Before & After Bliss: Our Monster Master Bathroom Renovation

**Warning** This post contains a LOT of pictures!  Please be patient while it loads!

It’s done!!!!  If you’re new here, then take a look at this post, which did a pretty good job of rounding up all of the dirty details that we’ve been doing over the past 6 months!  There’s also a chapter run down at the END of this post if you need more information.  I am SOOO excited to show you this makeover and thank you generously for your patience during this renovation!  This is by far the most amazing makeover we’ve done to this house – and we’ve done a LOT.  I’ll keep the commentary to a minimum and let the photos speak for themselves…

The Vanity

Before

As you walked in the door, the first thing you saw was the vanity to the left.  Before it was a pretty builder’s basic set up with stock cabinetry, off-centered plumbing and lighting, a wall-to-wall mirror and damaged marble countertops.  The finishes were also mismatched (Oil-Rubbed Bronze lighting and door hardware + brushed nickel faucets = ick!).  I could go on, but you get the point.

After

We replaced EVERYTHING!  Nothing here is original.  New cabinets, lighting, counters – slam-damn EVERYTHING!  There’s so much going on here that I’ll just let you look at the pictures to take it all in.

The Tub

Before

To the right of the door and facing the vanity, we find the tub.  The tub was fine – good size, good placement, good condition.  But that tile surround simply had to go.  It was cracked, damaged and just plain ugly.

After

We kept the tub but replaced everything else, including the backsplash and tub deck tile.  We opted for a board and batten treatment on the face of the tub deck rather than more tile (it’s an easier and cheaper installation that honestly looks more “custom”).  We kept things feeling serene and restful by limiting the color palettes to whites, pale blues and grays.  Though you can’t see it in the pictures, we also added a can light above the tub for more lighting.  Here is the tub area after our renovation:

The Loo

Before

I don’t have a ton of pictures of this area – it’s just not one of those things people really want to take pictures of.  Regardless, this toilet was never going to stay – it wasn’t a comfortable toilet to sit on and could barely handle the job it was designed to do if you know what I’m sayin’ (*wink*wink*).  Also, in the process of foreclosure, they had installed that air freshener above the toilet, which left a sticky residue behind that we had to *cut*out*of*the*wall* in order to remove, so some patching work was definitely in order:

After:

We replaced the loo with an elongated bowl, which is much more comfortable for my hubby and dudes in general.  Then we added some modern open storage shelves from West Elm and topped the whole area off with beautiful crown molding.  There wasn’t much to look at before and I’m not one to really get all giddy about a toilet, but, boy, is it pretty now!

The Shower

Before

Ahh….the space that pretty much started it all.  I did a pretty extensive post on this area back in June when we finished it (which you can read about by clicking here).  But it’s worth it to see what it was like before.  Cramped, dark and growing black mold – ick!  We had a light-blocking arch that didn’t do much except make that area feel smaller – as if that was possible!  We had no storage in the shower – not even a decent place to put our soap!  We pined for something larger, grander and more functional…and I apologize on the quality of these pictures – it really was a difficult place to photograph before…

After

I saved the best for last.  Wow, what a difference 6 months make!  NOTHING here is original.  And this shower is absolutely bee-you-tee-ful.  You can read more about this process by clicking here.  Essentially, we demoed this area down to the studs, added more plumbing so we could have a dual shower head system, built a custom shower pan (it’s easier than it sounds – more on that in another post), tiled floor to ceiling with crisp white Subway tile, added some soap dishes and storage shelves and installed a gorgeous Carrera Marble tumbled stone floor that has a nice flat and smooth finish – super easy on the feet!  Check out this after – it literally takes my breath away every time I see it!

Other Views

…anything that wasn’t covered above will be here.  Enjoy!

That’s it!  Thank you to everyone for your patience and encouragement during this journey.  It’s been a process and I’m sooooo glad we’ve done it.  I’ll work on a source list and our overall budget breakdown in the coming weeks.  But in the short term, I’m exhausted.  I’m so glad it’s done.  I’m so glad we did it.  Would we do it again?  Not in this house, no.  But in a future house??  If it needed it, then yes, definitely!  We learned so much doing this bathroom and I was continually surprised at what my husband and I were able to accomplish with our own four hands.  It certainly has given us a good deal of confidence that if you put your mind to it (and your back INTO it), you really CAN accomplish anything…

But now I’m off to take a long soak in my tub.  I think I’ve earned it, don’t you??

