Bathroom Bump Up: I Stop Being Lazy

Thanks to the nearly-ready human I've been carting around, I managed to dodge helping redo our bathroom. And I truly, honestly felt horrible about it. DIYing is never actually fun in of itself, it's just fun because it gives me and Hubs and excuse to hang out, make progress and eat basically unlimited Jimmy Johns. As a DIY team of one, Hubs got the short end of the stick, especially because this project has dragged on and on and on.

So, this week, with dust settled, heavy lifting out of the way and fumes finito, I decided to roll up my sleeves and park my buns in the tub to help install tile. 

Sausage fingers with caked-in grout to prove I was involved!

Obviously, as the more precise one in our pair, Hubs was in charge of cutting tile to size while I grouted and hung sheets of the subway tile.

After that set for 24 hours, it was grout time!

Another 24 hours and we again had fixtures.

Now, we're patching that cracked plaster around the edges of the tile and slapping on some more paint. Then, we can hang the shower curtain and finally bathe in our own home again! Can I get an amen?

Beyond that, we're just a few decorative touches away from my favorite thing - a good old fashioned Before and After blog post!

Bathroom Bump Up: You thought we were done?

You may have noticed I've been pretty silent on the subject of our bathroom makeover. We did the floor, the walls, the counter and the toilet - all with joyful hearts and one eye on our wallet and sanity. Ok, maybe "we" is a gross overstatement and "joyful" could be completely off-base, but you know. Hubs. Hubs did shit. And we have a prettier bathroom than we used to. And we spent a little money as possible.

But, one major eyesore loomed. You see, kindly reader, previous bathroom renovators failed to seal the grout in the shower, resulting in horribly disgusting grout lines that refused to budge no matter what manner of noxious chemicals I poured on them and how much grease my elbows did put forth.

Gag.

The original plan was to do a quick and dirty fix - scrape out the old grout and slap on some new, white, sealed grout.

That plan was all good and well until we realized that gol dangit, we ride by the motto Bigger, Better, Best 'round these parts and no quick and dirty fix would do for us. Especially because scraping all those grout lines promised to be only dirty and not very quick.

So, we're re-tiling the whole thing. For an extra $170, it seems like a good plan since many of the original tiles were cracked anyway. Plus, that soap holder is NASTY.

So, last weekend while I napped, Hubs demo'd.

Then, he rebuilt.

Last night, tiling began, but was short-lived because our tile nippers kept breaking. This is a Very Bad Thing when it's 8:00 on a work night and you're surrounded by wet grout. Luckily, I can get to Home Depot and back in under 30 minutes, so all was not lost.

T-minus two days until we can again shower here. Until then, it's hobo showers and abnormally frequent trips to the gym for all!

Bathroom Bump-Up: In which we reflect

Originally, we bought a pre-framed mirror at Home Depot for $30 with the intention to hang it in the space between the beadboard trim.Sadly, we failed to account for one measly half inch and the mirror hung so low, it overlapped the tile backsplash.

So, we set about making our own framed mirror. We got a mirror cut to size at Lowes and then Hubs decided that adding more beadboard would be the easiest way to get the mirror to lay flat against the wall and not sit at an angle as it hung from plaster to beadboard.

There was much measuring and mathing.

I'm thankful everyday that this flannel-clad man is my husband, but especially when projects like this require extreme precision.

I think you can see him thinking in this picture. We secured the beadboard with a bajillion nails.

Then, it was time to hang the mirror. We busted out the construction adhesive and Hubs got to work making the beadboard a cozy home for the mirror to hang.

A scientist and an artist, Hubs never ceases to amaze.

I love when we can hide cats in our DIY projects.

And then, a moment of sheer terror.

Construction adhesive sets up pretty quick, but we still had to fight gravity to keep it level while we hung the bottom trim to keep it steady.

The rest of the trim went up lickety split.

And I finally can apply my hot rollers in the bathroom and not the dining room.

It's coming together!

If our DIY graffiti tag is cats, what's yours?

