Half-Remodeling the Half Bathroom

 

There's nothing like impending houseguest visits to expedite a remodel, and thanks to a scheduled stopover from Mr. W's best buddy from Portland, our half bath revamp got put on the fast track. We spent the last days of 2014 plastering, sanding (I'm beginning to loathe that word), painting, and prettifying the little bathroom we'd turned upside-down.

Last time I showed it on the blog, it looked like this:

The toilet looked lovely in the shower, but it was even better sitting in the hallway for about 3 weeks. Thankfully neither of us is a sleepwalker—we might have ended up with a tragic accidental peeing-into-the-hallway-toilet episode.

Prior to moving the door from the laundry area/kitchen to the hallway, the bathroom looked like this:

Not terrible but not our ideal with the 80s oak cabinetry and grimey (no matter how much I scrubbed) linoleum flooring. Even worse, when we opened things up in the new kitchen layout, you could see right into the bathroom, and I don't know about you but I just don't want to look at a toilet when I'm making stir fry or taking a fritatta out of the oven...

So we moved the door into the hallway and reconfigured the half bath layout.

All was going well until our plumber accidentally cracked a tile during the toilet installation and we didn't have any extras. (Yes, everyone has lectured us on how you should never buy tiles at Costco because you won't be able to replace them if you break 'em.) Through some miracle, even though our tile was no longer available at Costco, Mr. W tracked down a tile display at one of the stores and was able to unglue a piece from it for us to use in our bathroom. Crisis averted.

Though we wanted to make this bathroom nicer, we also wanted to save some money so we made quite a few thrifty choices. We opted to recycle the sink cabinet and upgrade it with a new front panel and doors (courtesy of Mr. W's mad woodworking skillz) and extra hardware we had left from the kitchen. Eventually, Mr. W will build a concrete countertop for it and install the more modern sink and faucet we bought.

 

We also saved money by using the extra pendant lights we had left from the kitchen and turning them into shiny, black sconces. Stay tuned for a follow-up post on how we did it.

We were planning to reuse the old mirror that was in there but both Mr. W and I accidentally cracked the corners of it on two different occasions, so we had to buy a new one. He plans to make a sleeker new frame for this one in the coming weeks.

The one big thing we have left is to re-tile the shower. After the pain of doing our other bathroom's shower, Mr. W has vowed never to do bathroom re-tiling jobs again. We'll likely hire someone to do the tile (after we demo it) when we're working on the new bathroom add-on. The plan is to go for a look like this with white tiles and dark grey grout:

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We'll also be replacing the old crank-out window in there when we have new windows installed for the addition. So although it feels like a whole new room, we're really only about halfway done. Which is just fine by me. I look forward to having the hallway plaster dust-free for a few months!!