Happy New Year everyone! The Mulls haven't really made any resolutions yet (and probably won't), but here's to hoping that we get more work done around the house in 2012 while maintaining our sanity. We are still working to complete the downstairs half bath that we started demo on in August and blogged about here. It has taken us longer than expected because we work in spurts and then take a few weeks off (small steps = part of our plan to maintain our sanity!). The last image we left you with was this:
Can I get a "yikes"? After freaking out about what we had done cleaning up the demo debris, we knew we would need to put some drywall up on the wall that had crumbled during demolition so that our new beadboard would have something to nail into and our walls would all be even. We measured the width of the existing plaster and then ran to Lowe's to get some drywall in the same width. After cutting down to size with a jigsaw to cut out the plumbing holes and a circular saw to trim the sides, Stuart screwed it into the wall and we once again had 4 walls. You can see the bottom corner of the drywall in the picture below (sorry, no pictures other than this one of the drywall portion of this project).
Up next on the list was tile installation. We ordered a 1" hexagon carrara marble mosaic tile from Amazon.com for around $9/sq ft. Since our bathroom was 20 sq feet, we ordered 21 sq feet of tile and came out just under $200 for the flooring. Neither Stuart nor I have any experience in tile installation, so we educated ourselves by talking to the floor guy at Lowe's and watching online videos. The tile we selected was held together by mesh and each sheet of tile was 1 sq ft. This was a very user friendly tile because the pieces were so small that we could snip the mesh if we needed to trim the tile around the toilet, air vent, etc as opposed to needing to have our tile cut. We did have some pieces of the tile cut to fit around the edges of the bathroom, but otherwise we didn't need to cut it at all. To get started, I laid out the tile in the space to be sure we had ordered enough and snipped tile from the mesh to leave an opening for the toilet plumbing and air vent. Based on the tile we selected, we used a mortar recommended by our Lowe's guy. I mixed the mortar and spread it one tile sheet at a time. I laid each sheet starting by the bathroom door and worked my way into the corner that houses the toilet, since that would be the most forgiving area once the toilet was reinstalled and covered much of the space underneath. After laying the tile in the mortar, we laid the marble threshold piece between the bathroom floor and hallway hardwoods.
(close up of post mortar, pre-grouted tile)
After waiting 24 hours per the instructions on the mortar, I mixed the white nonsanded grout with polymer for the tile. I am proud to say that I laid the mortar and grout all while Stuart was out of town (!!!), so I confidently say that anyone can do this with a little patience and the right supplies. Once the grout had dried for 24 hours, I sealed the floors with a sealent recommended by our Lowe's guy. I don't have a close up of the tile after it was grouted, but take the picture above and imagine the space between the tiles filled in with white grout.
Next up for the bathroom project was hanging the beadboard on all the walls. Our walls are not square, so after a lot of measuring at the top and bottom of where the beadboard would hang, we cut the beadboard to size using a circular saw (and a jigsaw for the plumbing holes). We hung each piece with finishing nails and a little nail finisher tool. Next up was measuring, cutting, and hanging the chair rail, baseboard, and shoe molding. We didn't use any fancy tool for this, just a neat piece of plastic and a saw that my dad bought for us last year that gives you the option of cutting various angles. Below are some pictures of the beadboard and trim before filling the nail holes, caulking, and painting everything high gloss white--pretty rough!
After puttying/caulking/and painting everything from the chair rail down a high gloss white, we hung the new towel bar and toilet paper holder. Then, Stuart and I watched more online clips and learned how to reinstall our toilet. I must say, I was very proud of my sweet husband for figuring this out and replacing some parts on our toilet. We decided to just reinstall our old toilet because a.) we figured that no matter what toilet we installed, it would ultimately just be a toilet and serve it's same purpose while looking similar to pretty much any new toilet and b.) we could dress it up with a new oil rubbed bronze handle and make it shine with a good Clorox scrub.
So this is where we are now. We still need to:
- install the sink (we have bought a new sink and are waiting on our new sink hardware to come in)
- install a new light fixture (our electrician is coming on Friday to install a wall switch--up until now the light has turned on/off with a little pull!)
- paint the wall above the chair railing (we are painting a light gray)
- paint the trim and medicine cabinet above the chair railing (high gloss white, what else?)
- add handtowels, artwork, etc.
We still have a lot to do, but I'd say we have come a long way from this:
To this:
