It has been so long since I’ve blogged…. or designed anything for that matter.   Contrary to popular belief I have not fallen off the face of the planet… lol!  For the past few months I have been working on renovating my two bathrooms.  I got to the point where I just had enough of their current state.  We’ve lived in this house for almost 8 years and have done nothing major to it outside of getting new siding and windows 4 years ago.  We typically don’t put money into the house and that really needs to change.

I actually had a lot of fun remodeling the bathrooms and have learned a lot in the process.  I did the majority of the work by myself (like….98%).  My husband only helped to pull out the one toilet and help demo the sink in the 2nd bathroom and take down the wall to wall mirror.

Here are some photos from the first bathroom that I re-did.  I should have just re-tiled the floor during this but at the beginning of this project, I was a bit tentative and felt tiling was a huge step.  I wanted to “practice” first in the guest bathroom. LOL!  In the 2nd bathroom, I did end up going tile crazy and will eventually come back and put in a new tile floor for this bathroom too.  Installing the floor in this bathroom will be so much easier than what I ended up doing in the 2nd bathroom (but more on that later).  For the short term solution, I just painted the floor because I had to do something about that nasty green.

BATHROOM #1 – The BEFORE shots

Just lovely isn’t it?

The first thing I did was actually recolor the grout in the tiles around the bathtub.  It was originally done in a greyish color and always looked dirty.

I took a photo showing before and after on a little area…. The recoloring made a HUGE difference…. The part on the bottom right is the original color – and it just looks dirty… but it was really a nasty color grey that never looked good – ever.

I wish I would have taken a full before shot just to have it… below is a full after shot and wow… big time difference.  There was nothing hard about this other than my arm would get tired.  Picked up a grout whitening bottle at Home Depot for $12.  One bottle gave me three coats.

The photo below was taken after I pulled out the vanity.  Once I got to this stage, I decided that I really needed to replace the toilet as well.  At this point I knew absolutely nothing about replacing toilets but I had seen it done on a few DIY shows.  So I did some research and figured out what I needed to do and buy.   I was all set to remove the toilet by myself but I could not get the screws out.  They were just spinning and getting no traction.  Eventually DH sawed off the one screw (which looking back I could have done) and then cracked the base on the other side and we were able to pull it out.

So now I had a completely demo’d bathroom – at least for this remodel. :)  I did not replace the tub but will most likely have it resurfaced at some point. I had also primed the floor as well.

After I had everything out I put in some wainscoting.  This was my first experience with a jigsaw and I was quite proud of myself – I measured and cut the holes for the toilet paper holder, the toilet pipes and the outlet.

I don’t have a photo showing just the wainscoting… so I’ll show you this corner.

I wanted to do stripes on the wall – just to try it.  Took me 4 hours to prep the stripes because 1)  I did it myself with no help.  2) Did not have an auto laser level so I had to manually make sure each line was plumb (didn’t want skewed stripes…lol!)  and 3) Did not buy the 3 inch painters tape and ended up doing double tape lines with a 1 1/2 roll – which I will never do again.  lol!

On one of my trips to Home Depot I saw that Ralph Lauren makes this glaze called “Candlelight”.  I liked the effect it created and decided to try that for my stripe.  It worked well for me.  It gave a subtle stripe effect – like flat vs glossy of the same color paint – but it has a sparkle to it if the light catches it right.  Very cool.

BATHROOM #1 – The AFTER Shots

After all my efforts – new sink and cabinet, new toilet, new medicine cabinet, new light fixture (which I don’t have a photo of), wainscoting and paint – as well as replaced all the shut-off valves and piping for the sink and toilet.

Like this bathroom renovation?  Wait till you see what I did with the other bathroom…. lol!

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