bathroom makeover

This bathroom has gone from your typical 1950's peach-tiled bath, to mediocre ranch bathroom facelift, to what I hope is the final (and greatest!) improvement.  Let's take a walk through what it took to get our bathroom to this point.

The reason this improvement even got started is thanks to our crappy tub spigot.  You had to jiggle it to get the shower to turn on and I snapped the thing right off and also the pipe that it was connected to... whoops!  So instead of fixing what would have been a $300 fix, we decided that now was the time to gut the entire bathroom (for the second time in 7.5 years!) and get it how we wanted it.   Now normally my Mr. Fix-It husband does everything around here.  But we immediately decided that the plumbing was going to be too big a project.  So we hired Mr. Simon to fix it all up.  So glad we did since our house's plumbing job was in need of a major upgrade.  (And it was worth every pretty penny as we have not had a clogged toilet in over a year now!  The longest we've ever made it before then was probably only a week!)

So we gutted the bathroom down to the studs.  We cut out a ton of the old pvc, laid OSB and a new (level) sub floor.  We took the old tub and tub surround out, the old vanity, the old toilet, and the custom built cabinet that Jordan had once installed (see post here!).  What a job.  When you're down to the studs in a room, it doesn't feel like it'll ever be complete again.  It's a scary thing.  Not to mention, that is our ONLY shower.  We went 12 days without a shower!!  We jumped between nearby friends and family every other day and we doubled-up on deodorant!  Here are some of the 'work in progress' pictures!

yikes!  So nerve-wrecking sometimes.  Jordan wasn't scared though!

I worked below....

Jordan is wondering, 'how the crap are we supposed to move this tank out of here?  Lindsey...!'  It was so. very. heavy!

For our own sake, I love the in-between pictures.  But sadly, I was taking many of the pictures on our tablet which is broken and I haven't been able to retrieve the pictures from it.  We did everything but the plumbing on our own which included demo, putting up the subway tile, tiling the floor, lots of painting and caulking.  This project definitely expanded my horizons again: how to use a wet saw, a jigsaw (while standing on a chair with the jigsaw overhead to cut old plumbing pipes away... and I almost struck the extension cord on one of the cuts!) and I've never been so sick of grouting and sealing.  We finished tiling the shower on a weeknight after midnight and each took a turn taking a bath since the shower still wasn't hooked up.  I remember looking around me at the banged up walls and the sub floor at 1 AM feeling so overwhelmed that even though we had just tiled an entire shower over the past two 8-hour nights, we still had just barely scratched the surface.  But at least we had a bathtub!  And a day or two later, the shower was hooked up at long last!

And here is the finished product!

 For never tiling a shower before, I think we (mostly Jordan!!) did a great job!

  Hours before Jordan started the behind-the-scenes shower project, he asked what I wanted.  I knew I wanted some kind of cubby system and this is what he came up with.

We were thrilled to find this tp holder at IKEA since we could find nothing else even remotely appealing!

 Ikea hooks

And I'm scared to commit to hanging this old ship print onto our beautiful plank walls!!  So for now, it just leans against the wall!

We love the look of plank walls (see our half bath) plus we had a big mess of the drywall.  So why not just cover it up, right?!  The bathtub is new and a few inches smaller all around to increase the feel of the size of the room (it worked!).  We found the vanity at World Market.  I've said it before, I love lines.  The sinks and faucets were found online as there isn't always as much variety at home improvement stores.  We splurged on the shower head (glad I did!).  We got some mirrors cut and my husband whipped up the frames.  And the bathroom cabinet was purchased at a flea market.  The size and color were just what we wanted.  I feel like our home has a modern farmhouse feel to it and I liked the idea of pulling in some 'old' to this modern bathroom.  But we're not stuck with it if we decide to change.

A couple of details you may have missed, near the toilet we have an adjustable night light which we knew would come in handy for when our littles need to pee in the middle of the night.  Also, there is nothing in this bathroom that we don't use on a regular basis.  So there's no need to dig through extra junk to find that nail file or bobby pin.  There is a place for everything.

So now I must show you some before pictures compared with the after pictures!
Before we moved in:

Middle:

And the end (well, for now!):