Bathroom Remodel, Part 1

Six months ago, June 16th, 2014,  we started remodeling our bathroom. I wish I could say that it is almost done, but it is not. It is INCREDIBLY close! The sink is in and operational, the toilet is in and operational, but the tub, which is IN the bathroom, is not anchored or plumbed in so therefore nonoperational. It IS out of my kitchen, however, which deserves a whoop all of its own.

As a reminder, this is what our bathroom looked like when we bought the house. It had not changed until now!

Picture 1: Tub in my kitchen, used as storage. This has been here for.. 2 years?

Here is a quick overview of our bathroom remodel. If you are looking for the "Penny Floor Instructional", please click here.

Mr. Ireland taking out the vinyl tub surround.
This is his favorite part of the project:
tearing it down!

Burning question: What is behind the wall?

Surprise! Nothing but some wires! Yes, that wall was there just
to fill in the space for the short tub. And to hide some wiring that ran from
the basement to the upstairs. *Sigh* Mr. Ireland cut a notch for those,
we knocked out the extra frame work and made the new wall
flush with the other walls.

Taking it down to the studs. Well, half of it anyway.
You see my ceiling? Yeah, I've been living with that
FOR A YEAR! We took it down to move the upstairs
bathroom drain. Nothing like spiders in your shower.

Gutted! Mold free insulation!
Now we take out the sink and toilet and
get ready to peel off vinyl flooring.

What do you do when you find that your bathroom mirror is
NOT held on by clips, but GLUED to the wall? Cut it out, of course!
I'm a sheetrock master. Really. Wait for it.....

Mr. Ireland, starting the vapor barrier for the insulation.

New green board and subfloor where the tub was.

Now I get to do my thing - tape, mud and texture.
I actually enjoy this.

There it is! Patched the wall. 'Round here,
I'm the drywall/carpenter/painter lady

Ready to texture. I chose to texture over the original walls too.

Well obviously I got around to texturing.
This seemed like it took forever, but the
picture time stamp says it was still June...
The 30th, but that's still June!!

Paint swatches and Mr. Ireland installing a fan.

Painting. I've had this paint since we bought
the house, so I've been waiting a long time to
see it on the wall! Low VOC natural stuff that
Home Depot used to carry.
The swatches were to see if I needed to lighten
it and how I was going to finish it with the gold.

Ah, here we are! The gold shimmer!
Two coats, Ralph Lauren something or other-
Candlelight? Its good. Love it.
And they no longer make it.

It's not for everyone and every house, but I LOVE the look of
hand textured walls.

Now to address the floor...

Peeling off the vinyl wasn't that bad because there
were 3 layers!

The bottom layer was so brittle that it was
breaking off in big pieces. We cleaned it up
with water and a mutt.

That's as good as it gets. Now ready for
self leveling compound

That's where I'm going to stop. My next post will be all about the floor. What to do, what not to do when you want a penny floor.

Looking back through these pictures has really shown me that we did some good work. This first set of pictures represent 6 days of work. We really did well through the whole project, if you take out all the weeks between work days... ha ha. I am incredibly hard on myself and my spouse and I had a lot of anxiety about getting this done, determined to finish the WHOLE THING in June! Completely unreasonable expectation for a family of 7 that homeschools heavily in summer and has many other projects and lessons going. Ridiculous, even.

Now on to the next post!