Uncharted Territory

There is a door in mine and Blake's room.

For the entire time that we have lived in this house we have pretended like the door isn't there. Most of the time it is blocked off. Until recently, when we moved around the furniture in our room.

Behind the door is the master bathroom.

If you asked our kids they wouldn't know what was behind the door...well...at least the younger ones. They are probably under the assumption that OZ is hiding behind that door.

I promise that this bathroom is anything but magical. It has been a great storage for our "construction" supplies. It was also great for holding Christmas presents. That is about all it is good for.

If you could go back in time 6 months to before we bought our house, and smell what our house kind of smelt like, this bathroom is a good representation.

When we were working on everything else, we had the notion that we would clean the bathroom maybe paint the walls, and bottom of the vanity, and call it good.

Well....

Randomly one day, while I was painting everything else in sight, I decided to take off the front of the vanity so that I could paint the doors. When I was sitting there unscrewing the hinges I randomly looked down and saw a loose peel and stick tile so I took my screwdriver and pried it up. No biggie. I noticed that it was the same laminate that was in the kitchen. Perfect! I thought. I will just peel up the peel and stick tiles and paint the linoleum underneath, like I did in the kitchen. So I popped up a couple around the front of the vanity. Then I pried up one that was in between the vanity and the shower wall. There it was. Black fuzzy mold.

I stopped prying up tiles, stopped trying to fix the vanity, walked out of the bathroom and closed the door.

That bathroom has "not existed" for the last 6 months. I didn't want to deal with mold.

But...this weekend Blake put on his hazmat mask and got to work. Here is a little before glimpse:

See the soap and shampoo? Left from the previous owners. Just goes to show you, how much we haven't touched this room.

The whole in the wall by the toilet is from an inserted toilet paper dispenser. Why oh why did they love to cut holes in the sheet rock back in the day?

Blake removed the toilet and put it in the shower. (That way, if any water leaks out of it, it wont leak onto our wood floors.) He also removed the vanity.

It became clear pretty quick that there had been a leak. Luckily the sub flooring came up with out a hitch and the wood planks underneath seem to be in good shape. Blake sprayed the floor down pretty heavily with bleach to kill any remaining mold. Twice.

Surprisingly the whole thing took Blake about 3 hours.

Now we are ready to start putting this bathroom back together.

Some of our really good friends came over to check out the progress on our bathroom. When our friend noticed that the toilet was in the shower, he didn't hesitate to step inside and relax....

and that, is exactly why we are friends.