Hi Friends,

You know how kitchens and bathrooms sell houses? Our house sat on the market for over 100 days before we put an offer in! We were the only ones lining up to buy our house. Why? Because the kitchen and bathrooms were Terrible. Yes, capital “T”! Because my husband is a plumber, we don’t shy away from a good plumbing project. We gave our powder bath an easy makeover last year so I thought we could do the same thing to our basement bath! Here are some (very grainy – sorry!) before pictures.

The bathroom was very 90’s. Standard builder grade oak vanity with biscuit colored solid surface countertop, cheap brushed nickel finish faucet, round front toilet, horrendous vinyl floor. Do I need to continue?

Originally my thought had been paint the vanity and vanity top, get some new floors, paint and faucet and we are home free! Yeah, that didn’t happen. The vanity top painting went very wrong. You can’t tell from this picture but the finish was awful! Bubbles and drips all over the place even though I followed those directions to a T.  Time for the vanity to go!

Once the vanity was out, we realized how badly the tub surround tile needed to also be replaced. The tile was old, cracking down the middle of the back wall (thank you to whoever didn’t tape and joint compound the backer boards together) and had the most awful rusty grab bar attached and anchored into the tile backer. After tearing all that out and replacing a couple of the walls with new cement board, we were ready to start work!

Here is our “blank slate”. Time to add fresh new finishes. I painted the top half of the wall a pretty gray color and we are planning on white board and batten for the lower half.

This beautiful wood look porcelain tile will go on the floors while the beveled white subway tile will make up the shower walls. I’m really excited for this project and ready for it to be done. After 6 weekends of work, it’ll be nice to be able to step back and enjoy our new bathroom when it’s completed! Right now I’m shopping for bath accessories and a light fixture! I’ll post more progress pics soon!

Thanks for reading,