We remodeled our master bathroom and it was a doozy that took 6 months!  We did absolutely EVERthing ourselves except for installing the countertops and shower doors.  Here are some links to read more about the process and maybe it’ll give you the confidence to tackle your own renovation! 

The Bathroom begins…, Demolition Day 1 and Day 2 and how we got rid of all that trash!  Our budget and a tile preview and a little look-see into what MY view is when my hubby is installing electrical and a video view of what all of the demolition looked like before we started installing things. Check out our desperate attempt to keep the house clean while we renovate and another video update with a sneak peek at our gorgeous marble floors!  Then you can also see moments of despair as we struggle to maintain sanity after over a month of bathroom renovating!  And then there was paint…  And then the cabinets and toilet were installed…  And then we began tiling…….and then it started to look like a bathroom again!  And then I teased you in a major way….Then we finished the shower and took a summer vacation away from all of the finish work…but managed to throw in this one last teaser photo just for the helluva it!  And if you’re not into reading ALL of that stuff above, just click here to get a good overview of the mayhem that occurred during 6 months of renovation our master bathroom!

A little teaser…

Check this out…

….and this means….you guessed it!  The bathroom is almost 100% completed!  We’ve been heads down these past few weeks, plugging away at the final touches in the bathroom.  We just miiiiight get it all wrapped up this weekend and put to bed….OMG!  Can you believe it?!?!  6 months of bathroom renovation madness (though, truth be told, we’ve been 100% functional since the first weekend in June) and we are ALMOST DONE!!!

I really can’t WAIT to show it to you.  It’s the most beautiful bathroom I’ve ever had.  It’s lovely.  And it turned out FAR better than I could’ve imagined and believe me, I can imagine quite a bit (can anybody spot the sideways movie reference?).  Stay tuned.  Thanks for everyone’s patience!!!!

 

We’re remodeling our master bathroom and it’s a doozy!  You can click on the following links below to see what it’s all about: The Bathroom begins…, Demolition Day 1 and Day 2 and how we got rid of all that trash!  Our budget and a tile previewand a little look-see into what MY view is when my hubby is installing electrical and avideo view of what all of the demolition looked like before we started installing things. Check out our desperate attempt to keep the house clean while we renovate and another video update with a sneak peek at our gorgeous marble floors!  Then you can also see moments of despair as we struggle to maintain sanity after over a month of bathroom renovating!  And then there was paint…  And then the cabinets and toilet were installed…  And then we began tiling…….and then it started to look like a bathroom again!  And then I teased you in a major way….Then we finished the shower and took a summer vacation away from all of the finish work…Stay tuned for more updates!

Room of Requirement Progress….it’s getting there….

It’s not finished….but the BIG things are finished, namely the painting, crown molding and trim work to jazz up the cheap Billy Bookcases.  Yes, we took $60 bookcases and put crown molding on them (well, actually just really chunky chair rail because it’s easier to work with) and they look so much more custom and built-in and expensive.  Adding the doors and accessorizing them “monochromatically” also helps!  Ah hell, pictures are better!  Just sit back and soak it in..

All right, I just gave you a whole bunch of data without writing anything but I’d imagine one of the first things you’re thinking is, “What the h-e-double-hockey-sticks have you done behind that couch?!”  That’d be a cityscape and, yes, we painted that – it’s not a stick on or anything like that and we did it with….drumroll please….painter’s tape!!!  Just like our stripe routine in the laundry room from long ago (you can read about how we painted stripes in our laundry room by clicking here and take a peek at what it looks like now by clicking here):

And honestly, it was actually much simpler because we didn’t need to worry about being completely straight or level (which is pretty obvious when you’re standing in the room – haha!).  Here’s how the room was looking when we were taping the wall out:

