After almost five years living in our house, we're finally taking on a big project. A whole room remodel. It's the end of the line for the blue bathroom.
Someone back in 1983 thought the idea of a baby blue bathroom was a great idea. Blue bathtub, blue toilet, blue counter-tops. If you ever read a home decor article about trendy appliances or fixtures, heed my warning: don't. Just don't. Pick nice neutrals or your future home owners will curse you.
Also, carpet. A fully carpeted bathroom. Ick.
And while the bathroom is not terrible, it's definitely not great. It's the hall bathroom so it's the one guests use. We wanted it to be something fun and flashy. Maybe I'm breaking my own warning from a few sentences ago, but this room deserved to be something great and we had big plans.
Redoing this bathroom has been in the cards for a very long time now. I actually
posted about it almost two years ago with this mood board. A bit Southwestern, a lot vintage, and the highlight of the room would be the gorgeous penny tile floor that we've been researching for years.{Sidenote: there's a great restaurant in Tucson that has penny floors Cup Cafe at Hotel Congress. Highly recommend it, and the food's pretty good, too.}
So, a couple of weeks ago, I was feeling pretty fed up. I had the weight of unproductivity sitting on my shoulders and the only way to shake it off was to start destroying something. I chose the carpet in this bathroom. After Dan cut out a safety lip of carpet with an exacto knife, I destroyed one side of the divided room with my bare hands and a crowbar.
I stopped at one half of the room for two reasons. 1) We don't have a dumpster sitting around so I didn't want to overfill the trashcan and 2) The carpet in the toilet/bathtub side of the room had to be gross underneath because who in their right mind puts carpet by a toilet?!
However, what I didn't anticipate was Dan jumping on the destruction train and before I knew it, he had turned two rooms into one...
Don't worry, that was the plan all along. The top image is the bathroom lay-out 'Before' and the bottom image is the lay-out 'After' it is finished, when it's all one open room.
Over the past few weeks, when one of us is feeling motivated/destructive, we keep going. Everything in the room will have to go at some point so there's no fear really. All the carpet is now out. A good portion of the ceiling drywall has been removed to see if it was hiding duct work (Spoiler alert, it wasn't. Purely decorative. And because the bulk head was a poor decorative decision, it's got to go!)
I think the hardest part of this project has always been committing to start. And that cat is out of the bag. Like any project we do, it'll probably take us forever to complete it but it's finally underway. And the list of things required for this room is looong. Right now, it includes:
remove carpetremove dividing wall- remove old bathtub
- order new bathtub
- remove drywall
- re-drywall room
- remove old vanity
- install penny floors!
- Electrical work
- Plumbing work
- install new vanity! (We purchased the vanity many moons ago. Like everything, this has its own story behind it. We'll get there.)
- Install bathtub
- Tile bathtub surround
- Swap in new toilet
- Paint
- Hang mirror and lights
Next thing on the list is ordering the new bathtub. Like anything we do, this has turned into a fiasco, but I'll save that story (and it's going to be a long one) for another day.
This is going to be a rough one, guys, but I am so incredibly excited that we've finally started!
