Money can't buy you cla-hass

Once upon a time, Kennedy and I decided it would be worth our time to completely gut our master bathroom and renovate it ourselves.

(See that huge window? That used to be where our old vanity and mirror was!)

We were working really hard, and had a good rhythm going, but then we hit a wall. (i.e. Spring Break ended). Then it was TAKS (state testing) season and I was basically at work from 7a-7p every day. Then TAKS was over and I just wanted to come home and crash every day. Kennedy was also very busy, but managed to do a little work here and there.

It has taken us 5 months, but we are FINALLY gaining some steam and are hopefully in the home stretch of this bathroom renovation. Here's a quick list of what we have done so far! Skip it if you don't like lists, because there are some current pictures down below!

• Gutted the entire bathroom including knocking down a couple of non load-bearing walls
• Replaced one window and added a completely new window (see above photos)
• Framed out a new shower 
• Hung mold-resistant drywall
• Taped and mudded all drywall seams
• Hung cement board in the shower
• Re-did the sub floors and laid cement board down on the floors
• Textured the walls and ceilings
• TILED THE BATHROOM FLOOR!!!

Thanks to the help of my wonderful parents (specifically my Dad, the tile expert), we now have our tile floor down. It has yet to be grouted, but the thin set is upstairs drying as I type this! Please enjoy some progress pictures now.

Kennedy and Dad getting the first few tiles down

Almost done!

View from the door

View from the shower

Now that we're finally seeing some visible progress, let's hope we can stay motivated and get this thing done soon, because...

We're gonna have a baby in January! (Like you didn't know.)

Pictures to follow.

Stupid me

I'll say it once, only for the benefit of anyone who doubted our ability to do this bathroom renovation: I screwed up.

And by that I mean that I should have taken the time to move us out of our room before we started anything. And because of my lack of foresight (or laziness) I am now subject to sweeping/dusting/vacuuming every night before I can go to bed.

SAVE ME!

Other than that, the bathroom is swimming right along! Thanks to the help of my lovely parents, we were able to get up most of the drywall on Saturday. Now we are mostly done with the sub-floors and cement board which leaves us with a few solid half-done jobs!

Since pictures do a better job of showing progress than my beautiful prose, I'll share some.

At this point (in the photo) we have finished the ceiling and started on the wall. By "we" I mean "Kennedy & my Dad." This was after an 8ft piece of drywall fell on my poor Mom's head, knocking off her glasses and popping out a lens. Then I decided it was a good idea to have my camera out.

This is a view from where the shower will be. The exposed studs area is the future site of our vanity.

Kennedy's workflow differs from how I would do things, but he also works a lot faster than I would...However, don't leave drills and power tools lying around, plugged in and ready to chop off any appendages that should get in their paths! Kennedy almost lost a foot 5 times today.

My darling claw foot tub, sitting so patiently. Still needs to be painted and sealed - (I didn't know you could paint a tub?!?!)

Also, we bought floor tile today at this wonderful discount tile warehouse. Is it possible to be in love with a tile store? If so, then I am. We chose black slate tile - can't wait to get that in there!

Oh, and on an unrelated note, we have a rat in our house.

Hole in the wall

We have hit a couple of snags along the way in this bathroom reno. Of course I pouted and then things ended up working out (the latter did not depend on the former.)

One of these things was that we had to decide on a new layout. Since our bathroom is on the 2nd floor, it was going to be too difficult to move the toilet that far from the original spot without ruining a couple of floor joists. And the last thing we want is for the bathtub to end up in the kitchen because the floors aren't rock-solid.

So after several days of working over this puzzle, we decided on a new floor plan which puts a ding in my "shower on the whole back wall" plan. BUT, it will still be great!

We found a claw foot tub at an adorable antique warehouse in Ft. Worth (can't remember the name right now, but will share later.) Patrick & Todd came over to help Kennedy haul it upstairs (while Amy, Emily & I hung out with the dogs downstairs.) Now it's sitting in our gutted bathroom, and it's beautiful. I'll share close-up photos later.

