Sneak Peek

I want to tell you a little story.  It's about an impatient wife, and an exasperated husband.  What had happened was.... I came home one day with a bright idea to rip out our completely functional, somewhat dated, bathroom vanity and put in a bright shiny pedestal sink, paint the dingy walls, add new cabinets, lighting and a fancy mirror.  Easy peasy!  In my brain it was anyway.  We already had the pedestal sink from a previous reno that we never finished, and we had two nightstands with marble tops that would be perfect for storage cabinets!  All completely free!  Easy!  Done in a flash!  Bahahahahahaha!

Here was my brilliant idea:  (Disclaimer: SketchUp is the devil. You can just bump a wall out here, drag and drop a sink there, and it's all looking beautiful on paper in about 5 minutes.  That doesn't really happen in real life.)  Here's the bathroom as it was before we moved in:

The footprint of the bathroom is pretty long and narrow and eventually we'd like to take out that wall across from the sink (which is the back of our master bedroom closet) and turn that into more space in the bathroom.  That's waaaay down the line, though.  Right now I just wanted to do a Phase 1 reno to make the bathroom a little prettier and more functional.  

The bathroom has always been a little dingy and outdated, which bugs me.  As you can see from the pics above, the vanity is awkward (Why is it off-centered?  Why are there no cabinets below?  Why would you leave the plumbing exposed?  Why are the countertops painted?) and it makes for a tight squeeze with two people trying to get ready in the mornings.  The sink was originally blue (as was the tile and tub) but the previous owners painted (yes, painted) it all white.  They didn't do the neatest job, so the paint is coming off in places and there's a lot of brush strokes and drips clearly visible.  There's some really ugly lighting in there and it's dark like a cave at night.  

Changes on my list included a fresh coat of bright paint, new lighting, and some bright white cabinetry and a new sink.  I eventually want to get a new tub and tile surround, and tile the floor with some pretty white hex-tile, but that's not in the budget right now, so that'll have to wait on the back-burner for a few more years.

I sketched up my ideas and it seemed so easy!  Did I mention SketchUp is the devil?  Here's my SketchUp plan:

The floorplan:

View of the new pedestal sink and storage cabinets:

Some floating shelves above the toilet for more storage:

And a new ceiling-height white shower curtain to hide the painted tile/tub:

After one evening of angrily ripping everything out, which almost ended in Daniel divorcing me on the spot, here's where we ended up:

Yes, those are holes in the drywall, which is so old they don't make the same thickness anymore!  Yes, the plumbing is off-centered just enough so that we have to move all the pipes!  Yes, the electrical is so old that will all have to be re-done!  Yes, there is mold growing on the walls because there is no exhaust in this room! Yes, that's yet another expense to be added to our already over-stretched Phase 1 "free" bathroom renovation budget!  Yes, we do have to replace a big section of the ceiling where Daniel almost fell through while trying to re-do the wiring!

Whew!  I'm tired already.  And my part of this thing hasn't even really started.  This was one of those projects that I think will only take a weekend or so to complete, and then 5 months later, it still looks like the pics above.  We have made some progress.  We have a working sink.  Beadboard has gone up.  Some wiring has been completed.  That's about it.  But I'll be sure to keep you posted on our Phase 1 progress!  Stay tuned!

Note: If you want to check out our progress, click here, here, here, and here.