Chronicles of a DIY Bathroom Remodel
Our bathroom remodel is finally finished. Here are the before and after pictures:
Posts Tagged ‘Drywall’
Bathroom Remodel 5: Tile
Last week, I put on my general contractor hat and oversaw the tile and plumbing jobs. This is what the floor looks like:
Bathroom Remodel 4: Progress
On Monday afternoon, the wife put a couple of coats of stain blocking primer on the ceiling and walls. I realize I still have some bumps to smooth out on the ceiling patch, but it looks okay.
Bathroom Remodel 3: The Hard Work
We finally got into the thick of the bathroom remodel over the weekend. And by “we” I really mean “I.” The wife helped demo the baseboards and wainscoting, but there’s just not enough room in our tiny bathroom for two people to work. She primed and painted the bead board outside while I worked in the bathroom. In what I hope wasn’t an omen, I had to call a plumber early Saturday morning. One of the faucet shut-offs was so brittle and corroded that it had to be replaced. After that, I disassembled the sink and got the vanity out of the room.
Bathroom Remodel 2: It Begins
Although I just posted the Bathroom Remodel Plan, I actually started working on the room a couple of weeks ago when the wife was out of town. I figured that since I was going to fill the house with dust from the Hardwood Floor Patch Job, I might as well start skim-coating the bathroom walls with mud. To begin, I had to take everything out and scrape down the walls and ceiling.
Bathroom Remodel 1: The Plan
We’ve never been too pleased with the bathroom in our tiny house. The previous owners remodeled it immediately before selling. As a matter of fact, we first viewed the house when the room was under construction. In retrospect, I should have asked them to give us an allowance in lieu of finishing the room. They did some good structural work beneath the floor, but everything else was done on the cheap. Here’s what the room looked like when we bought the house. We tried to dress it up a bit with fixtures, but it was like putting lipstick on a pig.
Kitchen Remodel 5: Almost Finished
We’ve been really busy since last weekend. After work on Monday, we filled the gaps in the floor with a cream-colored grout. After almost two years with a black and white floor that advertised every speck of dirt, we wanted to go with something a little more low maintenance. I had never done this before, so I was a little intimidated. It wasn’t so much the work that worried me as the time sensitivity. Thanks to a few YouTube tutorials, we managed to do an okay job:
Getting the grout haze up is a pain, but it goes away quickly if you wipe it with a 50/50 mixture of vinegar and water.
Kitchen Remodel 3: Making Progress
After last week’s work, I started stressing about how to frame the rear wall in a way that would be either inconspicuous or elegant. In other words, my options were to try to hide the laundry area or to accentuate it. I actually lost sleep about it. I wasn’t happy with either option, and I felt relieved when my wife emailed me on Tuesday to say she’d figured out what she wants. She put together a portfolio of kitchen images that had design concepts she liked, and she drew out this design for our rear wall:
It’s a blessing and a curse.
