Sunday, January 31, 2010

Bathroom Remodel

We have been in our current house for almost 7 years. It's a house that we had built when we decided to move from the country to the city. I know, crazy right?

Actually, where we lived before was 30 minutes - minimum - from anything, including the grocery store. So just a trip to get milk took 1 hour. You had to plan every errand. Once my son came along, it was just too isolated and too far away for me. So we found this nice neighborhood, interviewed several builders, picked one and built a house.

Well, long story short, the builder we picked was a con man, stole a bunch of money from us and we had him arrested. Needless to say, it was a long and horrible chapter of our lives but we learned ALOT of lessons from it.

Anyway, back to the house. Many of the subcontractors that our horrible builder used were absolutely terrible at their jobs. So, it's a good thing that my DH and I are DIYers because we have had to use our skills many times. We've repainted almost every room in the house, replaced flooring, repainted trim, fixed plumbing issues and I don't know what else.

There were 3 rooms in our house that I have never been happy with - mostly because they weren't done the way I wanted in the first place. And I'm not one of these people who don't know what they like, aren't sure about colors, etc. I always know EXACTLY what I want, usually down to the last detail. The 3 rooms are the kitchen, master bathroom, and powder room. So, this week has been Powder Room Remodel Week.

I started with the smallest room first to ease my DH into it. LOL

We actually HAD to replace the toilet in there because it was a terrible flusher. You know how when you go to Lowes and they have all the toilets lined up on the shelf and they start with the "Best" flushers and end with the "Good" flushers (which means crappy by the way). Well, our flusher was in the "worse you can possibly buy" category. We had been talking for 6 years about replacing that toilet. Finally I said, let's just go to Lowes and buy a new one and while we're at it, let's repaint in there too. Well, one thing lead to another and we also ended up replacing the flooring. So, once we get it put back together, all will be new except the pedestal sink, mirror and light fixture.

I'm very excited about the remodel. We removed all of the fixtures and everything ourselves. Then I repainted the walls. They were bright red which would have looked great in a different room but since this room was so small, with no natural light, it just looked like a dungeon. So, I painted them Dancing Mist - which is a light aqua. The new floor turned out great! It's a really small room, as you can see from the pics, so we thought about busting up the old tiles and retiling ourselves. But we had never done that before and I was afraid we would make a bigger mess by busting those tiles up than it was worth. So I talked my DH into letting the floor guys do it. I got lots of estimates (they all charge a minimum for really small spaces like this) and went with a floor store owned by friends of my in laws. They did a really great job and were so clean and professional.
(you can see the old tile good in this pic and the red walls)

I sealed all the grout yesterday and we are now at the stage of replacing the quarter round molding so that I can finish repainting the trim. All the trim in my house was originally suppose to be bright white (which is what I like) but instead the idiot painter used Onion (apparently a yellow onion) because all the trim has a yucky yellow glow. We still have alot of trim in our house that I need to repaint.
So, once I get the trim painted (hopefully today), we can start putting the fixtures back in. For now, I have "before" pictures for you to see. They are dark because it was a small dark room and it's L shaped so it was hard to photograph.
You know the funny thing about this is I had never done any decorating of any kind in this room. Didn't even hang a picture on the wall, no special guest towels. I think I had some kind of mental block against it. Hum. Weird.
Up next, during and after shots!

1 comment:

  1. What a horrible headache with the builder and contractors! UGH!

    That being said, think of how much you're learning, and the pride you have, from doing these jobs yourself. I'm impressed!

    Can't wait to see the new pics....

    ReplyDelete

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