What You've Been Waiting For...

It's FINISHED! The bathroom is finally FINISHED! (Okay, okay so you caught me. I still haven't done the two tiny jobs that I have left to do, but I just couldn't wait for the reveal).

From start to finish, our bathroom renovation took just under a month. Not bad considering that we (and by we I mean Josh and his dad... BIG BIG thanks to Dad by the way!) did it all ourselves. And I can honestly say that I am in love with the room. It's more beautiful than I even imagined it would turn out when we were spending our life savings on picking out all of the elements. So without further ado, here is our big reaveal!

BEFORE
cute but not functional

AFTER
updated, expanded, and elegant


It's easier to see the change when they are side by side. There is not even a glimmer of the old bathroom in the new one!

I'm loving all of the details. The shower stall is a custom size so I had to order a window treatment to fit. I chose the Linden Street Grommet Panel in Chocolate from JCPenney and love the way it looks with the tile.

Josh laid all of the tile and did a beautiful job. The floor and the shower stall are made by the same manufacturer, but the shower is much lighter than the shower. It really makes the shower feel bigger than it actually is.


This picture probably shows the most accurate depiction of the paint color. It looks very orange in some of the photos, but it's very much a burnt orange. We weren't sure about it at first, but once we installed the wainscoting (one of the two things that I knew I wanted in the new bathroom), we all knew it was perfect. I ordered a valance to match the shower curtain to tie it all together.

Our vanity was on sale at Home Depot and we got it for a steal! It's a $400 vanity that we got for under $200 including tax. The mirror was purchased separately at Menard's. Major props to my husband for picking out the faucet. He knew exactly what he wanted and it goes perfectly with the look and feel of our house.

As for the other thing I knew that I wanted in the new bathroom... we installed a chandelier and it's by far my favorite feature! With the crown molding and those corner pieces, it really accents our tall ceilings and creates more elegance and glamour. Every bathroom needs glamour, right?

And just for fun (and for the sake of seeing just how much work Josh and Dad put into this), let's take a look back at the progress:

Here it is completely gutted with the wall torn down between the bathroom and the closet that used to be behind it (which is still there, but is now only about a foot deep rather than the entire width of the bathroom). The frame for the new wall behind the toilet goes up:

Shower stall formed, dry wall installed:

Shower tile installed and paint goes up. What was I thinking? The orange is SO MUCH BETTER than that horrid purple I tried first!
And here she is now. What a beauty.

I absolutely cannot thank Josh and his dad enough for all of the time and work they put into this. Dad did all of the plumbing, which neither one of us knew anything about and saved us a bundle of money. I think we hit a home run and it's almost too pretty to use!

HGTV, eat your heart out!

Before the Bottom Falls Out...

I had heard the expression before, but this week, it took on a whole new meaning!

Mondays are Josh's days off. He typically likes to sleep as late as possible (which is only until about 8), watch SportsCenter, play all day with Jake, possibly take a nap, and generally, if he didn't get to it over the weekend, he'll mow the yard. So this past Monday started out like any other... my husband woke up, got his cup of coffee, and since it was about time to give Jake his morning cereal, he volunteered to feed him so I could get some work done. Our son, being the calm, cool, and collected kid that he is (insert voice dripping with sarcasm here), decided that he needed to smear his cereal all over his face and in his hair. Okay, so I have to be honest, it was pretty darn cute. He was still in his pj's and hadn't had a bath the night before, so I recommended just giving him a bath. Jake loves bath time anyway.



So into the downstairs bathroom they went. Josh leaned over to put our son in the bathtub and his foot literally sank into the linoleum (Josh's foot- not Jake's). Since linoleum is one of the world's most flexible materials, it didn't crack or anything, but he knew there was trouble underneath it. After bath time (and before I could even wrap my mind around what was happening) half of our bathroom floor was pulled up. That's okay, I thought, I didn't even like that old blue linoleum anyway. What I didn't realize, and what Josh had to point out to me, was that the linoleum wasn't the problem. The subfloor (which is a new vocabulary word for me this week) is made of wood and had completely rotted out. Our toilet has been leaking for only God knows how long and the floor that holds up our bathroom was basically a big, spongy mess. After further investigation, the water damage had spread under the toilet (obviously), under the 350-pound cast-iron tub, and even under the closet that is adjacent to the bathroom. In a word, our bathroom would have eventually fallen through the floor and into the basement! Could you imagine???

So after discussing our options, we decided that the smartest thing to do would be to renovate the entire room- including knocking out the wall between the bathroom and the closet to make it bigger and add a shower. This is an idea that we had been toying with since moving into the house, but it was a project that was pretty far down on our wish list. But sometimes these things have a way of happening more quickly I guess!

So on his day off, Josh spent hours demolishing the old floor, walls, and prying off every last inch of old plaster. It was quite an extensive job! He also generously sacrificed two of his vacation days to stay home and work on the project so that we won't be without a bathroom (no worries... we do have another one upstairs seen here) for too long. And the added bonus is that his dad was coming up this way anyway, so he just came up sooner to help out. Thank goodness they are handy!

So here is what we're dealing with to help you visualize our mess:

This picture is taken from the study. The door on the left is where the old closet used to me (seen in the next picture). It was a pretty good sized closet and as deep as the bathroom. The door on the right is the bathroom door. There is also another door that leads into this bathroom on the right of the bathroom (not seen) that goes into our kitchen. Because we don't need three doors going into the same bathroom (a bit of overkill, don't you think??), we are rebuilding a very shallow closet where the old one used to be and using the rest of the old closet space as a stand up shower.

