The bathroom on our main floor is a shared bathroom with the master bedroom and the hallway. It has certainly had an update from the original floor plan, but it wasn't done well.
The two most glaringly obvious faux pas were the painted-over wallpaper, and the 3-inch gap between the wall and the vanity. It was so awkward, and it needed to be replaced.
Can you imagine the entire room in that crazy wallpaper?
Last November, we were strolling through Lowe's, and we happened to stumble upon the floor model vanity that we loved on 50% clearance. We bought it, and have kept it in the corner of our bedroom for the last 7 months. We also found the faucet on 50% clearance. We've been slowly planning our this remodel for a LONG time.
Barb had already started peeling off the wallpaper before this week, but there still was the majority of the room to de-wallpaper. It came off in three layers - so it really felt like we did the room thrice.
While Barb was taking off the wallpaper, Brandon took everything ELSE out! (There are no pictures, because he did it SO quickly, that by the time Barb turned around, it was already gone!)
Once the room was torn apart, we had to wash all the walls to get off the sticky wallpaper glue off.
Brandon had to patch all the holes, as well as the marks on the wall from when the previous owners had removed the built-in vanity. We're assuming this poor patch job was the reason for the wallpaper, and then the paint-over.
Barb painted the room with new Kitchen + Bath paint from Valspar which was a Paint + Primer, as well as being mold resistant. It was looking better already!
With the walls now looking smooth and sleek, we could move on to the problem of the flooring. Fortunately, there was only one layer of linoleum in the bathroom, and it came up rather easily. We were left with a layer of subflooring, which we covered with cement board in preparation for tile. A few weeks prior we had found, and fell in love with, an awesome ceramic plank tile that looks like white-washed wood-grain. We knew that this is what we wanted for the updated bathroom floor, but it meant figuring out a pattern that pays particularly close attention to seams, much like laying wood flooring. Here were our three options:
A brick pattern with alternating seams
A staggered pattern with stair-step seams
An irregular pattern with random seams
We opted for the last of these options, which meant we could now lay out all the tile and mark our cuts. Then, once again, it was back to Lowe's for free wet-tile-saw cutting.
Of course, the first time we forgot to mark the air vent (all of which come through the floor on the main level, weird), so it was back to Lowe's AGAIN before we were ready to start tiling. Once we had all our tiles cut appropriately, however, it was back to the now familiar process of spreading mortar, laying tile, and then lots of drying and grouting and cleaning and drying some more. We discovered, however, that laying larger plank tiles as close together as possible (to mimic the seams in wood floors) is significantly more difficult than spacing out square tiles. By midnight, we finally finished.
A day or two later, we grouted and cleaned the tiles. Another day or two and we could finally reassemble our bathroom!
The floors were looking beautiful, but the only problem was that we only removed one layer of thin linoleum, and added layers of cement board, mortar, and tile. This meant that we had to alter a few things. We'd already notched out the now-too-low door jams to fit in the tile, but now that the floors were done, we had to figure out how to connect the toilet (sitting a good inch higher than before) with the plumbing that was now inset into the floor. Thanks to the internet and a couple bucks, we attained a falange extender that solved all our problems.
Now that the toilet was in place, it was time to install the vanity (and thankfully get rid of the massive box that had been taking up an entire corner of our bedroom for months on end). Some simple plumbing, and we were in business!
We LOVED the new look! The contrast of the dark wood with the light floors and counters was so amazing, in fact, that we wanted to continue it into the shower by installing oil-rubbed bronze fixtures there as well. Acquiring a shower head was no problem. The faucet and handle, however, posed quite an issue. Apparently the only faucets and handles produced now have the water diverter (the plug that changes water flow from tub to shower) in the faucet spout itself, not the circular plate that surrounds the handle, as ours does. We could convert ours, if we were willing to open up the wall and re-do all our shower plumbing. It seemed like a silly (and expensive) idea for something that was purely aesthetic. So, we opted for something much simpler: our new best friend, spray paint! After a shiny top coat, you'd never even know the difference!
All that remained from our Spring Break bathroom transformation was re-installation of little things like cabinets and towel bars. In one week flat, we had dramatically changed the feel of the room....ya know, like, away from the 1980s. Brandon now claims it's his favorite room of the house. Lovely.
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