The biggest change we've seen (besides the plumbing and electrical being done) is a brand new window in the wall that was not previously there. I think it will be best if I can just show you with these photos....

Before, we had one window above the toilet. (That's the old tub and old toilet, by the way)

Now! Nice big window (You can see part of that claw foot beaut in the corner). The tub will be centered under the window (and I'll put some frosted film on the window for privacy, don't worry Mom!)

If you notice, there's a cute little white dog in that bathroom. Oh, and Kennedy is installing a bigger window in the other pre-existing window spot. He's sooooo handy!

It's in, it's level! I think we have a window addiction right now....

Another view of that big, beautiful window. I'm obsessed with it. It's even better during the day!

Kennedy is finishing up the window (and this is tonight - a weeknight! How does he keep up with all of this?)

That's all I got for the night. Thanks for reading!

Snow Day #5

Dear Texas,

It snowed a little, but not enough to measure with a standard ruler. You closed everything anyway. That's one of the reasons I love you.

Love,
Sara

It was a nice surprise to wake up to no work for the 5th time in 2 weeks, but one thing that is NOT a nice surprise is how the dogs want to go out every 5 minutes to wrestle in the "snow". It's not snow anymore, though. It's now just really cold mud. And do you know how hard it is to wipe really cold mud off of a dog's paws? It's hard. Especially because I can't justify making them rinse off in the pool at this point in time...

They are cute, though.

In other news, I came home late from work last night, and my dear husband showed me his continued demo progress on the bathroom! He cut the studs out that were separating the bathroom, closets and toilet closet thing. He also pulled out the vanity, soffit above the vanity and the last mirror.

Now it's nice and open!

All that's left is to pull up the marble tile on the floor and get that gigantic tub outta here!

Ahead of Schedule

One way to force yourself into taking on a project that seems a little scary at first is to act impulsively!

We were only gonna take down the mirrors and doors yesterday, but as you can see from the following photos, we got a little carried away.

This is good because it puts us ahead of schedule! This is bad because we have bought nothing (NOTHING) to begin this bathroom renovation, except for a crow-bar combo pack and a sledgehammer. Oh and some construction trash bags.

Kennedy is currently working on getting the corroded vanity faucets off the wall so we can carry the vanity out to the garage and perform all sorts of magic on it!

Just to remind you of what it looked like before:

Enjoy our destruction!

Bags full of drywall greet us at the top of the stairs - This is only from today - there are 15 bags on the front porch from yesterday. I'm sure our neighbors are wondering if we are chopping up dead bodies over here. (Sorry, I let Dexter influence my imagination.)

We still have a lot of framing to tear out, but it's a start! (Hey Kennedy, nice socks!)

Look at all the fun exposed wires!

Most of the shower is torn out...

Have fun, Kennedy! I'm gonna go blog about all the hard work you're doing! (Just kidding, I helped clean!)

Total spent so far: $40.00 (New tools & trash bags) 

Total saved so far: $1500? How much does someone charge to smash up a bathroom?

It has begun

As I sit here, wasting my life away on the computer, I hear this:

Pound - Pound - Pound - SHATTER.

The bathroom renovation has begun. And it sounds like Kennedy's new sledgehammer was just introduced to our 1970s mirrored cove.

Good-bye for now - I must fetch a dustpan!

"This just got real..."

...is what Kennedy told me last night after he got off the phone with Stinson. We have recruited our first helpers for this bathroom project!

Now, where to begin? I decided that the most logical next step was to decide on a layout for the bathroom. Of course this isn't written in stone, but it will at least give us a jumping-off point. I'm thinking that we should have several back-up plans in the event that we hit a snag.

Kennedy and I have made some discoveries here in DIY-land. One being that every project (big or small!) takes at least 3 times longer than your original estimation.

Another discovery is that SOMETHING WILL GO WRONG. No matter what. It might be minor, or it could be major, but it's best to plan for the unexpected.

