Master Bathroom

Thought I had abandoned ship? Nope. We are still trudging along on our house, we just took a little vacation to recharge. It was lovely.

Prior to leaving there was a big list of things to accomplish. We were working to make it happen...hence, no blogging.

Remember the master bathroom? I think I left you with it looking like this.

Well, our friends came and stayed at our house while we were gone to watch our kids. We figured, that they might like their own bathroom to use while they were here. We are considerate like that.

The brunt of the floor work normally falls on Blake. Not that he minds, I think he likes piecing things together. He started by putting down a new sub floor, and then topped it with hardibacker to make it good for the bathroom.

While he was working on the that, I was working on our shower. There was previously a glass door attached to the walls. That came down but then we were left with gross walls to clean. Out came my Krud Kutter.

I had thought of a couple thing to do to the tile in the shower like: paint the tile, refurbish the grout, and completely retile the inside. In the end I cleaned the tile...and that is it. We still are undecided on what to do. It is not the nicest looking tile and it is cracked in some spots, but at least it is clean.

After prepping the floor we were stalled due to weather. We wanted to cut the tiles for the floor, but it kept snowing. Thankfully, one weekend it was clear so we got to cutting. About midway through cutting it started to rain, but Blake was a trooper and kept on going.

I had my typical task of measuring and marking the tiles, and Blake cut them on the wet saw outside.

With the floor all laid out, you would think that we would get to the thinset pretty quick. Not the case. We wanted to wait till the weekend instead of trying to squeeze it in one night after work.

Not wanting to waist the time during the days I decided to paint the walls. We decided to try and use some of the paint that we already had on hand which left us with only a few options. Light grey, dark grey or light blue. Our bedroom is light grey with blue curtains so we decided that the blue would work best.

I started painting above the shower.

(The toilet in the shower made for a handy stepping stool.)

When that wall was done I stepped back and looked. I wasn't convinced that it was going to be the best option. The bathroom is small and I thought that having blue on all the walls may make it seem small and cramped, even with the lighter color. As with any small dilemma I went to my favorite problem solving site...Pinterest.

Painting the ceiling seemed to be what I was leaning towards. The only problem was, how our bathroom was laid out was going to make the transition difficult. Also, there was going to be the added expense of beadboard or trim around the top that we didn't want to have to deal with.

A little discouraged, I continued to look until I came across this picture.

Sure, it looks like a lime green circus tent. Sure, it was a little crazy. But it spoke to me. It said something along the lines of "Good luck trying to convince Blake that this is a good idea!"

Well wouldn't you know...this picture came along and viola! it was just right.

Blake gave me the go ahead to, get down with my mad taping self.

I am going to get this out of the way, because I feel like it is the elephant in the room. I like to paint. I don't like taping, but I don't hate it either. But measuring? Calculations? Not my thing. Blake is the numbers guy in our operation. I am the "lets figure out the easiest way possible for this" gal.

My solution to not having to measure out about a gazillion marks?

A taco box.

I would like to say that I am kidding. 

It's true.

All the lines in our bathroom are taco box width.

One more thing: this bathroom took forever to finish painting. By the end, I just wanted to be done.

When I had finally did all of the coats of the paint, the most rewarding thing was removing the tape.

Then my victory was quickly squashed by the gaping holes in the walls.

We left the holes because we hadn't yet done the thinset or the grout on our tile. Fixing sheetrock is a dusty job, so we saved it to the end. Saving it till the end, just meant that I couldn't put away my brushes quite yet.

Finally with the weekend here, we got to finishing our tile. We laid the thinset down and spaced our tiles using spacers.

After 24 hours we grouted.

With the tile down Blake got to rewiring and patching the sheetrock. With great concentration, he moved the light switch and plug down so that they would sit just slightly above the vanity.

Then it was time to move everything in. This time we opted to buy a vanity from Home Depot. The vanity that we got came with a mirror, which was a great deal for us. The vanity light is also from Home Depot.

With all home improvement projects there always seem to be some kind of hiccup. The vanity has been ours. The day before we were supposed to leave on our cruise I noticed a puddle underneath our vanity. The wall pipe had been leaking. We turned off the water and moved the vanity out. Blake tried a new pipe but it still leaked. We have another idea so we are hoping that we can get the sink working by this weekend.

It seems like with every problem, there is always a silver lining...like the universe trying to make it up to you.

My silver lining came in the form of a $3 purchase at DI.

The overhead light in our bathroom is old but still tolerable. We had no plans to change it anytime soon.

Imagine my surprise, that when I walked into the DI there sitting on the shelf is a light cover. There was nothing fancy about it, except that it matches the light cover that is in our hallway. The one that our kids have lovingly referred to as the sun.

Sure it is nothing to write home about, but I am going to take it as a cosmic win.

I forgive you Universe for making our vanity leak.

And...since I know you are dying for them! Who isn't?!

Before:

After: