happy birthday, house//a bathroom story

In honor of our home's second birthday on Sunday (to us, because it's really like 60-something), I'm going to finally share our bathroom remodel and some other projects we've done over the past year. So, happy birthday house! Your present was a $2,000 bathroom remodel! Yeah, you welcome.

When Evan and I bought this house, I was majorly concerned with the bathroom. It was pink, green and maroon and screamed GRANDMA to me. I hated it. There were a lot of other problems with it besides it being ugly and outdated--like there was only one outlet, the sink was in bad shape, there was no ceiling fan, there was a lot of mold everywhere and the previous owner smoked in it so it stunk. We moved in and painted our entire house except for the bathroom because we knew it would be our first remodel project. So my mother and I cleaned the bathroom multiple times from top to bottom with the harshest and roughest chemicals known to man and it still felt dirty and not my own. Evan and I kept putting off the remodel for every excuse in the book but finally when I was pregnant and only a few months from having a baby, we decided to just do it.

I'M TELLING YOU: IT. WAS. BAD. Like, what are those vine things on the walls?! The colors and the tiles. The old, broken mirror. The vanity that was 5 feet high. HORRIBLE.

One Sunday night at like 9 pm Evan and I hauled everything out of our bathroom and into our basement bathroom (our house doesn't have a master bath =[ ) and I then sat in the livingroom and listened to Evan rip the tile off of the wall and make a general dusty, moldy mess. I was pregnant so obviously I couldn't help (like I wanted to. Let's be real.) so Evan and our dads did all of the work.

We chose to do everything ourselves to minimize cost and that was the only reason we were able to completely renovate a bathroom for under $2,000. That was also the reason it took us almost three months to complete the project and I had to wake up in the middle of the night and walk all the way to the basement to use the bathroom. Pregnant lady NOT happy.

It was a total nightmare and two minutes into renovations I was ready to just give up and sell the house as-is and not have to deal with the stupid bathroom. There were lots of errors that previous owners had done and cheated their way through remodels and so we ended up paying for it and fixing all of that. It ended up being the un-fun stuff that no one sees but is totally necessary like these random metal brackets that hold the frames under your tub. Expensive, not fun.

We also had to change our minds about 300 times about what we wanted. I had picked out a surround for the tub and ceramic tile for the floor and glass tile for the backsplash. The surround was too small to be functional so we had to switch to actual tile. It ended up being about $200 more than a surround would have cost and so we decided to do linoleum tiles on the floor and grouted between them. The floor is probably my favorite part of the bathroom. EVERYONE thinks that they are actual tiles and cannot believe it's only linoleum. I love, love, love that we grouted them and even though it was a huge pain because we had to buy 45 different glues and pieces and tools to make it work, it was so, so worth it.

We finished the bathroom in March, right before Maddox was born. Actually, we had the bathroom in working order about 5 minutes before 30 people showed up for my baby shower. My dad was screwing the toilet into place as my friends and family were showing up and about 10 people had to use the bathroom all at once. He's a miracle worker! We had barely moved everything back upstairs and we were heading to the hospital to have a baby. It was worth it, even if it took like four months. We still want to replace the toilet and have the tub resurfaced but the bathroom is usable and CLEAN and it smells good. There's no mold, no smoke smells, no grandma-style junk in there.

A big, big, BIG thank you to Evan, my dad and my father-in-law for working their butts off to give me a brand new bathroom (for a fraction of the cost) before Maddox was born. Without them our bathroom would still be duct taped shut (Evan's doing to keep me out) and the toilet would still be sitting the livingroom. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU.

So, here are some during-the-remodel pictures and some after-the-remodel pictures. I'm sure you're all going to look at these and wonder why we didn't just leave it half finished. I know I wonder that every single day. ;]

I basically stopped taking pictures at this point. This is where I was really OH-VER IT. I didn't take pictures of my dad installing the vanity or the sink fiasco or tiling the shower which took an entire Sunday (but I wrote this post while he did that) and then the grout had to dry for TWO WHOLE WEEKS.

But it is finished. I even have proof!

Sorry that there are 4 million pictures. (I'm not really sorry.)

DETAILS:
/Shower curtain-Target.
/Window curtain-Urban Outfitters.
/Vintage sugar and creamer-Gift from my mema.
/Towel "bars"-Tutorial here, pulls from Urban Outfitters.
/Mirror-Hobby Lobby.
/Paint-"Soft leather," Columbia.