Master Bathroom Remodel: The end is near

A quick HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the husband!! We took a little time out of our busy weekend to celebrate his birthday last night. He rocks and has really done so much awesomeness in the bathroom. I'm super lucky to have him as a partner in crime (and everything else)!!

Don't get too excited - when I say the end is near I mean that our deadline is only three weeks away!  Scary! We have definitely made some good progress but we still have a decent amount to do. The month of October was out of control. The husband was home 11 days total. That only made working on the bathroom slightly challenging (sarcasm). Plus my schedule was kind of ridiculous too. Suffice it to say FLEXIBILITY is the word of the month for October and November.

Despite our schedule issues, we accomplished a ton in the month of October and this past weekend. Here's where we are now:

Tiling is 85% complete. We need to finish the half wall and around the tub. Then we need to grout. The plan is to have the husband finish the tiling this week. I will be out of town Thursday through Sunday so we plan to grout (definitely a two-person job) the week after I get back.

The counter top guys came and installed the counter top and the ledges in the shower area. Yay!!! (Please excuse the mess that goes along with our construction zone)

We demoed the closet, patched and cleaned up the walls, and painted. It was a lot of work but it looks a lot nicer now in all of it's cleanliness. (There once was an ugly shelf where the ladder is below - you would never know now!)

We planned our new closet organization system and had a date night trip to Ikea this past Saturday night - dinner included. I am most definitely ready for normal weekend nights full of things other than busting our asses. (I lovingly refer to this kind of paper as checkerboard paper)

And just to remind you of the floor, here's a picture of the closet floor. The husband is pretty amazingly talented (and patient)!

We don't have a ton of stuff left in the bathroom but the timing is a little challenging to get it all accomplished. We need the carpet in the bedroom and closet installed before we can start working on the closet - that will happen sometime this week or next.

It will be a busy November but totally worth it. And since it's our family birthday month (mine, the husband's, and both dogs), it will indeed be a wonderful birthday present for us all we we finish it! Shadow will be happy she doesn't have to follow me around the construction zone and Gracie will be happy for the quiet.

 

Master bath remodel - Tiling!

I don't know what week we're in but who cares! We are making progress - you know, real life progress where you can actually see the bathroom coming to life. Woo-hoo!

In the last couple of weeks we tiled the floor! The husband did most of it while I provided a lot of moral support. I decided I wanted to do a herringbone design on the floor and he was gracious enough to spend a lot of time cutting tiles to make that work. It got a little tricky in our linen closet and toilet room but he did such a great job. The floor looks amazing (we still need to clean it more).

This past weekend we painted one coat of paint, installed recessed lighting above the vanity area, tub, and shower, and started tiling the shower area. The painting situation was pretty hilarious. I'm typically the organized one who makes sure we've thought through things and are doing things in the right order. I've had some problems with neck pain and headaches lately so I was taking pain medicine and a muscle relaxer Saturday. Let's just say that those kind of meds do not make for clear thought processes. We got started on painting and realized we still needed to prime. Whoops! :)  No worries, we stopped and primed and then painted. I opted not to take the muscle relaxer the next day so I could be more on top of things!

The recessed lighting turned out to be much more time consuming than we expected. Initially we were going to put three above the vanity, one over each sink and one in between. Of course there was a stud in the way. After going back and forth about what to do, we decided to go with four recessed lights. You can never have enough light right?!? In the previous bathroom we had really big terribly ugly recessed lights and the small ones we put in are much nicer.

After we finished with the recessed lighting, we started the shower wall tile. The husband installed ledger boards around the shower. Ledger boards give you a completely level surface to start tiling. After that, we installed three rows of tile above the ledger board. Once that sets, we can remove the ledger boards and use those three rows as the level basis from which we tile the rest of the shower and wall.

We pushed through Monday night to finish painting after work and the husband installed the cabinet bases Tuesday night while I was at group. So much visible progress in five days!! It feels really good to have made this progress and I think we're both ready to get this thing done.

Master Bath Remodel - Weeks 8, 9, and 10

I definitely didn't keep to my promise about updating - whoops! Things have been really busy here - I underestimated how a remodel project like this really sucks the time away. We definitely had a date night this past weekend that included a trip to the outlets, followed by sushi and a Lowes run to look at carpet for the bedroom and closet. Yes, while remodeling your home you will have to do crazy things like go on dates to Lowes.

Picking out carpet is a pain!

But people - we are making progress! I took some time last week to review our timeline and what we still need to accomplish by our deadline (the Tuesday before Thanksgiving). I'm not going to lie - that whole review process made me nervous (a lot). We had a lets-get-on-the-same-page meeting and decided we needed to really get on it with the bathroom. So guess what? We are so close to being ready to tile. Really, we are ready to tile but we want to paint first.

The husband, with minimal assistance from me, finished the waterproofing this past weekend and added some texture to the patched parts of the ceiling. He did a mighty fine job with both.

Waterproofing done!

 

Ceiling texture over the sink area done!

