Bathroom reno #2 complete

Although the bathroom has been useable for the past month or so, there were little details that needed to be finished. Like the baseboard in front of the tub (which needed to be stripped of the paint the previous owner applied), filling in nail holes, and redoing the moulding around the door.

The bathroom itself was really out of commission for only 2 weeks. I think that is a great accomplishment for hubby considering what needed to be done!

And now, since it is finally complete, I thought I would share a few highlights of the new bathroom.


This was a support beam under the subflooring. Notice how it's not there. Yeah, that's what happens after 20 years of decay from water damage.


A nice fresh coat of paint to turn our dungeon of a bathroom into the perfect retreat. It took three coats of off white paint to cover up the awful color. We were debating about putting a pocket light over the tub, but since the new color is so bright we don't need one. Notice the beautiful wrap around tile on the edge of the corner?? Yeah, hubby had to replace the last row of tile so we decided to prevent further water damage by adding it .... and to make it look pretty. The other thing we changed, one because of the color, and two because of the amount of paint caked on, was the baseboards. Who paints their baseboards a darker shade of the same color as the walls?? A nice crisp, clean white is what it needed.


Because this bathroom is in the main hallway on our main floor, and right next to Little Man's room, there wasn't much we could do about hiding the mess. So we let him help Daddy whenever he could. Even if it was handing Daddy a nail or handing him a particular tool. I think it made him feel really useful. The other down side of the position of the bathroom was we couldn't make much noise at night for fear of waking Little Man up. We tried to make sure the majority of the noise was made during the day.

We had a medicine cabinet on the side of the wall. No big deal, right. Well not if it supplies the only mirror in the bathroom. Makes it kind of difficult for hubby to shave in the morning. We weren't sure if we wanted to cover it up with drywall or replace the medical cabinet with one without a mirror. Turns out, no one makes medicine cabinets without mirrors. So our other option was to make our own - with or without a door. We opted for the less expensive version: Open box with moulding around the edges and re-use the shelf from the old medicine cabinet. I think it's kind of nice. It's a place for us to store our toothbrushes to keep the counter top clear.

Like the first bathroom, I'm not exactly sure how much we spent on the project. I do know that we did so much more work than the first and hubby still managed to get it done in record time. And that we made record trips to and from Lowe's. It really could have been a lot worse than it turned out to be. Fixing the water damage in the walls and the floor was the biggest obstacle. And I found out something about my hubby in the process. He used to part of a program called BOSS (Better Opportunity for Single Soldiers) in the Army. Instead of soldiers waiting around for minor leaks, cracks, or broken parts in the barracks to be fixed, they learned how to do it themselves. Because of this program and the repairs and work we have done to this house, we'll be able to build our own dream home some day. Looks like I married a real "Handy Manny"!