renovate

We've spent well over a month remodeling our main bathroom on the second floor. As it sounds, this took longer than expected, involved more gutting and fixing than we planned, and cost more too. Not that we are finished, but let's say it's close. Only the sink is left, and I finally ordered a sink to sit atop the Ikea kitchen island that I'm going to modify for a sink stand. We are doing all we can to cut corners but cost just seems to rise regardless of my design choices. In any case, we've come a long way from the demolition pictures at the bottom of this post.

Built in removable shelving between the shower and the window holds basically everything we need.

We kept the original window but re-cased it, which sounds simple except the entire wall was rebuilt to be "plumb".

A new low-flow but strong flush Toto toilet is a welcome addition.

Josh, our cousin, did most of the actual work of the renovation and you can see his tile handiwork is superb. My favorite is the built in shelf, though we also added a bolted glass shelf as well.

We decided to go with a combination of a soaker tub and a nice shower experience by getting a deeper and wider tub.
We also took the door off its hinges and reconfigured it as a pocket door built into another rebuilt, re-plumbed, thickened wall. The interesting gadget above the outlet is the control for the hidden but likely best feature of the room, heated floors. Yep, no more cold tile in the winter. And that isn't the best reason, it will save us energy. We had a small radiator that did little but was using lots of energy by heating water in a dedicated pipe that ran over two floors from the basement directly to the bathroom. Now we are recycling that copper and only heating the actual part that needs heated, the floor.

Because it took so long, we spent many nights and mornings tubbing it ghetto style.

Oona got a kick out of the construction site too. She's waiting for bath time.

Here you can see how we went down 7 layers to the original floor to build a new floor that was actually level and well supported, not to mention insulated. Only one exterior wall was insulated, now the whole room is. You can also see the edge of a maze of pipe that we tore out and completely re-plumbed.