We had lofty plans of trying to fit in painting this week but we both have a ton of stuff going on with work so that hasn't worked out all that well. We are hoping to paint the ceiling tonight after work and we're planning on painting the walls this weekend. If we can get the wall painting done Saturday we may start the floor tiling. Woo-hoo!

We laid out some tile to see how the pattern looks

Once the tile sets on the floor, we'll get started on the shower and wall tile which we know will take a whole lot longer. Completing the tile is crucial to getting the bathroom complete because we need to have it done before we can order the shower glass and marble counter tops. Now that we will have fun things to take pictures of, I will try much harder to blog each week!

Master Bathroom Remodel - several week update :)

Technically this past weekend was the 7th weekend since beginning the work on our bathroom. I haven't updated in awhile partially because we haven't done anything "fun" yet with the bathroom. The behind-the-scenes construction stuff isn't all that glamorous and honestly when we take pictures, it kind of looks like we haven't done anything. Additionally the husband has been traveling quite a bit and we have tried to maintain some sanity in this process by not working all weekend long every weekend. Basically, we haven't accomplished a ton in the last month. It's cool though. We'll get there eventually! :)

We opted to pay a plumber to come in and do the shower plumbing. It was less expensive than we anticipated so that was a plus!

We spent one entire weekend (for real) leveling the stupid bath tub. On at least three occasions one of us said, "would it be that bad to just fill in the space and put in a freestanding tub?" because it was that painful of a process (putting in a freestanding tub would likely cost us an additional $2500). We persevered though and got the tub leveled! Yay!

The following weekend the husband worked on the half wall between the shower and tub. We struggled with the placement of our shower shelves and I suggested we put a shelf in the half wall. I'm so glad we came up with that solution and I think it will be awesome to be able to walk into the bathroom and not see all the shower toiletries.

This past weekend the husband finished up a few odds and ends of things and put in more drywall. We opted to put a Kerdi shower membrane in the shower, which according to the manufacturer, can be put directly on top of drywall or cement board (why you will see drywall in the shower).

We need to put up the last of the drywall around the tub and do the taping and mudding. Once that's done, I think we're looking at tiling. September and October should be easier months for us so I'm hoping we'll get this done by the end of October. Our make-it-or-break-it end date is Thanksgiving when the husband's parents and sister come into town. I'll probably be more on top of updating from here out! Thanks for following along with us!

Master Bath Remodel Weekend 3

I have to admit we're moving a little slow right now with the master bath. We are purposely taking our time but a few other things came up and kept us from doing much this weekend. One of those learn-as-you-go things is that it's helpful to have all of your materials before you get started. I have a really hard time deciding on items because I often cannot visualize an item in a space and since I'm no interior decorator I also constantly question my decisions. There are a ton of factors that go into deciding on materials and that also makes it pretty complicated. Part of the electrical, the next step for us, depends on where we hang mirrors and the size of those mirrors, so we're at a standstill with that until we decide on mirrors.We did some window shopping this weekend but didn't find much of anything.

We were able to accomplish a few things. The husband spent some time leveling the pocket door and put down a self-leveling compound in the tub area.

He also removed the fur down that held the terrible recessed lighting over the vanity.

We purchased the recessed lighting and sheet rock (in the picture above) so we can get started on those aspects. Sunday we spent most of the day working on a project for my office (because my husband is awesome like that) and taking things to my office which is what kept us from doing any work on the bathroom.

And two really exciting things happened - we got all of our faucets this past week and the husband went with a neighbor to pick up the tile Friday night! Yay!

The other part of the house

One of the parts of the house that does not frequent the blog is what we call the back of the house. The floor plan of our house is such that the dining room, office, kitchen, den, and master suite are all located in a really large rectangle at the front of the house. From the den, there is a long straight hallway that leads to the half bath, laundry room, both extra bedrooms (one of which is really a combo of two bedrooms), and the second full bath. We pretty much go down that hall to do laundry and that's it.

Until now of course! As part of the master bath remodel we decided to completely move out of the master suite and into the back of the house. In addition to the master bath remodel, we're planning to replace the carpet in the bedroom, largely because the previous owner's dog used it as a bathroom a lot. Moving out of the bedroom gives us a lot of space to hold materials and do any work that is necessary. Plus, we can keep the bedroom door closed to minimize dust escaping.

The move into the back of the house seemed totally doable. There are three rooms with three closets, plus the extra storage in the bathroom and laundry room. I thought we would easily fit all of our stuff back there. Man was I wrong. It is a tight fit but I made it work. And who cares if the traveling toiletries are in the dresser in the guest bedroom or if we're using a wrinkled curtain panel to hide clothes on a bookshelf? What can I say, we had to be creative! :)

Looking from the couch room into the bedroom.

 

The other corner of the bedroom.

 

The closet

 

Looking from the bedroom into the couch room - we're hiding a picture and golf clubs behind the couch.

Looking into the couch room from the closet, including the window-panel-covered bookcase full of clothes!

Random Ikea cabinets in the couch room - holding towels and other miscellaneous items (keeping it real with our hamper).

