Catching up...and a few delays

We are enjoying the redone bathroom, but we had to put off a new counter and sinks. Other stuff broke down (as it does in a home) and the money for those things had to go elsewhere. Unfortunately, that means the sink I fell in love with is no longer available, so I have to find something else.

I will post more when we are finally able to put the final, finishing touches in the bathroom, but overall, it is so nice to use. :-)

Pulling it all together, Part 2....

The staining process is done.
We had no idea it would be quite so time consuming, but the results are absolutely spectacular.

It looks like we went out and spent big bucks on new cabinets, but we just bought stain, brushes, and steel wool to sand in-between coats. We bought a 2-in-1 stain that was both stain and sealer in one, and it was so worth it.

Before

This is a close-up of a kitchen cabinet door. They are the exact same shade and design as what was in the bathroom.

It makes me want to cry, they are so dang ugly.

I even hate the friggin' handles.

After sanding.

I personally hated the shade of the finish that was on the cabinets. I love the darker mahogany shades. Luckily, the hubby doesn't care either way.

All the grooves and handle holes are filled in with a stainable wood filler and then sanded again to leave a nice, smooth surface.

This was where we were getting excited - to see that ugly country pattern go away.

And voila!

Nice, pretty, non-country patterned cabinet doors. You can still see a faint suggestion of the filled lines, but once they are mounted on the cabinet front, it will not be visible at all.

Oh, remember the ledge that needed to be stained as well? It was the same ugly shade as the cabinets, and it had four holes that had to be filled as well because of the pointless, ugly wood poles that were there previously.

Before.

After. Nice, huh?

And I love how the color of both the doors and the ledge tie in perfectly with the medicine cabinets and the etagere.

And here is the finished product, hung back where they belong, new door handles in place, and same hinges used since we are on the dregs of our budget. (The last of it will be used to purchase the counter top and whatever miscellaneous items we will need to get to install it and the sinks).

There should only be one more post for the bathroom, and that will happen once the counter is chosen and it is installed along with the new sinks, and the towels are hung and the new floor rugs are in place.

More later...

Pulling it all together, Part 1....

Well, the major parts are in place, and it is turning out so much better than we could have ever imagined...

I can't believe how nice the combination of the medicine cabinets and lights turned out.

What a difference some paint and new fixtures makes. I was joking with Lolo and told him it feels like we finally have a grown-up bathroom, not just something in a rental house or an apartment that we can't change.

We finally have a bathroom that looks like it was finished on purpose, not just slapped together because someone was throwing whatever was laying around together in the hopes it would function properly.

Does this not just look like a completely different bathroom? The shower curtain is just awesome. And when we decide on a counter top - oh how freakin' fantastic will it look then?

I can't wait 'til the towels and rugs get in - that will just be the icing on the cake.

And I have pictures I am looking for frames for to go along the wall above the towel bars. They will be so pretty once they are framed!

Oh, and this ledge will be sanded down and stained to match the medicine cabinets & etagere.

(Had to patch the holes where the ugly, pointless wood bars once existed).

The under-cabinets will also be sanded and stained to match, and will get new hardware. We also have a little bit extra work we have to put into the door fronts, though.

See, the previous owners of our home evidently loved country design.

It was everywhere. Everywhere. (Blech!)

I absolutely hate country design.

However, since we are on a strict budget, we cannot buy new cabinets. We are, however, going to fill in that ugly groove that is in every cabinet door so no one will ever know it was there. That's what we are in the process of doing now. And since the staining is a 2-day process once everything is sanded and filled, it will be a bit before we are finished. (Most likely next weekend).

We will let you know.

More later.....

Next up is.....

We have grout! And fixtures!

The plumber came in the day after the tile guy was done and attached the gorgeous plumbing fixtures. The more I look at them, the more I am happy we spent the extra money on them.

They look so nice next to the tile!

Ooooh - and see the border the tile guy put up? He just took the same tiles and bordereed the entire shower area. It was actually his idea, and we thought it was great!

We're going to have to touch up the paint where that blue tape was - it peeled some of the paint right off.

Oops!

That's the shower curtain rod in the tub - it's out of the way there while everything else is going on.

You can see the medicine cabinets ther on the floor getting ready to be installed. We took photos of the totally patched and painted wall where they will hang, but it looks like they got deleted by accident.

