1st Floor Half Bath- Before & After
I know, I know. I am no good at this blogging thing! First off, I am terrible at documenting the process with photos as we go along. I don't own a real camera, so all you get are my moody cell phone pictures! But at least I can share the overall feeling of the spaces before and after & give a little peak at the transformations that are happening all over this place.
Almost nothing is completely 'done.' There have been an absolutely laughable number of mistakes and missteps on the part of our crew. I am not sure any of them have ever done a renovation of this scale. The only areas that are finished enough to share are the projects that Daniel and I decided to tackle ourselves. First up, the main floor half bath:
You may remember this beauty from a few Facebook pictures we posted while working on the space. A few things worth noting about the bathroom... It is 4'x7'. There were 13" (THIRTEEN INCHES) of space between that sink and the handle of the door. You had to turn sideways and shimmy past the handle to get to the toilet. I had 2 nasty bruises on my hip before I decided to rip that vanity off the wall!
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| Original Lighting has brass fixtures & white opal glass. |
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| It is really hard to take a picture of a light fixture in a room with no windows! |
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| Original Flooring getting a grout treatment to freshen up the overall look. |
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| We kept the toilet seat... just kidding! |
Demo! I thought to myself, I will just strip the wallpaper and paint the room a nice bright white. Had an awesome wallpaper steamer, did all the right moves, this stuff was a nightmare! All the rumors about removing wallpaper are TRUE. Here is what we found:
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| 2 hours of work up to this point |
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| 6 hours in: there is now mold visible & ripped drywall paper everywhere. |
It was at about the 6 hour mark and not even a quarter of the way finished that I realized we were getting nowhere and at an impossibly slow pace! Time to change the game plan. These walls were not worth saving. I thought about ripping out the drywall and starting over, but then it hit me: Luan!
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| You can see the drywall patch were I cut out the mold. didn't bother with taping it, as we were covering it up! |
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| Time to rip out the sink! |
I spy more wallpaper! Removal of the sink revealed a very saucy 3rd wallpaper hiding in this tiny room! Faux newspaper print was all the rage...
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| we saved this paper to hopefully frame! |
Back to the Luan! Luan is a subfloor type product that is about 1/4" thick plywood. It comes in 4x8 sheets and is fairly inexpensive at only $13.00 per sheet. Applied to the walls with a small spacer, it gives the illusion of shiplap without the price. You can see that we applied a layer of Killz over the horrible peeling paper scene, since there is a small gap we did not want any of that to peek out from behind our beautiful boards!
We needed 5 sheets of Luan for this project, and the guys at home depot ripped them down for us at the store. We did 5.75" wide planks along the 4' edge since we have a small wall in the room. It took about 20 minutes for them to do the cutting, but this was a HUGE savings for us, since we don't have a table saw!
We cut the boards to random lengths so that we could have staggered seams, then affixed with the brad nailer. Everything took about 4 hours to go in & that includes some very delicate cuts around the light fixtures and electrical outlets. After we were done, everything got primed and painted with semi-gloss white paint.
Step 7: What to do about this skinny space? I remembered seeing this very narrow, sideways sink an an Ikea a while back. I loved the sink, but did not love the super modern white cabinet that they offered. So, I figured we could fashion something to hold the sink & look more hip vintage.
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| Ikea Sink |
Turns out, the previous homeowner was a bit of a wood worker & left us with a very large pile of scrap lumber. When we ripped out the wood shop to build my studio (more on that later), we found one very large piece of wood:
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| Ready for 3 coats of glossy poly |
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| front profile for walnut floating sink |
Daniel worked his magic on this slab & turned it into a beautiful, rough-sawn specimen! There was just enough continuous wood to the left of the giant crack that we were able to use it for the shelf. We left a lot of the dark spots and knot holes, because honestly we just liked the way it looked. And then we did the poly... Holy smokes, I thought I liked it before sealing it, I loved it after. The color is amazing!
-Ikea sinks come with European pipe fittings, so unless you are using the European hardware and cabinet that it is 'supposed' to mount to, expect to have to rig this thing to get it to work! i.e. reducers and special order pieces.
-This sink and shelf combo is unusual, as a typical drain plug would not fit this configuration. The sink has a overflow. Overflow sinks require a special type of vented drain plug that my faucet did not include. If you do not use this type of drain, there is a negative suction issue and the sink just fills with water...super annoying!
-you can drill through a drain plug that fits the sink and create your very own vented drain with little more than a drill bit that will go through metal, and a very steady hand!
-it takes a really long time to drill through a 3" solid piece of wood to make holes big enough for this special drain and the faucet controls.
- i recommend making 1 gigantic hole, maybe 12" x 7" instead of our approach of two 4" circle holes.
- when your pipe connection leaks and you need to screw and unscrew the sink by taking it completely off the wood 15 times, you will see why I recommend one large access hole.
- measure your setback before buying a toilet!!!!! Thankfully I knew to check for this before heading to the store, ours was only 11", standard is 12" every toilet is different!
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| New Toilet, elongated for the fellas! |
We still need to caulk and finish up the grout treatment on the floors, but it is looking good in this bathroom. We haven't unpacked any of our 'stuff' yet, so I am hopeful I will have a little shelf or something cute to finish off the space when we open up those boxes. Maybe a basket for towels under the sink? For now, it feels clean and bright, and that is good enough for us!
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| Just scooped up this vintage cactus print at the Nashville flea market last weekend for $5 bucks! |
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| Same sconces, different light bulbs. Waaayyy less yellow in here! |
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| Walnut slab |
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| AFTER |
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| BEFORE |
Toilet- $180.00
Sink- $65.00
Faucet- $100.00
Drain- $35.00
Chrome plumbing fixtures- $30.00
Mirror- $25.00
Grout Treatment- $12.00
Luan Shiplap- $65.00
Toilet paper holder & towel rack $28.00
New switches & GFI Outlet $18.00
Baseboards & Trim $22.00
Estimated Total: $580.00
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