Couch room closet.

Guest room closet FULL of clothes and other items!

Master Bath Remodel Weekend 2

The next big projects for the master bath remodel are electrical and plumbing. This past weekend we focused on finalizing our decisions about the lighting in the bathroom and faucets. As a result we did not do a ton of work this weekend but we did make some headway on materials and decisions (which can be super time consuming with two strong-willed people)!

The husband was able to complete the pocket door between the bathroom and the closet and used the old door to make sure it worked! Success!!

He also started to fill in the tub space so we can raise the height.

Our tile arrived this week but we still need to pick it up. Our faucets should arrive very soon and we're going to hopefully finalize our lighting fixtures and mirrors this coming weekend. In addition, we're hoping to get the electrical started (and maybe finished) this weekend. But we'll see! Slow and steady wins the race right?!?

No going back now!

We successfully demoed the bathroom this past weekend! Yay! It wasn't nearly as bad as I anticipated and thankfully we didn't run into any issues!!

We spent Thursday evening and Friday evening moving all of our stuff into the back part of the house. I had grand illusions that we could easily fit the contents of our master bedroom, bathroom, and closet into the back three bedrooms, three closets, and guest bath. Ha! To be fair all of our stuff is back there, it just took a lot more finagling than I anticipated. And I haven't quite finished finding a place for everything. I'll have to take pictures of that mess and post soon!

Pre-demo Saturday morning

Empty-ish master bedroom

On to demo! The husband, bless his heart, kept telling me that he envisioned the show Renovation Realities when thinking about our renovation. Please check out an episode if you're not familiar but the gist is that people who are ill-equipped and ill-prepared decide to do a renovation of whatever room in their house. It pretty much always ends with an injury and a few arguments and whatever else nonsense you can think of. Definitely not what you want to hear from your husband before demo! Thankfully, no renovation realities occurred this past weekend!

Day 1 of demo began slowly but picked up quickly after our friend Brett came to help. I decided that if I wanted to maintain my sanity my time was best spent tackling the organization of all of our stuff in the other bedrooms. So the husband and Brett got to it!

A lot done by lunch on Saturday

During the tile removal. It was so loud and they were so worried.

End of the first day!

Day 2 involved only a few hours of demo and clean up thankfully.

We also found some really awesome (sarcasm) wallpaper behind the vanity. I'm glad that wasn't in the bathroom when we moved in! Can you even imagine that purple striped wallpaper all over the bathroom?!? Eek!

You can see in some of the pictures that we opted to keep a few things in place for the time being. The door to the closet stayed so we could minimize how much dust went in there. We also left the light box thing because it opens directly into the attic. We plan to tackle that this coming weekend.

Up next:
Close off attic ceiling above light box so we can remove that.
Possibly begin work on the pocket door.
Whatever else suits our fancy.

Our master bathroom

It's that time folks! We are t-minus 2 days from starting the remodel of our master bathroom! I am both excited and SUPER anxious! (I thought I would mention the anxiety in case you couldn't tell from my overuse of exclamation points!) This is a big project and we are going to do most of the work. Eek. But for reals, the husband is super handy and occasionally I am too so I think we can handle it. The main question is whether our marriage can handle it! :)  I'll keep you posted!

As a reminder of the current state of our bathroom, here are a few pictures!

Here's a bit of info on our planning process and I'll keep the blog updated as we move through the various projects.

Planning:
We mulled over the plan for a LONG time (and when I say we, I almost 100% of the time mean ME). We considered what seems like a ton of options but really it came down to three options:

Option 1: Keep the same foot print and replace everything but the tub

Option 2: Remove the linen closet and extend the shower into the linen closet space making the overall shower ginormous. Keep the remaining footprint the same and replace everything but the tub

Option 3:  Remove the linen closet, essentially move the shower over and extend it's size a bit but only so much as to have enough room for a new free standing tub. Keep the remaining footprint the same and replace everything

And we chose option #1! The main reason was cost. Removing the linen closet would mean a large increase in the cost of materials and we would have to move the shower plumbing. The current footprint isn't bad so leaving it is one huge way to save money.

Materials:
After browsing too many bathroom photos to count and visiting several tile stores we (I) finally decided on the materials. Here are some of the photos I used for inspiration:

My favorite bathroom - inspiration for the general feel and colors
picture from Houzz

Inspiration for shower tile and half wall of tile
picture from Creative Homebody

The shower will have white subway tile with a chair rail that runs through the middle much like the above photo. Our bathroom does not have the same layout as the one above so the chair rail will only be around our tub.

We are going to use a gray 6x20 tile in a herringbone pattern on the floor - the tile in the background of the picture below. We are going to use a small carrara marble hex for the shower floor and carrara marble for the counters. 

We went with a set of Ikea cabinets for the vanity, which we purchased last weekend. We are updating the bathroom with new doors and replacing the door into the closet with a pocket door.

I'll share more about the finishing touches later. Here's hoping we only hit minor speed bumps along this trip! :)