Hey, Friends! Hope you all had a great weekend! I have been down with a sinus infection and an ear infection in both ears. Yes, I’m in my 30’s and apparently still getting ear infections. No fun! But, while I’ve been sick, our bathroom is quickly transforming, no thanks to me! 😉
Our bathroom remodel is officially underway! We decided that we didn’t have the time, energy, or know-how to tackle gutting and rebuilding the bathroom completely by ourselves, so we turned over a lot of it to the pros. We will be installing the toilet, light fixtures, mirror, baseboards, doing the painting, etc, but the major things like the tile and cabinets are being hired out. After years of DIYing almost everything, it feels so weird to have someone doing the work for us! Weird, but really nice and a such huge blessing. Here’s a quick refresh of my vision for the room!
Last Friday was demo day! But, before I get into what is happening in the bathroom now, I need to show you the before pictures!
Our bathroom doesn’t look horrid at first glance, especially not in photos. Pictures don’t show grime, trust me. 😉 It’s a pretty standard builder grade bathroom from the late 90’s. However, it is in much worse shape than it appears in these photos.
We were planning to remodel the bathroom next year, but we had a leak under the shower and bathtub, so we had to scramble and get it done sooner. The leak damaged the subfloor, so the only way to fix it was to completely rip out the shower and the tub. Ugh!
Of course, everything from the baseboards to the floors to the shower/tub surround was done in the same 4″ beige tile, so if we were ripping out some of it, we felt like we should go ahead and rip it all out. The tile is impossible to perfectly match and even if I could find a perfect match, there’s no way I would pay good money to have brand new tile that looks straight out of the 90’s.
And, in order to rip all that tile out, we needed to get rid of the vanity and toilet, too. Oh darn. 😉
The vanity was not in good shape. The vaneer was starting to lift and the doors have had to be repaired multiple times because they kept coming off the hinges. The cultered marble top was really yellowed and looked dirty all the time. Gross. The lights above the vanity were completely rusted out and needed to go before they fell right out of the wall. 
The shower was the worst spot in the bathroom. The grout was missing in numerous places, the tiles on the floor were cracked and had been patched up at some point, and the remaining grout toward the bottom was super nasty and stained.
And the absolute grossest thing? I can’t believe I’m about to write this for all the world to see, but the stupid toilet would randomly spit when flushing, even with the lid down. We even replaced the parts in the back of the toilet to try to get it to stop, but no luck. So, before we could walk into the toilet room, we had to check the floors and sanitize any spots where the toilet had sprayed. GRRRRR. I can’t even begin to describe how angering it was!
When we moved in, we simply had a plantation shutter installed for privacyy and then just lived with the bathroom as is. I never even got around to decorating it because I simply did not enjoy being in there. Imagine how happy I was to see this sight Friday evening! Bye, Felicia!
See where the floor is gone? All of that part of the subfloor was damaged and had to be ripped out.
When we first noticed the leak, we submitted a claim to our insurance company, Allstate. They came out, hemmed and hawed and couldn’t decide whether or not it would be covered. They said it was a gray area in our policy. They had us hire a plumber on our own dime to come out and officially diagnose the source of the leak. In order to do that, the plumber had to cut a hole in our living room ceiling so he could see the flooring and pipes under the tub.
After all that, Allstate denied our claim, leaving us with an unneccsary plumber bill, a hole in our ceiling that we now have to patch, and an entire living room ceiling that needs to be repainted. They left us scrambling with our budget trying to figure out how to fix the bathroom. I was SO angry. We have been with them for years and years and have never submitted a single claim, and then they denied us when we really needed them. Needless to say, we are on the market for a new insurance company. Any suggestions?
Also, THIS is exactly why you should have an emergency fund. Always always always have an emergency fund! We are trying to dip into ours as little as possible, but knowing it’s there is a huge relief. We discovered the leak in January and stopped using that shower right away. Between halting any bathroom reno talks while I recovered from surgery, then all the insurance hoopla, then having to get multiple quotes for the bathroom remodel, and lots of travel, this whole thing has dragged on for 7 months now.
As aggravating as that is, it bought us time to tighten up on our budget and save up more money to put toward the new bathroom. We already had been saving for the bathroom, but weren’t planning to do it until next year. I hate talking money in public, because it’s a very private matter, but I know that as a blog reader myself, I am sometimes wondering how people pay for all these things! We are adament about not doing any projects without having the money to pay for it out of pocket, so sometimes that looks like not using your master bathroom shower for 7 months while you save. I’m especially grateful we have more than one bathroom in this house so we were able to do that!
Moral of the story, have an emergency fund, be patient and sacrifice to save money and stay debt free, and go with a better insurance company. 😉
So, that’s where we’re at! Gross bathroom is gone and new bathroom is going in! Our tile installer is AMAZING and has been making so much progress! I truly can’t believe how much he’s gotten done already! It would have taken us weeks to do what he’s done in just a couple days. I’ll update you all again soon!
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