The only “building” we really tried to copy was the Sears Tower (which is backwards and it’s not called that anymore, but don’t tell anybody – oops!).  Outside of that the composition was very random and we kind of like the haphazard approach to it – doesn’t seem too perfect or imperfect.  We actually used “Frog Tape” for this because we’ve heard wondrous things about it.  To be honest, I was kind of skeptical because we have textured walls in our house and we did the Laundry Room (above) with regular ol’ blue painter’s tape and a coat of glaze and had no issues.  But everybody *says* it’s the best, so we figured we’d give it a try.  Let me just take a little detour and tell you about Green Painter’s Tape:

• Supposedly it has moisture lock out technology – kind of like diapers.  Once you paint over it, it supposedly “seals” to the wall with no worries.
• If you’re doing something like what we did above, first you paint your base coat, wait for it to dry about 48 hours, hang your tape, then paint the same base coat color over the painter’s tape – this adheres it to the wall.
• Then you paint your other color over top of that (after it’s dry, of course!), do another coat and then take the tape down before it has a chance to dry after the second coat.

So here’s how it actually happened in Tell’er All About It land, whose rules just aren’t the same as in Frog Tape Land:

• Paint Walls, wait 24 hours, attempt to tape, tape falls down…..begin to cry.
• Wait another 24-48 hours for dark paint to dry – AGAIN – then put up tape.  Still not sticking!  If you look at the pic above, you can see we were having trouble getting it to stick all around.  Beginning to think this green tape junk is bunk…
• Decide to forge ahead and paint the base coat on the painter’s tape to see if this “magic moisture lock out” marketing broo-ha-ha is worth it’s weight in gold, especially with our “orange peel” textured walls.  Green tape stays on the wall, but there are pretty obvious gaps between the tape and the wall.  We just paint extra paint in the hopes that it’ll learn its lesson.
• Begin painting the lighter color…

• …decide to dive right in and just paint the whole darn thing.  If it leaks…well….what’s the worst that can happen?  We have to touch up paint?  Whatever….
• Dr. J stays up ’til midnight to paint the second coat, rips down the tape and does a happy dance….it sort of worked!  But L-blogger’s asleep…probably shouldn’t wake her up….will wait ’til morning.

You can see for yourselves how it turned out, but this was of course after we did all of the touch up painting:

How would I rate the Green Frog Tape?  I’d give it a B- on textured walls.  I think it does the job well enough, but we still had to touch up paint a few places on the wall (especially our criss cross building in the far right corner).  In fact, when we painted our laundry room a year and a half ago, we used regular ol’ painter’s tape with the glazing method and I have to say that I think it did a much better job.  Now that could also be because our lines were very even and symmetrical and the paint surface (a Valspar paint brand instead of a Glidden paint brand) felt much “dryer” than the surface we were dealing with above (hence, the paint was able to stick better).  But I consider Glidden (a Home Depot brand) to be vastly superior to Valspar paint (a Lowe’s brand) in every possible way, including coverage and durability, so I’m definitely not knocking Glidden here.  A lot of the issue here really stems from our textured walls, which make it impossible to paint over.  I think in the future I’ll go back to the glazing method instead of the paint method.  It’s more “glue like” and sticks better than paint, but that’s just my two cents.

In the end, though, we’re really happy with the wall mural.  It’s something unexpected in a house that screams “builder’s basic blah”.  But remember, we are NO WHERE close to done in here.  We still have a ton of touch up painting to do, furniture to bring in, accessories (btw, we’re doing lime/apple green accents in case you couldn’t tell), pictures to hang, etc, etc.  But it’s getting there….

PS  I’ll post more detailed info on how we trimmed up the Billy Bookcases in another post so stay tuned for that.

Before & After Bliss: Be our Guest…Room!

It’s finito!  The Guest Room is finally finished and we can finally break out the good china and start singin’ “Be Our Guest” like the Broadway singers we are….not!  Not only does this transformation look like a million bucks, but it smells better than its former “Smoking Allowed” persona!  It’s certainly not “new carpet” smell, but that will come later when we finally shell out the big bucks for new carpet (probably sometime in 2011-2012).  We also have the satisfaction of knowing that we didn’t spend an arm and a leg for this gorgeous transformation – though we did *use* our arms and legs….and backs and knees and feet….ouch!  We’re still hurtin’ from this transformation and glad that it’s over!  But what about the big reveal?!  Ok, fine – here it is!  Remember what this dull Builder’s Buttercream painted room looked like before we moved in?

