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!