It's hard to see how deep this old closet is here, but this will be our new shower when this is all said and done. This picture was actually taken when we looked at the house and we didn't have nearly this much stuff in it, so I'm not too worried about what will be displaced. Those old drawers are original to the house, however, so we're hoping to keep them and eventually build something that will utilize them

And here is the bathroom before destruction as seen from the unseen door to the kitchen mentioned above. The toilet will stay in the same place, but the wall behind it will only be about 2 feet wide from the left. The rest of the space will be open and will be the entrance to our new shower. We are losing the tub, but we're okay with it since we have one upstairs.

Now here's the same space seen above plus the added space from the old closet:

This is the subfloor. You can see where they had to pull up some of the diagonal planks of wood to replace them. before the new wood went down, you could see straight into the basement. The hardwood floor that we left in there (on the left upperhand side of the picture) is the depth of the closet. The rest of the space in the back there will be the shower.



As of the end of last night, the planks had been replaced, the concrete subfloor (that we will tile over) had been laid, and the new wall for the closet had been built. We've decided to not make the wall go all the way to the ceiling to make the room appear even bigger. Our ceilings downstairs are very tall.

So that brings us to today. Today's projects included a lot of working in the basement to reroute the plumbing from the old bathtub to the new shower. Fun fun! And I am just staying out of the way as to not throw in my two cents. I feel as if I'm an expert because of the amount of time I spent watching HGTV!

I will definitely post more pictures as our project progresses! It's just always an adventure here in Mauneyland!

Dear Baby Jake,

After a lot of hard work, your room is finally ready and waiting for you. It's come a long way from where we started and we think you will love it. We look forward to laying you down in the crib that grandpa built and wrapping you in the quilt that sweet Connie at church made just for you. You are already so loved around here and everyone can't wait to meet you... you are the talk of this town for sure! With that being said, our bags are officially packed for the hospital, the car seat is in the car, and all that we're missing is you. And boy are we missing you. We think about you all the time, talk about you constantly, dream about your sweet face, and talk about what you will be like, what kind of personality you will have, and how wonderful it will be to finally hold you in our arms. We know you'll come when you're ready and when it's your time, but make that soon, okay??? We are already so in love with you... see you soon.

All our love and more,
Mommy & Daddy

PS - We really hope you like monkeys!

Labor of Love

It. is. almost. finished.

Remember that first post back in October about starting on the baby room? Never did I imagine then that four months later we'd still be working on it! But after four months, a wall-paper removing disaster (in which we removed the plaster as well), lots of spackle, a new ceiling thanks to my super-handy husband, crown molding installation, several cans of paint, and the search for the perfect furniture, the baby's room is THIS close to being complete! And as much as I would LOVE to share the pictures with you, our shower is this coming Saturday and I want to make sure that it is 100% complete before sharing the reveal. I mean, you've waited this long, right? So what's a couple more days? So instead, I'm just going to share a couple of pictures of this long process. And if you forget what a mess it was to start with, you can see the beautiful mess it was here. And I promise, since you've been so patient, that I will post the "after" pictures after the baby shower. It's worth the wait!

A few things to note here: Being the smart decorator that I am, I painted the walls and then realized that I was supposed to spackle them. Yes, I am a genius. So then I spackled. Then Josh attempted to take down the wallpaper on the ceiling (below) at which time all kinds of glue and gunk ended up on the walls. Needless to say, the walls were painted several times!

Whoops! That looks like more than wallpaper removal

Our lovely hole in the plaster of the ceiling. You just have to love old houses!

And that's how we ended up with a brand new ceiling. Talk about dusty!!!

And just because you're so patient, here are a few little things you can expect to see in the new room. Sorry for the teaser... I couldn't resist!

More to come soon! Stay tuned!!!

Bathroom Reveal

Remember how I mentioned a month ago that the Bathroom Before and After photos would be posted soon? Well, what I have learned since then is that projects go much slower than I anticipate. At first we were only going to paint the bottom half, but once I got the paint on the walls it made me not like the upper half... it figures. And in my mind, I was going to get much more than painting done. For example, I would love to do that spray paint technique on the light fixtures that makes them look like antique bronze, but so far I'm not finding very good instructions on the Internet. If anyone knows how to do that, let me know. Also, we're eventually going to re-tile the floor, but that's way down the road I think. Actually, if we had it our way we'd knock out a wall and expand into one of the bedrooms to create a combination big bathroom and laundry room. Maybe one day... *sigh*.

As a simple disclaimer (and as any of you know who have tried to do a before and after post before), colors do not really show up well on a simple point and shoot digital camera. These posts will be much better and more vibrant once my husband gets me a fancy digital SLR camera for Christmas (hint, hint)! It's never too early to start thinking up ideas, right?

So since this is as finished as the bathroom will be for awhile, we're going to consider it as DONE and move on! So here it is...

Boring and very lame before

Warm and cozy after... and yes, a bathroom should be warm and cozy Afterall, it is visited daily.

And from the other side before... BOOOORRRRING

And after. As dumb as it sounds, my favorite feature is the little cubby hole for the towels. On a whim I painted it, and I love the results

These pictures do the colors no justice. The bottom half is actually a REALLY dark, bright teal (actually, the paint color is literally called "Really Teal" and the top is a khaki color (Sherwin-Williams "Latte")

Next up? The baby's room (and I couldn't be MORE excited to start)!!! But don't expect a post on that one for quite awhile... we have A LOT of work to do!

Needless to say, I am not expecting HGTV to call me anytime in the near future!