And so it begins...
When we bought this house 3-1/2 years ago, we did a lot of cleaning and painting before we moved in. At that time, the bathroom was the best room in the house, so we decided to just clean it and leave it as it was until we had the other rooms squared away.
The other rooms are more or less the way we want them for now -- with the exception of new carpeting still needed throughout the house -- and by comparison, the bathroom is now the worst room in our home. Oh, it's been perfectly functional since we moved in, but it would never win a beauty contest. The only things we did to it were to clean it well and paint the ceiling; after we had painted the ceilings in the rest of the rooms, it almost had to be done because it looked so bad.
Over the course of three years, we've slowly gathered most of the materials we'll need to renovate. We have the flooring, the vanity, the tub and shower with its surround, towel bars, towels, shower curtain, etc. We still need to decide on a mirror and/or medicine cabinet and a shelving system for the linen closet (which is inside the bathroom). We went out this morning and bought the faucet system for the bath and shower.
Shane, having redone a bathroom in a former life (and in a former relationship), was afraid the project would cause some tension between us. He thought that would be especially so if he didn't have time to gut the room and install the new stuff all in one go. (It's our only bathroom, so it has to remain functional during the remodel.)
He hasn't had a big enough block of free time to take on a project this large, so he's been putting it off. I finally convinced him to tackle it in stages. As long as there aren't months or years between the stages, I'll be fine with a semi-remodeled bath for a while.
Stage 1: Taking out the old tub and shower, then putting in the new one.
I've never been much of a shower person, but I love my hot baths. I also like to read in the bath sometimes. I'd love to relax in a nice, clean, wide bathtub. Our current tub is a dingy almond color, has unexplainable scratches in the fiberglass from the previous homeowners, has rust stains in the bottom that won't come out with any amount of chemicals or elbow grease, and is a little narrow. It's a one piece unit, but it's coming out of the house in several pieces, so that we don't have to remove the toilet, door moldings or door jambs during this stage.
Here are a few photos and I'll be adding more as the day wears on.
9:30 a.m. Before shot from hallway.
9:30 a.m. Rust stains in old tub.
9:30 a.m. - Old shower head.
10:00 a.m. - Faucets and trim board removed.
10:30'ish a.m. - Shane was going to cut it,but he actually ended up breaking it into pieces.
11:30 a.m. - Tub on end and ready to be carried out.Shane took a short break at this point and declared the time as "beer-thirty".
3:30 p.m. - Not much visual progress since this morning. Made UTTHD #1 (Unplanned Trip To Home Depot) at 12:30. Who knew the drain insert and overflow cover plate didn't come with either the tub or the faucet set? Made UTTHD #2 for copper fittings at 2:30...the new tub fits differently , so all of the plumbing has to be moved a couple of inches. The upside is that we'll gain a couple of inches of floor space. That's a lot when you're trying to squeeze in to clean the floor between the toilet and the tub.
7:30 p.m. - Starting to see progress again...after UTTHD #3for more copper fittings.
9:30 p.m. - After 12 hours, the tub and shower are in...
and I made Shane call it a day.It still needs some fine tuning, but Stage 1
will be complete by tomorrow afternoon.
6 comments:
Good luck with your remodel. Kevin and I remodeled our bathroom last year. We had an old jacuzzi tub that I could not get clean no matter how much I tried or what I used. We tore out the old plastic--or whatever surround and put in tile. That was a first for both of us as was the whole bath remodel. The only things we left in this bathroom was the floor and some of the walls. We remodeled our kitchen from the floor to the ceiling in our last house. We built a pantry in this house and remodeled our family room too--even tearing up the carpet and putting down hardwood floors. I love when we do stuff like this together. So--good luck again and would love to see after pictures.
We renovated a bedroom in a different house we owned. It was pretty easy...just sheetrock, ceiling, carpeting and painting. It had an en suite bathroom, but all that needed was a new vanity and painting. Nothing major. This smaller room is going to be a much larger project. :) But he likes doing it, and although I'm not much help this time, I do like watching the progress.
Looks great! Shane did a great job! He is one hard-working man!
YAY for rust-free newness!!
WOW! He is really quick!!! I'm impressed. We usually have a HolyS*** moment and have to stop for a while! I can't wait to see the end results!
And thank you for sticking by me!!
Your bathroom looks almost exactly the size of ours! Your tub, toliet and sink are in the same location as mine, so I'm thinking that I can just watch your hubs progress and hopefully my hubs can do ours next! What color are you going to paint your walls?
I noticed in one of the pics that your register vent is in the wall. That is genius, as ours is flush on the floor with this stupid cover over it. I hit it almost every single time I go into the bathroom! UGH! I'm going to show hubby that pic and see if we can't move ours off the floor and onto the wall when we do our remodel!
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