More later.....

And the next step is......

We have tile!

Beautiful, beautiful tile!

Tile on the back wall....

Tile on the left wall...

Tile on the right wall...

Tile with no mold, no breaks, no chips, no gold flecks!

And no grout yet either, but that is coming in the next few days.

WooHoo!

And paint! Nice, soothing paint! Isn't that shade such a fantastic difference from the dark blue that was there previously?

~

And guess what else happened? Who knew I had an amateur electrician in my family? Guess what my baby brother did for us?

That's right! We have lights!

We have awesome, gorgeous, pretty, fantastic new light fixtures moved to above where the beautiful new medicine cabinets will go!

And it only cost us about $20 in supplies!

All we have to do now is patch, texture and paint over the old medicine cabinet spaces and voila! A whole, functional wall with gorgeous fixtures and a soothing paint color.

Awesome.

It looks a little bare now, but when the other colors start to make an appearance, I can only imagine how scrumptious our new bathroom will be!

More later...

Fixtures and Finishes.....

We thought it might be nice to gather pics of the fixtures and finishes we will be using:

Medicine cabinets (2) - not recessed, so we will have some drywall patching to do ourselves when the time comes. I just hope it doesn't look like crap when we are done.

Matching etagere - or as I like to call it - the behind-the-toilet cabinet. I just wish the glass in the doors was frosted. We may look into frosting them ourselves, depending on how much of a pain that will be.

I fell in love with this sink before I even found the perfect shower curtain. The only thing now is we haven't decided on the counter top yet, but we think we are going to go back with laminate. The manufacturers of laminate have made them so nice looking nowadays that we just can't seeing spending all that money on granite - besides, how lame is getting the same thing everyone else is getting?

I saw this set and thought "Oh yeah."

So far, this is actually the most expensive thing we have purchased (even more than the tile - yikes!) Who knew the plumbing fixture industry had such a racket going on?

Towel bars (2).

Pretty   :-)

Toilet paper holder.

That's pretty, too   :-)

And, of course, the shower curtain. The inspiration for the entire scheme of the bathroom. I love the brown/blue/tan combination - I think it's casual enough for our family (and really, there is nothing formal about us in any way), but nice enough for someone to look and think "Nice!"

We have light fixtures and a light/exhaust fan fixture, but since we won't be replacing or installing those right now, they will sit in our garage until we are able to pay for the electrician to come back & change the wiring. Hopefully that will happen before we retire.

More later... 

Reconstruction begins...

Demo took us about 2 weeks, mostly because we both work full time and I go to school full time on top of that, so we were tearing everything up in our spare time. But now, things are looking up...

The shower head has been moved! All I can say is, WOOHOO - no more ducking to wash our hair!

And no more leaking! The plumbing has been repaired, and we expect our water bill to go back down around to what used to be normal.

YAY!

New window!

New vinyl window!

New vinyl window after a 10-day delay because of the type of glass in the window! Now that was irritating beyond belief. We do wish now that we had gone ahead and replaced this window with all the others, but that's mostly our frustration trying to take root.

(Please ignore the terrible backyard - that's the next project - we hope.)

Walls all nice and solid, with the right materials for a bathroom. The hole in the closet was patched with minimal fuss, so we didn't bother with pics of it.

Ugly, pointless wood poles gone!

However, if you notice, the lights are still in the same spot. See the soffit above the sinks? There is an electric conduit behind it, along with a boat load of blown insulation. It seems all the wiring in our home is done through electrical conduit, so it makes any electric work expensive and just a general pain in the rear. The drywall guys had to re-sheetrock the soffit, so no new lights for now. The electrician can move the conduit, but it will eat a good-size chunk of the budget, so that part of the project is a no-go. The exhaust fan/overhead light is also a no-go for the same reasons.

We are so disappointed.

So, next up is the tile guy. He will come in and put this gorgeous tile we found at Tile For Less up on the walls around the tub. We saved big and lucked out when one of my co-workers suggested we look there. (Thanks Elisa!) Here is what it looks like:

The tile is 13x6.5, and we got 80 sq ft plus matching grout for about $140. We love the slight impression of the sand dollars in it - it is unique but beautiful, and it will look so fantastic when everything is pulled together.

More soon!