Bathroom Remodel

JulieB · 10-08-2012, 04:10 PM

I just introduced myself in the introduction forum. Before I post our current mess I though I would show you all some previous projects that were done by us. By us I mean mainly my husband.

We moved to California from Texas in 2009 because of my husbands job (we are back in Texas now). I didn't want to go and was excited to leave when we got the chance only two years later. We lost a lot of money on this house but sold it in only two weeks. Considering what other people are going through with their homes I can't complain.

The house was built in 1948 and was not only remodeled but a second floor was added on around 2001. They did a fairly nice job (if you ignore a slanted floor in several rooms and stupid layout in the master bedroom/bathroom) only they left one bathroom (main bathroom on the first floor) that needed remodeling badly. First I will show you a few pictures to show you the house.

First thing we did was paint the outside of the house.

I don't have a picture of the whole house before but here is a picture where you can see the color.

After (painted the whole house, including the white part, new shutters, new house numbers, new mailbox and doorbell. Also recovered awnings that you can't see in the pictures (they are on the side of the house and around back).

Moved the mailbox from another location (new mailbox), new doorbell and new house numbers make a big difference I feel.

There were two front doors. The one farther away in this picture goes to the study (originally the master bedroom) and had an ugly mailbox at that door.

Previous ugly house numbers that lit up at night. Original color of the house. Look how dirty is was.

Did love the weather (We lived in Fullerton. My husband worked in El Segundo...sucky drive.)

My favorite part of the house was the front porch.

Also bought larger shutters and had them painted black. The orginal shutters were falling apart and were hunter green (I really don't like that color). On two side windows and back kitchen windows had awnings (also hunter green), we had them recovered in black. Two of the awnings go over the two windows on the left side of the house. They weren't back yet when I took these pictures.

Cute little shed in the back yard. They had it originally painted a different color than the house and it kind of clashed. We had this painted too.

JulieB · 10-08-2012, 04:48 PM

Youngest daughters bedroom. Floor also crooked.

Her bathroom (in her bedroom). Floor and toilet were both crooked.

But the woodwork was beautiful.

Hallway/landing from my daughters room to out bedroom. Laundry room on the left.

Master bedroom. I painted my bedroom furniture (I also made all the quilts you see in these pictures). I also painted my bedroom/bathroom walls and my daughters room. They were PINK, the color was called blush and looked like a light pink. It was awful. In fact, we painted every room except the study, kitchen and the bathroom in the kitchen. Planned on painting the kitchen/bathroom but didn't live there long enough.

Ok here is the strange part. Picture the master bedroom as an "L" shape. There was this extra area which was odd to me. There was no wall across from the bed to put an armoire on to put a tv in or dresser. The door is a pocket door that leads to the closet. I would have used that extra space for more closet space.

If you are laying in bed this is what you see. No door to the bathroom. If we would have stayed there longer we were going to reconfigure the space and redo the bathroom. The tiles were all cracking (and slightly gaudy), the floor in the bedroom was crooked and I wanted a door. We had to replace all the carpet in the house and my husband tried to fix our bedroom floor before they came to install new carpet. He made it better but the floor needed to be removed then reinstalled.

Balcony in the bedroom.

Laundry room. It was very small but well thought out. We sold the washer nd dryer with the house.

Other side of laundry room. Why they changed the wood in there is beyond me. The two big doors on the right are actually drawers for laundry.

JulieB · 10-08-2012, 05:05 PM

Going down stairs.

The hallway to the garage.

Downstairs bedroom. My oldest daughters room. Floor was really crooked in this room.

Study

This room had cherry woodwork. The door you see in the picture had cherry on one side and natural black walnut on the other. All other rooms except for the study and kitchen were natural black walnut.

My husband made me the crafting table you see in the picture (I painted it).

Living room, we have Texas size furniture. Doesn't work well in a house that was originally built in 1948.

I never got use to the original ceiling height, especially in the living room. My husband made the TV easel.

