Bathroom Remodel

You know how some remodeling projects are born out of necessity, like water damage? Well this is the story of a bathroom remodel that happened sooner rather than later due to a leaky shower which was improperly installed.

I bought a new mirror at Lowe’s but reused the old vanity I installed a few years ago (also from Lowe’s) and the old faucet. I like the striped walls too—so much better than the dark brown I painted seven years ago. Funny how some colors go out of style fast. Like brown. What was I thinking painting such a dark color in a window-less bathroom?

Looking at the photo above it’s hard to believe that six weeks ago it looked the photo below. I took this photo on panorama mode with my iPhone. It looks huge but really this is the tiniest bathroom ever, about 4’x6’.

Yea, it’s done!

Below is how it looked a few years ago when we still had a pedestal sink. I hate pedestal sinks, all beauty no function. The shower was literally the worst tile job I have ever seen. The first owner of our house thought he could tile. He was wrong. (He was wrong about a lot of things in this house, bless his DIYer little heart.) Hence it eventually leaked, ruined some baseboards and drywall in the adjacent room, which lead to this big project.

I painted the room a pale blue then added white stripes. While in my pajamas. Truly I look ready for the red carpet in this photo. Painting was my only contribution to the project. We had a contractor do everything so that this time the shower would last. We are funny that way. I know my limits as a DIYer—pretty much paint and fabric and pretties.

We decided to have the tile go all the way up the ceiling to take advantage of our 9-foot ceilings. I love how it looks.

We chose a basic white subway tile for the walls with a couple stripes of glass/metallic tile, all grouted in white. Should be fun to clean, thankfully this shower isn’t used much. The glass tile was super pricey, hence just two stripes. After seeing stripes in almost all showers in this year’s Parade of Homes I figured I was on solid style ground in doing tile stripes. (And paint stripes too!)  The floor of the shower and the floor of the bathroom are basic white honeycomb. I don’t think honeycomb tiles ever go out of style. 

I chose to have the grout gray (high traffic) for the bathroom floor and white for the shower floor.

Seashells and coral the girls found on a beach last year in Hawaii.

Hang some artwork, and hallelujah, we have a bath again. This is the bath all visitors use when in our home so it’s about time it looked good after looking like a giant piece of poo for the eight years (gasp) we have lived here.