Not For A Weak Stomach

Any disclaimer that I could put before this post would not be adequate.

There are some things that you can't unsee. 

It will stick with you.

Kind of like the smell of this bathroom stuck in your nose even after you had left.

Picture if you will...

Gold shag carpet. Normally plush carpet is a good thing, when you soak it in urine. Not so much.

The carpet was old. The original owner of the house had 3 boys. The renters had 3 boys. 

Boys don't always make it into the toilet.

Catch my drift.

Couple the overwhelming pee smell with, dirt, and something else...

and you have what our bathroom smelt like.

I hated for our kids to even go in the bathroom. They were also forbidden to take off their shoes in the house.

Most people take a shower to get clean. I can see no scenario where taking a shower and then stepping onto that carpet would not make me want to jump back into the shower again.

Our good friends, who live directly across the street from us now, have a black light.

It seemed right at the time, to take a look at the carpet with the black light.

Standard operating procedure.

Try not to gag.

I couldn't wait to get the carpet out of the house.

We originally planned to pull up the carpet and paint the sub floor until we could redo the bathroom and tile the floor.

Pulling up the carpet was a breeze.

 Then came the sheer and utter disappointment.

Then regret.

Then fear.

I am sure those are the emotional steps one goes through when you buy an old house.

I can't be the only one.

I was concerned about mold. I was worried about our floor. I was obsessing about whether or not we were going to have to gut the entire bathroom.

Then realization hit. Holy Crap. We may have just bitten off more then we could chew.

Luckily, we have awesome friends. One who is a professional plumber. We had him come over and look at the floor. He wasn't concerned.

There was some water stains on the planks, underneath the sub floor, but they were not rotten and were still sturdy.

We washed the planks several times. Some with bleach and some with soap.

Then we set up a fan and let the floor "air out" for about a week.

When we realized that painting was out of the question.

We weren't entirely sure of where it came from but we wanted to be certain that it wouldn't happen again. 

Tile. It was going to happen.

That way the flooring would be protected to withstand any water.

Since we have blind faith in our abilities to do things, and youtube videos on our side, we decided that we would tile the bathroom ourselves.

Blake laid down new sub flooring.

Then the new Hardie Backer.

When I went to Home Depot to find some tile for the floor I found some very nice options.

My delema is that our house is not fancy.

I knew this.

I am not fancy.

It seemed silly to tile a bathroom with fancy tile only to have the rest of the bathroom look out of place.

It's like putting lip stick on a pig.

Then I spotted it. I probably ran in slow motion towards it just for effect.

Hello cutey. Where have you been all my life?

Only one problem...OK two.

It was the most expensive of all of my "cheaper" options

...and Blake.

He wasn't convinced. Plus he had heard that it was hard to lay.

But I gave him a good pep talk and that was it. He went to go buy the tile and the supplies and while at Home Depot he was talking to an employee and a conversation like this happened.

Blake: Ummm. I am going to tile. Where is stuff?

Employee: I am not supposed to offer, because they could fire me and stuff...but I can come and tile your bathroom for you for $100.

Blake: Can you be to our house by 3?    

We chose a light grey grout so that the pattern of the tile would show up, but also because I am no fool.

I know our floors are going to get dirty.

I did not want to spend half of my life scrubbing the grout to make it white again.

We decided to leave the vanity for now and in my painting frenzy I decided to paint it blue.

It was awful. It made the counter top look gross and the bathroom seem dirty.

I repainted the vanity in a light grey color which matches the grey in the granite top.

Blake rehung the cabinet doors, and I removed the medicine cabinet/mirror hanging on the wall...only to find a gigantic hole in the sheet rock.

By some kind of divine intervention we had a mirror that barely covered the hole.

At some point we plan on patching the hole in the sheet rock, and replacing the light fixture and adding baseboards.

Ideally I would love to tile up the shower, and replace the vanity...but...baby steps. 

We are working with what we got right now.