Thursday, March 14, 2013

The Adventures in Bathroom Remodeling

Greg had decided to renovate the bathroom.  Well, you don't know Greg the way I do.  I knew that this was going to mean loads of stressful days.  You see, he is diagnosed with OCD by my daughter and myself.  When one item is out of place, his anxiety increases.  Oh you want an example...Ok...We have a candle holder on our coffee table. It MUST be centered.  When it's not, you need to get out of the way and just let him put it back because he absolutely can not walk away from it.  Oh and there he goes moving the coffee table....I didn't mean to move it I swear.

OH...I got off topic a little but there is a point to it.  If you can't have a candle holder out of place, how well do you think he handled having an entire room literally torn apart while another room(granted an empty one) is used to store all the equipment needed to complete this job.

So here we are, the decision is made and the date is set to start the work.  It's time to pick out tile.

I tend to lean more towards a bit of drama in each room.  Always in a classy way but something that makes people say "Wow" .  Greg leans towards the practical.  He likes to keep in mind what he feels will reflect well when/if the property is sold.

His selections were all very simple.  They honestly reminded me of a hotel choice.  Sort of generic and bland.

I found tile that I loved.  I explained to him how we should go for a "Wow" wall.  One wall when you enter into the bathroom and you see through the glass doors, it just makes  you go wow.  

My thinking is this:
               1. We will be living with this bathroom for many many years, possibly until we pass from this earth, so let's make it in a way that we will enjoy it daily.
               2. If he's going to spend the kind of money it takes to update this bathroom, we really should love it.

So I find the tiles shown below and I get to convincing Greg how wonderful it's going to look when done.   Initially, he wasn't sold by any sense of the word but when I put it all together and Greg asked the salesman what he thought..... Well let's just say that the salesman was impressed with my skills and Greg jumped on board.    We did have to do a little juggling of the initial plan to keep it in budget.  Rather than having tiling going across the wall with the sink and the commode, we kept it just in the shower.  

The Wow wall tile was $25 Sq Ft.  but then we found the side tile & floor & ceiling tile was only $2.99 Sq Ft.   By making these changes & finding those side tiles, etc, we were able to keep the shower in budget.

This first picture is showing the shower floor tiles....the small ones .  The Bathroom floor....the lighter hardwood looking tile...yes that's tile not wood folks.  And it is lying against the larger tiles that will be the 2 side walls and the ceiling. 






The larger tiles here will be the side wall tiles while the smaller colorful tile will be the WOW wall!   The one back wall that you will see as you walk into the room and say WOW! when you see it :) 



This picture is to show the larger side tiles, the WOW wall colors and the bathroom tile floor that looks like wood :) 







This last picture is the best picture of the WOW wall and how it will be installed.  We are looking for the wall to make the room look wider by putting it horizontal and of course to wow people as well as ourselves with the beautiful warmth emanating from our bathroom wall :) 


Greg handled the vanity, sink, quartz counter top & glass shower door exclusively.  He chose beautiful items to accent my "WOW" wall. ;)  

By setting things up the way we did, including the horizontal lines and the colors, it makes a small bathroom look larger :) 


So I know your dying to see the final product.   Scroll on down to check it out! 





This is the gutted bathroom! 


























This is what you see when you turn the corner and head towards the bathroom. 






This Shows more of the cabinet & the flooring. 


I have to give a shout out to the company that we got the tile from.  They were wonderful at helping us find just the right tiles to make the job work for us.  So absolutely knowledgeable!  I can strongly recommend them to anyone looking for any sort of flooring and/or tile work.  They don't just have tile but also have a very large selection of wood flooring.    http://www.waynetile.com/