint the sun room the same color as the kitchen to give the whole thing a better flow.  We really like the color, and I actually didn't really mind the floor, but Brent really wanted a room in the house that had carpet.  We had an estimate done for installation for just that room, but it was way too much.  I got online and found some carpet tiles on improvements.com that I really love! This will be our project next weekend!

Moses really loves it too! He will go sit on this one little square since it really is the only carpet in the house- I promise you'll have some more soon bud!

We also had about 20 paint cans still in the sun room that we had to get rid of.  We really wanted a good way to keep the paint, so I decided to put all the leftovers in mason jars.  I think they look so pretty! And they take up about 1/100th the space.

Be sure to check back soon!! (I mean it this time..)

 

It's Been Way Too Long!

I can't believe how long it has been since I last posted! I have a list ten items long that I need to write updates about! This could take a little while to catch up, but I will get started with a few quick ones...  

Remember that lovely "storage shed" that the previous owners left? Here it is:

Really?! Does this really count as a storage shed? What can I put in there.. trash?? The doors were missing and it would maybe fit one bicycle.  We were sick of living with our sun room in this state:

so embarrassing...

So we decided it was time to invest in a new shed.  We found some local guys online that would come build the shed on-site in less than a day.  They did such a wonderful job and it cost less than getting one from Home Depot or Lowe's.  Check out their handiwork!!

Beautiful!

Wonderful built-in shelving!

Needs a little landscaping!

Brent has already been working on the backyard as you can see a little bit in this picture. We will obviously be planting some shrubs around the foundation of the shed, but we l-o-v-e it!  A little shop-vac action, and the sun room is almost ready for human use! We are almost done painting (here I am with my painting helper close by).

Ready for Brent to cut in!

Now that there is actually room in this room, we had a place to FINALLY sand the stained wood doors from the den.  We have had them sitting in this room since MARCH. Awful. So we took them out on the deck and tried to give the stain stripper a go.

It took us all of about 30 minutes to give up on this project! We had three doors to do, and between the stripping, sanding, priming, and painting, it was clearly going to take us about 17 weekends to complete this project.  SO, we called some trusty painters to do them for us.  $150 and 4 and a half hours later, and the doors were done and beautiful.  These things cost an easy $300 each new.

We also had to paint the inside of this closet.. Here is before (ew)

 And after:

This one is a little blurry cause I just stuck my hair in the paint for the fifth time...

 Amazing what a can of paint can do! So I think I will end this first marathon post here. There's a lot more where this came from though, so stay tuned! :)

Built-Ins

Remember when we took ALL that wallpaper down after we bought the house back in March?? Well we have painted all the walls with a neutral color. YAY! We really like the built-ins upstairs, but it was all just so blah.  Here is a before picture (with the previous owner's stuff still in the shelves):

In all of its yellow glory!...

And after! (I had to shut the door because of the mess in the other side..)

 

Here is a full view

 

Brent put a fresh coat of white paint all over the wood and I painted the back the blue color.  We really like the way it makes the hand-made built-ins look a little bit newer (and cleaner)!

Super Easy Upgrade

Easy!! Yay!! Our house was built in 1966 and has a lot of 1960's quirks.  Our kitchen cabinets are hand-made, built-on-site cabinets, and they are definitely not perfect, but we are not planning on ripping them out any time soon.  We have heard the whole wall would probably come with them cause they're not simply nailed. SOO we have done a few things to try to make them livable.  The cornice over the kitchen sink was so incredibly dated, something HAD to be done.  Here it is before:

 

So country and old.  I decided that, since our cabinets have a lot of paneling anyway, maybe we could just cover it up with some plywood.  We went to Home Depot and bought some for about $4.

After some paint and a few nails, this is what the window looks like:

I'm so glad you can't see the top of the curtain anymore, and I think it looks so much less dated! What do you think??