Bathroom Remodeling!!

 I've been spending little time in the studio for the last week or so for one reason alone....we've been tearing apart both of our upstairs bathrooms!!  The bathrooms were the last major project on our "inside house" list.  We've saved them for last because they require the most work and the most moola.  But it's well worth it and well worth the wait too.  There's still a lot to be done...but so far the guest bathroom/laundry room looks like the photos above.  Below is the before...yelch...

 The before bathroom left soooooooo much to be desired.  The shower walls were plan and was coming apart at the seams...the shower head bobbed in and out of the wall, the sink leaked underneath so we couldn't use it without a puddle forming on the floor, and the hookups behind the washer and dryer were so far out from the wall...the appliances were taking up far more room than they needed too.  And mind you this bathroom was renovated right before we bought the house in 2008.  The floor was ugly ceramic tile with a printed pattern meant to hide dirt, which to me just made it look like it was already dirty.  The toilet was old and bisque colored...

 The sink was blah and boring and had all sorts of weird holes in the bottom of the cabinet, so whatever you stored in there had the distinct chance of falling through and possibly never being seen again.  Needless to say that when I took the sink out, I found all sorts of icky things that my old tenants lost under there. 

 This bathroom isn't teeny tiny, but it looked and felt that way.  And I hated going in it, so I didn't and we let it get junky because it was never going to look pretty all cleaned up anyway. 

 Once I knew our scheduling for redoing the bathrooms, I didn't waste any time ripping stuff up.  These 12x12 tiles came up with very little effort. 

 I took the sink out and wasn't sure what the floor would look like underneath.  Part of the floor was missing and there was an awkward heating vent right near the water hookups.  I wound up piece-mealing old scraps of wood to finish off the floor and bought a pretty scrolling vent cover for the opening of the heat vent.  The original molding is missing there too and since it was handmade a long long time ago and neither Lowe's or Home Depot carries anything like it, I'm getting a piece handmade to match by a molding maker here in town...a lucky accident that I found him through his wife who works at the Curtis Lumber down the street.

I also installed all of the bead board and upper molding yesterday. 

  It took me a couple of hours to cut the tile to fit around the pipes and vent, but well worth it.  We are putting a pedestal sink there with a small base, plus in case we ever want to put an exposed console sink or something there in the long distant future, the tile won't be a problem.

 I hired a plumber here in town to demo the shower walls and install cement board and the fixtures.  Glad I didn't have to do that part!

This corner is where the washing machine was.  The dryer hookups are on the other side.  We were going to have the dryer hookups reinstalled on this side and get stackables to save on floor space, sacrificing most of the window.  This is until I discovered the 2 in 1 washer/dryer combo from LG.  It's one machine that washes, and then dries your clothes!  You don't need to switch the clothes and if you wanted to just wash, or just dry, you can.  It's more popular in Europe, and really hasn't caught on here the US yet.  It's ventless so it doesn't need a dryer vent.  It used condensation to dry your clothes (don't ask me how it works!).  It does take longer to dry, but we leave our clothes in there for hours after it buzzes anyway.  And since it doesn't use hot air, it's more energy efficient and used a regular outlet plug instead of a giant weird looking one that most dryers need.  It was perfect for us and saved us a lot of money in labor!  And best of all...Our window won't be blocked and we can build some shelves over top of it.  It's supposed to be delivered today!  Can't wait until we can start using it!

 So anyway...back to the rest of the bathroom...here it is as of this morning!  I tiled the entire shower walls with marble subway tile on Saturday (phew...it took me til midnight!).  And yesterday installed the bead board and most of the arabesque tile floor.

 Onto the other bathroom...our master bathroom that opens onto the balcony.  This is the before.  Yuck...boring, ugly, yuck.  The shower head in this bathroom also bobbed back and forth in the wall and sprayed everywhere, so the dry wall above the shower insert was melting away, slowly but surely.  I could tell that wall used to be bright blue...lol. 

 The floors were the same ugly floors as the other bathroom, but with a "fancy" mosaic tile border.  The vanity was new and nice to most maybe...but ugly and boring to me.  I'm not really an orange-y wood type of gal.  I can't wait to show you the sink that we're replacing it with...hint...it's part vintage enamel and part barn board.

 Since we're doing both bathrooms at once (we have a bathroom downstairs, so we weren't bathroom-less), I started chipping away at this tile.  It was a little more difficult to pull up, but not too bad.  And Ben helped a bit. 

 No tile...yay!

 We took the sink and toilet out and I hired some other guys to demo the shower...here it is post demo and semi-rebuilt.

 Here's what it looks like right now.  We decided that since we almost never take baths, that we would change this to a walk-in shower with glass doors.  They finished up the mudset for the floor and the rest of the walls yesterday and I can start tiling at any time now.  I'm looking forward to the result, but kind of dreading the process...only because it takes a really long time.  I'll set aside two days just for the shower.  The floor should go a little faster. 

I can't wait to show you when it's all done!!!  :)