Well, here’s what it looks like as of now…after our Ben-Gay inducing transformation and without the benefit of sunshine to brighten things up a bit:

Isn’t the beadboard-plate rail combo just dee-lish?  And doesn’t it just provide a certain little some’n some’n to that room?  The plate rail is probably my favorite part of the whole room – architecture *and* organization in one?!  Seriously H-A-W-T!  And what’s even better, is that this project has been weighing heavy on our minds ever since we broke out the Monty Python references back in September with the proclamation of our Quest!  And here we are, close to 6 months later and it’s *finally* completed!  And it couldn’t come soon enough – Dr. J’s Grandmother is coming to visit this month and we wanted to be sure to get it all ready for its proverbial close up in time for her anticipated (though brief) arrival!  But enough about that, here are a few close up shots of the Guest Room in case you can’t make the flight out to the Pacific Northwest…

We still need to hang some artwork and play with furniture arrangement a bit but overall, we’re super excited about the results and can’t wait to welcome guests to our new digs when they come to visit!  We still can’t decide if the bed on the beadboard is a permanent home or if we should put it in front of the window for an added sense of drama and a better view to that gorge beadboard!  Eventually, when we go to sell, we’ll probably “stage” it so the bed is in front of the window so that potential buyers can look at the pretty woodwork, but the room does flow better this way.  But seriously, You Tell’Us!  How did we do and would you want to come visit us in the Pacific Northwest now that you have a swank bathroom and spiffed up guest bedroom to sleep in?!

And lastly, are we crazy?  Probably so, but you’ll either be devastated or excited to know that Tell’er All About It has decided to take a mini-spring break and hold out on major renos and DIYs for at least a couple of weeks.  We’ll explain more on why later, but I can tell you that a) I’m not pregnant (so stop asking!) and b) it’s yet another bribery technique to get people to come and visit – hehe!

So how did we get to this point?  Feel free to check in on our other installments in this room, like how we came up with a plan, choosing the paint colors, hanging and painting beadboard, and installing the crowning achievement in this room, baseboards and crown!

Crown our Guest….Room

And by “Crown” I mean “Molding”. As in the “crowning achievement” of our Guest Bedroom. And here is a question for the ages – is it molding or moulding? I think it depends upon who you ask, but I’d just like to say that here at Tell’er All About It, we swing both ways. Just kidding! Actually, I did hear something interesting not too long ago – did you know the reason most molding/moulding is traditionally painted white? Because it was traditionally made with plaster and plaster was always white back in the day.  And in order to create it, you had to use a mold, hence, “molding”!  Learn something new every day, don’tcha?

The Guest Room continues its process of beautification! We started by painting the room, then we installed beadboard along the accent wall, and now we’re onto molding and baseboards! We’ve definitely tackled our fair share of baseboards in this house and the Guest Room was not free of the baseboard replacement spirit! This will mark the fourth time we have tackled a Baseboard project. The first was in our Office, second was in the kitchen when we hung beadboard the last time, and third was in our family room/front entryway. So when we went to tackle the baseboard project we had a pretty good idea of what we were doing. Couple that with the fact that Justin now has a Compound Miter Saw suited to cut baseboards and molding and we felt pretty confident in what we were doing!

…however…

…we’ve never hung Crown Molding before…and after our misadventures this past weekend, we almost completely swore off ever attempting the project again (but just almost….)! It’s realtively counterintuitive to what you would expect and even all of the experts profess that it certainly *is* counterintuitive and many websites we researched actually recommended buying much more crown than you actually need simply so you could mess around, make mistakes, and play with the wood. We didn’t suspect it would be so….downright odd, but I’m happy to report that we prevailed in the end….sort of ;-).

So what makes Crown such a stinker? First, crown hangs at a 45 or 38 degree angle (yes, I said 38!) to the wall, so when you cut the crown, you need to not only cut a MITER, but also a BEVEL. Essentially, you’re not working on simply an X and Y axis, but also a Z axis if you remember your trig classes from high school. So what does it all mean? A great big learning experience for L-blogger and Dr. J here at Tell’er All About It! Fortunately, we were able to get the crown completely hung and we were able to fudge any mistakes with a whole lot of caulk, paint, and sanding and we think it came out better than all right. But, seriously….You Tell’Us!  How did we do?