Sew Unique in CO: Diary of a Bathroom Remodel...

Ok, it's been a while since I last blogged, so I thought my first post should be something big, something exciting and dramatic, something glamorous!
Exciting, dramatic, glamorous?
Of course I am talking about the bathroom!
It's been on the list since the day we moved into the house over 8 years ago, but it didn't jump to the top of the list until we visited Architectural Salvage and hit the jackpot...

Jackpot = gorgeous solid wood single panel door which fit in place without requiring long hours of tiny adjustments...
The door replaced a hollow core monstrosity, and immediately began to highlight the shabbiness of my bathroom...

Sadly, nothing short of a major reconstruction would be able to increase the size of the bathroom, but the shabbiness was something we could change...

The major issues to be addressed were the linoleum floor tiles...

the wallboard behind the tub...

And the lack of legroom between the toilet and the sink...

Memorial Day weekend was decided upon as the when, supplies were purchased as the what, and the kids were shipped off to willing grandparents as the how...

We were ready to go bright and early Saturday morning!

Step one: Get the claw foot tub out of the tiny bathroom, around the corner through the kitchen, and into the dining room...

Translation...

Get the freaking heavy, and ridiculously awkward behemoth of a claw foot tub out of the bathroom without injuring each other or the house...(Imagine that scene from Fantasia where the hippos are dressed in frilly pink tutus and dancing a delicate ballet)

Step 2: Begin the simple task of removing the wall boards from behind the tub...

Translation: Begin the long arduous task of removing the wallboard from behind the tub, discover that the plaster behind the wallboard is a crumbling mess...

And continue the long arduous and now extremely dusty task of removing the plaster down to the lath...

Still feeling relatively optimistic, we moved on to step 3: removal of the sticky floor tile and the ugly bathroom sink...

Spoiler Alert:

This is the only step in the entire process that went as quickly and easily as expected...

Ok then! On to Step 4: Cutting the hardy-backer board to the correct sizes and screwing them securely to the wall and floor...
Translation:
Struggling to score the hardy-backer (which resists such abuse) then struggling to get said boards screwed into the walls, which are covered in lath which you cannot screw into, and studs which are absent from the corner meaning that you must stop and engineer a false stud in order to ensure that the wall doesn't flex....etc. etc. etc....

Ok, fine, it's only 8pm, we got this, lets move onto Step 5: tiling the floor...

It's now approaching 1am, and I have hit that point where I regret ever beginning this project, what were we thinking?!!! I hate tile! I hate all tile! In fact, I hate bathrooms! I hate all bathrooms!
It is at this point that I blearily decide we should just drop everything and move!

But then...it's done!
Step 6: drop lifelessly into bed and hope that when we wake up the house elves will have come and completed the project...
Ok, Day 2! Looking slightly crazed, we move into the continuation of the previous nights tiling efforts, getting the wall tiles up!
This process was relatively smooth, except for that moment when I thought I was finished and had started to pack things up only to realize that I had forgotten to tile that one thin strip of wall (visible behind me in the picture above) and had to set back up and keep going! UGH! Mental head slap!

Ok, Step 6,7,8 and 9...or something...
The sneaky thing no one tells you about tiling, is that as laborious as laying the tile is, it is actually just as much work, and maybe more work, to grout the tile, and once you grout it you must scrub it all down! (I watch HGTV, they never show these steps)
On the plus side, it is the best arm workout imaginable...wax on, wax off! Grout on! Grout off!

At this point it's a desperate scramble to in stall the toilet and tub before we pick up the yahoos!

(sidebar: what is the best part of a bathroom remodel? playing in the giant box the new toilet came in, of course!!)

Well, winding things down now, we ended up living without a bathroom sink for a week...

But once installed it proudly grants the bathroom user an extra 2 inches of leg room, a vast improvement over the previous situation although we who live here are probably the only ones who can truly appreciate such things...

The claw foot tub proved to be just as beastly to get back into the bathroom, but it now stands painted and proud, ready to be refinished as soon as we can get a professional in to do so...