The Master Pain...I mean the Master Bath

I'm warning you right now that there are some disgusting pictures coming up. So when we were looking for a house, most of them didn't have a master bath. I think master baths weren't such a big deal back in the 80's. We were excited that our house had one. It was interesting that we ended up in our house. I can't even tell you how many houses we went through, how many offers didn't pan out. The house we are in now was a definite fixer-upper. It was in pretty poor condition. Little did I know that I would LOVE fixing it up. Well, one of the last things on the list was the master bath. And I'll tell you right now, we didn't go into this project with a whole lot of knowledge. But we learned what we needed to get the job done. I love taking on something and learning how to do new things. When people hear about all the things we've done in our house, I'm often asked how we know how to do it all. And the answer is we don't. But we do know how to research and find the answers, and we're willing to have confidence in ourselves that eventually we'll figure it out. So here is the story. And I wish I had better before pictures, but it didn't start out with us thinking we were going to change so much :)

So this is the best shot I have of the outside of the shower. I had threatened for several months that John was going to come home someday and find that I'd taken a hammer to the shower. This shower was disgusting! Long before we arrived, someone had built this shower and done it wrong. It is really important for the shower base to drain properly so water doesn't stay puddled on the tiles. That didn't happen with this shower. So water constantly sat their building all kinds of nasty mold or whatever. It didn't matter how much bleach we poured into this shower (John would spray it almost daily), the thing still looked nasty. So one day, I really did take a hammer to it. It was vigorous exercise getting all that tile out. I highly recommend it if you have a lot of frustration to vent. Anyway, we found mold underneath just as we suspected. We decided to check out filing a claim on our home insurance. They came out, approved us, but said they wouldn't be able to change the existing structure (we knew there was empty space behind the shower that we could use to make it bigger). We'd also have to pay our $1000 deductible. I was still on board to do it since the holidays were upon us and I knew it would be a long time before we got around to finishing the project. But John decided that for $1000 we could remodel the entire bathroom as opposed to just the shower. So we decided to go that route. And I'm happy to report we were right around the $1000 dollar mark. The cool thing though, is that the insurance company sent us a check (which we weren't expecting since we didn't hire someone to do the work) for about $1500. So really, we made a little money on the project :) Okay, here are the disgusting pictures...
This is the floor. Just looking at it now makes me cringe. This was seriously the most disgusting shower ever. And remember we sprayed it down with bleach every day. So disgusting. I had to show it though so you could appreciate the difference :)

You have to love the flower tiles. They almost disguise how nasty this shower is. Just Kidding! I'm not a fan of flower tiles.

And here is the sink after we started ripping out baseboards and such.

Now to the AFTER PICTURES...Doesn't it look awesome?! It was awhile before I quit going in there just to stare at it with satisfaction. So just what did we do? After ripping everything out, we realized there was enough room to put a tub in, so we reframed the shower part and put in the tub. We enlisted John's brother to help us out with the plumbing part. Then we put up backerboard, tiled (learned tons about that and never could have done it without my mom and dad watching the kids :). We used the same tile on the floor, put in a new toilet and a new vanity. I still want to get some glass shelves to replace the cabinet above the toilet.We had enough room to build a shelf into the shower. I love it because it easily holds all of our stuff. We had to put new drywall up on the ceiling, tape it, and then retexture the whole thing. John was doubtful that I could do the texture thing, but I think I proved him wrong :)

Here is the floor. We got all the tile at Home Depot. John's brother was in construction for a long time, and told us we could use liquid nails for the floor tiles. It worked great, and made that part of the project go fast. We used liquid nails for our countertop tiles four years ago and haven't had any problems. I was doubtful at first, but I'm a believer now :)Here's another shot of the shower. I love the new fixtures.We had a little mishap with the vanity. John was trying to surprise me while I was away for the weekend by getting everything finished up. He soon learned that it wasn't so easy to multitask while watching all four kids. Macy pulled the sink top off which split the sink in two and cracked one of the newly laid tiles. He stopped trying to get it done after that :) Home Depot was amazing though and replaced the sink top for free. I'm now a huge fan of their customer service :) Here it is after we got it replaced. I love this vanity. The cabinet is shallower than the sink, which really helps to open up the small space.

So there is our major project. I'm very happy with how everything turned out. There are still a few things I'd like to change (mirror and cabinet) but it looks pretty nice. It was a lot of work, but now I know how to tile, how to hook up toilets and sinks and new shower fixtures, how to texture a ceiling, etc. And hopefully this will give our house an edge when it comes time to put it on the market.