Upstairs bathroom: day 19-20

Tiling is taking a bit longer than expected.. but we should be finished up tomorrow. Laying out the marble is an exercise in patience/frustration. This would have definitely been a task worth hiring out :oP .

Upstairs bathroom: day 18

Primer, grout and 1 potlight (need another light bulb :oP ).

Tomorrow: hopefully some floor tile and/or paint.

This bathroom has been a bit of a slog, but it's starting to look like it might look good so we're getting motivated to get it done. I'm especially excited to see the wall color with the marble mini-brick tiles. :o) .

Upstairs bathroom: Day 16

Drywall is taped, wall tile is hung.. time for a beer methinks...




this is more tile than we ever ever want to hang again...

Upstairs bathroom: day 11

Blue board and denshield are up.

We also went and got our tiles/vanity last week. Here's what we've ended up with. The tiny black thing on the tile is a cutout of our vanity... kind of a lo-tech photoshop I guess...

Yay for E-bay!

After buying our new vanity we've been a bit stressed trying to find an inexpensive faucet that would fit the 8 inch center faucet holes that we ordered it with. Today we lucked out and won a nice faucet on E-bay for much much less than it retails for.



It doesn't really go with the vintage theme we originally had in mind, but with the new vanity and different floor tile our original plan is pretty much out the window ;oP . We'll see where this goes...

Even the best laid plans....

In our quest for the American Standard Williamsburg vanity from our previous post we hit a small snag. Big orange is the only store to stock this vanity.. and the fastest they can get it would be in 35 days. It's cute, but we're not prepared to wait 5 weeks for it. So tonight we headed to the western portion of the city (did we mention that relative to Calgary, driving in Toronto sucks?). We made our way to Taps Bath and ordered this vanity which we will be able to pick up in a couple of days.



It's a bit of a departure from the vintage look of the Williamsburg vanity but we really liked the look of it so we figure we'll fit it in. This vanity takes a wide set faucet which means we're back to the drawing board trying to find a cheap/pretty faucet. We also had a bit of a reality check when we revisited the pricing on the pretty hex floor tiles we were planning on using...

So all in all it looks like we're kind of back to the drawing board for the styling of the upstairs bathroom. Most likely we'll substitute the hex floor tiles for some 12x12 white marble tiles. This will help us save some $$ and will reduce the vintage feel a bit so the new vanity won't look quite so out of place. Lets hope this works... and that we don't have to sell our first born to pay for this room :oP .

Shiny new....

Vent!




Plumbing!


Wiring!



(well... the room was rewired with the rest of the house... we just moved the fixtures around)

Rebuilding begins

Since we last posted we've started rebuilding the bathroom. We got the electrical and HVAC fixing done. We had a vent blowing into the attic of the kitchen (basically out the back of the house) that we rerouted to heat the bathroom (much more useful). Now the bathroom doesn't share a vent with the guest bedroom and there isn't a path for north winds to blow into the bedroom.

On Sunday we tackled the electrical and today we started the drains. So far we've got the toilet/tub drains and the vent for the vanity. Hopefully we will be able to have a floor again by the weekend. Teetering around on floor joists is losing its novelty and we're getting a bit nervous about messing up the drywall ceiling below with all the cutting/banging :S.

We recycle!

... but not today!





Most of the upstairs bathroom was taken away in many pieces in a dumpster today. The rest is sitting in the second dumpster on our lawn.








many tiny window weights for the 1 little window.

Rebuilding will probably start tomorrow. We were going to take a break but a certain handyman is eager to start playing with all the ABS/doodads we picked up at Home Depot.

Today's renovation brought to you by the letters 'H' and 'D'

Dumpster came today. I guess the company we rented from also hires out dumpsters for Home Depot. I hope we got it cheaper by not going through "big orange".




It's all cockeyed because we didn't want to risk breaking our city water shut off by putting it on top :P.

Design for the upstairs bathroom

We'd be lying if we said we know anything about design... but here's what we've got planned for the upstairs bath. With a bit more of a budget for this bathroom we're planning to splash out a little.

The current bathroom layout leaves a lot to be desired... although being able to wash your hands while sitting on the toilet was a neat feature *sarcasm*. In some ways, delaying this project has been good because it took us this long to find a layout that would minimize space issues. We have a stack in 1 corner of the bathroom that precludes a more efficient layout with the tub across the wall with the window on it. After months of thinking about it, we've arrived at the following design.


There is a bit of unused space behind the tub by the toilet. We'll put some shelves there for some extra storage. The vanity is going to be a bit small so we'll probably need the extra space. Below is the vanity we're looking at getting. It's an American Standard from Home Depot. We'll be pairing it with the same Glacier Bay faucet that we used downstairs.




For the floor tile we're planning to use hexagon white marble tiles. The picture below is from DoorSixteen's really pretty upstairs bathroom.






The walls will include copious amounts of our 4x8 white subway tiles, and some wayside inn grey paint (this is the same tile/color we used in the basement bathroom). We're still playing around with what to do for an accent tile (if we do one) and where exactly we'll put the tile. It's less than 2.50/sqft so we can afford to go a bit nuts :D.

Upstairs bathroom your days are numbered!

With the basement bathroom functional we've booked the dumpster to take the remains of the upstairs bathroom for Thursday night. It will be a long Easter weekend of demo and dirt. Here are some pictures of what the upstairs bathroom looks like now (and 1 from before we moved in).



Above you can see damage from the electrician as well as some "artistic" welding we did to install the shower kit/new supply lines without removing large segments of the floor.



We thought this project or the kitchen would be our first project when we started this adventure in masochism but we really underestimated how nice it is to have a living room that isn't dirty and gross. So now, months later we finally get to this project!