Bathroom Before and After

Our second most important room after the kitchen, was a big priority prior to having company over to the house. We only have one bathroom (this was the biggest compromise aside from increasing our house shopping budget by $40,000) but we have plans to add another one or two in the future. This bathroom was victim to some inexperienced DIY-ers. The first thing you would've noticed was the color of the walls being a turd brown...ick! Then you probably would've noticed the outdated sink with a vanity that appeared to have been chewed on with a corner nearly missing. As you looked down, you would see the attempt of retiling the bathroom floor, with crooked tiles, cracked tiles, disintergrating grout lines and a stack of tiles to finish the floor stacked in a corner.  This bathroom is also home to the washer and dryer closet.

 We began by removing the sink and vanity, then we went after the floor. My dad helped us pull up the tiles, and we found a concrete board underneath it. We began replacing the floor with new tiles only to realize that the subfloor was a little too high and not even enough. So we had to rip up the floor again. This time we noticed that the concrete board was not the subfloor but an additional subfloor covering plywood that had tile adhesive all over it. To do it right, we ripped up both (backbreaking work for sure) and laid a new subfloor. This made the bathroom floor level with the tile floor in the hallway/kitchen area. It turned out nicely but was a lot of work. After choosing a vanity/sink combo and new light fixtures, we got to painting the walls. All the trim was painted a crisp with with the was being a bright blue. We painted the laundry closet a slate blue, and removed the cumbersome folding doors to make way for our fancy high-tech front load washer and dryer. My dad thinks you need a degree to wash laundry with these babies. While we didn't have funds to replace the tub or toilet, we freshened things up with a new curved double curtain rod, and a new faucet and shower head in the bathroom. The faucet wasn't planned, but when we went to repair the faucet that existed and it snapped off of the plumbing in the wall we had to open the wall and re-plumb the shower, which turned out to be a surprise $300 expenditure for parts. One of the joys of being a homeowner.  We added a new mirror and some shelving to make up for the fact that we do not have a linen closet, and overall it came out well. We aren't completely finished with the bathroom, we still need to add some lighting in the laundry closet and replace the toilet and tub, but it looks a lot better than it did.