Bathroom Bump-Up: That weird, mostly-done stage

Every project hits this point. The big changes are done and all that's left is a bunch of piddly mini-projects that will take more time than you realize but no one will notice. I personally guarantee that no one has ever walked into a freshly renovated bathroom and first admired the grout-sealing job, for example. Unless that person was a grout-sealant salesperson.

But, it's all the little things you have to do, like seal grout, touch up trim, putty over nail holes and bust out the painter's caulk (which! Fixes everything! Gap in the trim? Ugly plaster to tile seam? Painter's caulk that bizzo!).

We do have three big, fun things left to do:

1. Hang the mirror (we have to caulk the trim first and we've been hunting down some seriously secure hanging doo-dads for it. It's a 15lb framed mirror and so we want to make sure no little curious hands (or wandering cat butts) can knock it down and require us to spend a perfectly good Saturday in the ER - I'll share how we secure it in case anyone else is looking to do the same).
2. Scrape and re-grout the shower. We left this until last because, frankly, it's going to suck. There are a lot of grout lines to scrape (previous DIYers failed to seal the grout, so it is NASTY like whoa), but the regrouting shouldn't be horrible.
3. Shopping! I think I'll do a TJ Maxx shopping spree this weekend for:
• Window dressing (the glass is frosted, but a valance or roman shade would look nice)
• New shower curtain (because what was I thinking with that thing?) 
• Rug
• Soap dispenser
• Shelves for above the toilet
• Fancy, spa-like knick-knacks for those shelves
• Curved shower curtain rod

What's your least favorite part of the project? This is definitely at the bottom of my list, right before priming but after paying for all this junk.

Bathroom Bumpup: Bright, open spaces

Here at the Bigger, Better, Best house, we don't give up easily. When faced like a minor obstacle (like having one very uncooperative toilet), we don't spend much time hyperventilating and throwing ourselves on the couch with deep "Woe is me!" sighs (the time limit on that is ten minutes). Instead, we look around the shambles of our sole bathroom and say, what else can we do?

So, we painted. From a nice, but dingy green...

And sick, sad pale ceiling...

To a sharply nautical blue and stark white ceiling!

The trim is still that greasy off-white, but not for long.

Hubs also installed the new light, which, is almost impossible for a photography newbie like myself to take a decent picture of. It's shiny and bright and lovely, though.

It might not be a functioning bathroom yet, but it is starting to look like one!

Bathroom Bumpup: Toilet Toils

Once the bathroom floor was all set, we were in a frenzied rush to install the new toilet that resulted in a potentially ripped and corroded pipe behind the wall, requiring not one, but two "Holy shit, what time does Home Depot close on New Year's Eve?" (answer: 5:00 p.m.) and "CRAP! What about Menard's?" (8:00 p.m., bless their discount-hardware-sellin' hearts) moments. Sadly, at 9:00 (after all hardware stores closed to ring in the new year), we realized we were one pipe short of a working toilet.

The horror.

And so, we set about living toilet-less for a third night, confident that our troubles would be gone by 9:00 the next morning when Home Depot reopened.

The short-lived (foreshadowing!) joy. 

I woke up on New Year's Day to the most glorious sound known to DIYers of a one bathroom home: the sound of a toilet flushing, because Hubs got up early and exchanged the short pipe for a full-length one, thus ending my reign as Queen of the Throne-less.

A cat in a fresh-out-of-the-box toilet.

Sadly, this joy was only temporary. After two days of bliss, we noticed a small leak. Upon trying to fix the leak, we realized how horrendously old and nasty the phlange (the piece that connects floor to toilet) was.  A quick call to our back-up emergency plumber revealed that because the pipe was original to the house, it might not be fixable without (brace yourself) going at it through our basement ceiling. You know the one - it's the ceiling we spent hours crippling ourselves over as we rebuilt it just two years ago.

Now, we were potty-less for a fourth night. We laughed, we cried, we binged on Jimmy John's.

