We love our 1952 Cape Cod cottage. But we did not love its outdated main bathroom. Country blue, burgundy, and mauve just didn’t jive with our updates of industrial chic style (think gray, concrete, crisp white walls, and bold cool colors) throughout the home. So back in December, my handy husband Don began the demolition. The calendar is about to turn to April, and while we’re getting closer, it’s still going to be several months to the finish line. I’ve been posting our progress along the way with the hashtag #BathRenovationStinks because well, it does.
Luckily we have more than one bathroom, but at the end of January, we jokingly joined the gym so we could shower after our only shower was out of commission for almost two weeks (in what we had hoped to be one weekend). Before that, we had been showering in a plastic-and-duct-tape-lined tub and stepping out onto unfinished floor in a shell of a room.
If you’ve ever renovated a home, you know how it goes. With each step comes the element of surprise that throws the project off, one day, one weekend at a time (imagine self-leveling concrete subfloor oozing down into our basement onto the laundry room from the bathroom above!). Soon you wind up with a renovation that takes 6 months to a year or more to finish. And on one hand, while it’s awesome to save money on contractors because my husband is so talented and insists on doing it himself, and everything I seem to choose is the most expensive option, it works out well, except, he only has so much time on the weekends, so things take a little longer than expected in my impatient mind. So when I told my husband that my mom was coming to visit on March 24 and that I had planned a “before and after” blog post to go live March 31 (which even gave us a week of wiggle room for any mishaps, ha!) he pretty much told me where I could shove this blog post (in a joking-yet-fed-up-with-losing-his-weekends kind of way).
After removing literally tons of tile and concrete backing (oh the dust and mess that ensued from this bathroom that was built like a bomb shelter!) my husband then reinforced the floors and insulated the walls. He added a ventilation fan (unbelievable, there wasn’t one). Then he began the tile work in the shower, which was a several-step process getting the backing board lined up flush with the walls where the tile had been several inches thick. We were holding our breath as the gray haze of black grout was smeared all over the brand new white subway tile and then like magic, it wiped away and revealed the first real step of progress after months of work. That first shower felt like a luxury hotel stay.
What started as ugly, old and dirty is transforming to a chic, clean, luxurious loo. My vision: a modern update with brightening white and elements that co-habitate with period-specific fixtures and design. Marble hex tile, cross handle faucets, white subway tile with black grout, wainscoting on the walls, a replica school house light, all work with the style of the home in its original era, but updated in scale and style.
Stay tuned for the final reveal… sooner rather than later I hope!
Tons of tile!
Tub full o’ tile! (We said goodbye to that old tub too.)
And then we got to shower like this for a long time. Lovely!
Don on his first tile job
We held our breath on the grout process!
Finishing touches on the new shower/tub juxtaposed with the shell of the unfinished room
Good job Daddy! We love our new tub!
Finally, a floor! And a fab one at that!
