Other Side of the River
Bathroom Renovations
When we first moved in, my daughter went to use the bathroom and asked if there was a different bathroom she could use. Sorry honey; no, we live here now.
So one of the first things we did was clean our downstairs bathroom like crazy. I am not big on chemicals but this house needed it. I used scouring sticks for the tub and scouring sticks for the toilet. I used Zep for the other spaces. The water has a lot of iron so I could not get all the iron stains out of the tub. I know it's clean so we just ignore the stains. We recently discovered this tub is magnetic, so having an old tub does have its perks.
When we did our initial walk-throughs, we didn't notice the downstairs bathroom floor was rotting. The rugs were covering all of that up.
Before: (Looks ok, right? Yep, we were tricked too)
At first we tried to fix the floors by putting a rubber mat over the rotten floor boards. We thought that might buy us enough time, but the rubber mat got really wet and disgusting. We realized that was not going to work and we would have to do something more.
Graham added plywood on top of the rotten bathroom floor, even removing the toilet and putting some plywood under there. Then he put laminate over to make the downstairs bathroom livable.
When he has to do a project like that, I take the kids out of town so he can just focus on the job. This bathroom will be remodeled completely eventually, but until then we make do with what we have. Everything works, we won't fall through the floor, and I know it is clean.
After:
Our other bathroom needed to be completely gutted. That bathroom was absolutely disgusting. I am talking slime upon mold upon dirty underwear, upon a washing machine draining into the bathtub. Just pure filth! We showed none of our children this bathroom...some things are better left unknown. I regret not taking pictures of the bathroom before, but at the time I wanted to forget what that bathroom looked like.
When we gutted the bathroom, we gutted the pantry next to it. We wanted a bigger bathroom and didn't need a pantry.
Pantry:
Pantry Gutted:
Bathroom Gutted:
Graham did all the tile work by himself with a little guidance from a friend. We got the shower tile from Community Warehouse and Menards.
We needed help with the plumbing and to carry the claw foot tub upstairs. We found the tub on craigslist and painted the exterior with appliance paint. The inside was in great shape! Thankfully, I did not need to paint the inside. We got the windows, shower fixture, and sink fixture from Menards using our rebates. We ordered the fixture for the tub because we could not find that style anywhere else. I also had to order this trash can because it just fit so perfectly in the bathroom!
We kept the original vanity mirror with medicine cabinet and just fixed it up with a fresh coat of paint.
After:
Love the bathroom! Definitely going to try that appliance paint. 😍
I love seeing all the work you and your husband are doing!!!!! It looks GREAT!!!