Kitchen and bathroom in the kitchen. There were enough bathrooms, I would have made the kitchen bigger or added a pantry. The yellow would have been ok if it wasn't in the kitchen with a completely different color scheme.

JulieB · 10-08-2012, 05:31 PM

This room was the most crooked out of every other room. All of the crooked floor rooms were add ons. The downstairs bedroom was half an original bedroom then the other half was added on. The whole upstairs was an add on and crooked. This room used to be a porch. The owner before us had a terrific wood craftsman. He put a new floor in that matched the original wood floor from 1948. Why you would go through all this trouble and have obvious crooked floors is beyond me. If you sat a ball down on one end (the end closet to the living room) and just set it down, it would roll to the other side of the room.

Don't pay attention to the picture on the fireplace. I never knew what to put on there. I never liked the fireplace. It's on the other side of the fireplace in the living room. We were told it originally used to be an incinerator. I think it was a stupid idea. It takes up way too much spece in the room.

This is where you can really tell how crooked the floor is. If you put a marble on the right hand corner of where the picture shows it would roll towards the sliding glass doors. The crooked floors drove me crazy and made me hate the house. It was the nicest house we have owned as far as woodwork, appliances, etc but I could never embrace the quirks.

By the way, the blue was much more muted than it appears in the picture.

JulieB · 10-08-2012, 05:47 PM

Ok, now for the reason I posted this thread. The bathroom remodel. This bathroom had the original sink, cabinets and bathtub. The cabinet smelled like urine and you couldn't get the bathtub clean no matter what you did. The tiles were from early 1990's and were ugly. The floor tile and some of the accent tile had grey with mauve. UGLY

We knew we were going to remodel the bathroom when we bought the house but didn't realize all the other crap we would have to do.

Gross tub. It had sliding glass doors on it which were disgusting.

Lovely accent tile.

Toilet that was leaking and he ended up having to replace the subfloor.

Originally there was a medicine cabinet above the sink. We planed on putting one back. Also the water pipes use to come out of the wall, were rerouted to go through the floor and my husband moved them back to the wall.

JulieB · 10-08-2012, 06:05 PM

What a mess (toilet area).

He probably doesn't want me to show this as he says it was very messy the way he fixed the floor.

He ended up tearing every bit of Sheetrock and plaster (most of the walls were still plaster) and the concrete backer board around the shower. He also replaced more of the subfloor too.

Here he is working on the pipes that went to the sink. When they rerouted the original pipes they left the original galvanized pipes in the wall. So he was taking those out and rerouting the copper plumbing. He also raised the shower head height.

I will skip all the crappy work and get on to the fun stuff.

Tile work

We decided to leave the orginal tub and have it "reglazed".

JulieB · 10-08-2012, 06:18 PM

Floor tile. We didn't go with any pattern which made it hard to decide where to put the black hexagon tiles.

My husband did everything himself except refinishing the tub and painting the walls (I did that).

He built a soffit above the shower so he could tile the shower ceiling.

Ceiling of the shower.

The corners of showers get caulk not grout, that is why they don't look finished yet.

JulieB · 10-08-2012, 06:40 PM

Tub after refinishing.

Sink

Faucet

New toilet

Medicine cabinet my husband built. There was a plain mirrored medicine cabinet on a wall of the bathroom and my husband used it to make the new one.

The inside, the glass shelves and mirrored part were the original mirror.

Fixture in the bath/shower

Shower curtain that I bought at target. My husband had installed the curtain rod too high so I added the black material at the bottom and put the black piping at the top.

Above the toilet.

Toilet paper holder.

JulieB · 10-08-2012, 06:47 PM

He also did the crown molding

We also put towel hooks behind the door to hang wet towels.

I'm sure you are glad that this is the end of the pictures. I'll start another thread for other projects. One is of our backyard before we moved to CA and another is our current project (Austin) which turned out to be a larger deal than we thought (stairs).