We've decided to do a slow demo over the course of a few weekends. Maybe rip down some wall paper here, pull off some moulding there, carefully remove the wall of mirrors above the huge bathtub (seriously, I like mirrors as much as the next girl, but I'm not sure I want an alcove of mirrors when I'm bathing...)

I'll quit rambling now and get on with it. What you see below is a before and after blueprint of the bathroom that I quickly drew up on my computer - not exactly to scale, but pretty durn close. Let me know what you think! Do-able? NOT do-able? Any suggestions for the extra space between the shower and tub (if we decide to go with that layout)?

HERE!

The red Xs indicate the places that I have to stand in order to get in and out of that wretched shower/toilet closet.

Feel free to share any advice you have!

Restless Leg Syndrome

It's 10:08 on a Saturday night and here I find myself blogging and watching Tombstone with Kennedy (which at first glance, looked like Clue -- What? I've never seen either all the way through, but handle-bar mustaches + billiards rooms = Clue in my mind.)

Val Kilmer has really let himself go.

While we're on the topic of things that could really use a makeover, Kennedy and I have decided to finally take the plunge and renovate our master bathroom.

Here are are a couple of pictures on move-in day:

From the outside looking in....The only difference between this photo and now is we have since thrown out that bath mat and the white shelf on the back wall.

Here's another, just because it's so visually appealing...

From the inside looking out...

I cannot WAIT to have this project finished. And we haven't even started yet. This is definitely going to be one of those "marriage counseling" projects where Kennedy & I both come away better people. But in the end, I will not have to open a door, step in and press my body against the wall, then shut the door just to be able to get into our shower. 

Other non-negotiables we have for this bathroom project:

-No peeling wallpaper

-A bathtub that drains properly

-an absence of mold and mildew

-getting rid of anything brass

We are still in the preliminary stages of planning, but here are a few pictures of inspiration to help you envision with us. 

White Subway Tile (with white grout) in the shower....

Claw foot tub

Perhaps some grey slate tile for the floors....

(From Restoration Hardware....I wish!)

The jury's still out on what type of countertops we're gonna get -- I wouldn't mind going with a dark or black granite....Kennedy wants not black. We may compromise with a white-ish grey color. Who knows! We still need to decide on a layout!

Coming up next....A blueprint of our current bathroom and some possible new arrangements! Stay tuned!

Calming Stripes?

Well, it's been a while. But that doesn't mean that I haven't been busy. Kennedy and I have caught the renovation bug and are running with it! I can't stop doing things to this house. Hallelujah for this renewed energy, because it only took a weekend of painting right when we moved in to overwhelm us.

We finally took advice that was given to us by practically anyone who knows anything, and are going at it a room at a time.

This time, that room is the bathroom!

I stole this idea right off of one of my favorite blogs, Young House Love. They did this in their bathroom, I loved it, and I had to have it.

Here're the befores.

This horrible green faux finish wasn't so horrible at first glance. However, spending morning after morning getting ready in this bathroom (it has the best natural light of all the bathrooms in the house,) I got sick of it. You can't tell from this photo, but there were screws and nails and holes scattered in the walls as well. And LORD KNOWS I wasn't going to try to match this faux finish to cover them up. Ew.

Also notice that the cabinets and trim are that lovely cream color that we love so much (not).

Here it is at another angle. Gorg.

So I painted the trim and cabinet white. It now matches the tile in the shower and the lovely tile counter top. Kidding about the counter top. I hate it. But it will have to wait until I'm rich enough to get a custom marble-top vanity. Or until I can find something I like on Craigslist. (Who wants to place a bet on which one it will ACTUALLY be???)

Here it is!

And listen, those stripes took me a long time to tape off, so if you don't like them, keep it to yourself!

Elvis took this picture.

Here is some custom art-work. I took all those photos! You might recognize the one on the right from my Photograblog, (also a little neglected at the moment), while the other two were taken at a park in Sioux Falls on the very last day we lived there.

And here's the last one from a different angle. 

Is it wrong to want to be in this bathroom all the time now?