Ken, our plumber, came to inspect the toilet yesterday. Lo and behold, his original diagnosis was worst-case scenario and it's actually a really easy fix. Stranger things have happened, right? This old heap of bricks sometimes magically cures itself.

AND SO.

We have a functioning toilet again. I hope my dainty and ladylike musings on this subject haven't turned you off my blog forever. I just felt compelled to share the trials and truths of this harrowing tale with you all. And really, what you don't know about those four dark nights is saving my dignity.

After all, a true lady doesn't kpiss and tell.

Bathroom Bumpup: Ain't No Grout About It

Once the floor tiles in the bathroom were set, it was time to grout so that we could install the new toilet and end the madness and generally unladylike atmosphere that not having a toilet in your own home brings. Luckily, grouting is really, really, brain-meltingly easy. 

Swipe some grout over the tiles.

 Let it sit.

 Sponge off the haze twice.

Ba da bing, ba da boom. You got a new floor.

Bathroom Bump Up: One frap, two fraps, three faps FLOOR

Happy Almost-New Year! Hope your holidays have been super fun. I spent the first part of the week down south, celebrating with these good looking jammie models:

Once we returned to the north on Thursday, it was all business. The bathroom got its day in the sun, literally. Here is Hubs hauling our 60-year old toilet to the curb. I'm pretty sure angels sang as we put it out of its misery.

Then, it was time to pull up the linoleum (which is harder than we thought, but luckily, our bathroom is small so there wasn't too much swearing going on) and lay fresh backerboard to support the new tiles.

With the backerboard down, Hubs was able to start laying and cutting tile. We were lucky enough to borrow a wet tile saw from a friend, so we saved the rental fee. All we needed to do was buy a nice new blade so our porcelain floor tiles and marble countertop would have good cuts.

We went with over-sized subway tiles in a dark gray for the floor. While Hubs did the hard work, I photographed and did frap runs. I learned that Starbucks DOES make decaf frappucinos, which has probably revolutionized the rest of this pregnancy.

Obviously, with no toilet and freshly-laid tiles, the bathroom (again, our one and only) was out of commission. Since I wasn't helping, I thought running to the gym for a shower would be a great idea. After a particularly sweaty treadmill session, the joke was on me because the showers were all closed for a weekly deep clean. 

This, combined with my super fun respirator made for one heckuva Saturday night.

It took just about three hours for Hubs to cut and lay all these glorious floor tiles.

The thinset needs to dry for 24 hours and then it's grout time! Then, obviously, it is shower time. Thank goodness for face wipes and dry shampoo.

Baby steps!

Last Saturday, we made some small, but significant progress. It was a decent 50-degree day, so I cracked open the windows and painted the ceiling in the nursery-to-be.

Here it is before my handy work. Dingy and sad!

And after. Excuse the bad lighting, but trust that it is crisp and white.

The best part of painting a room top to bottom is not having to stay in the lines. Since I was just slapping paint around the edges, I was able to finish up pretty quick. Then, I finally moved everything out of the closets in this room and found new homes for all our crap (note: if you want any old polos, office supplies or bike gear, head to the Goodwill in Urbandale stat! About 80% of our stuff found its way there.).

Meanwhile, on the other side of the wall, Hubs was wreaking havoc on the tile walls.

 He ripped down the tile and will soon skimcoat the plaster to even it out so the wainscoating will sit nice and even.

Feeling inspired, he didn't stop there. He also removed the countertop overhang - the part that inexplicably went over the toilet - and cut a backerboard to size for the new countertop.

Our potty looks pretty squat and pathetic without its counter overlord.

And for fun: a bump picture! Here I am in the midst of work:

And all cleaned up with my favorite inflatable penguin:

Just about ready to hit 22 weeks: still lifting regularly, running about 7-9 (turtleslow) miles each week, taking Bradley Method classes and now a serious sock bun devotee.

Up next, I'll be working on taking the blonde trim to a shiny white and Hubs will be removing the mirror and skimcoating before we hop on the rebuilding train! This week, work is moving slow as I still need to get Christmas cards out, bake cookies, nap, etc. Napping is key.