Bathroom reveal...4 months later

I'm really awful about promising to write posts and then literally never doing it. Okay well not literally never, but it takes me forever. So today I'm finally talking about our almost-6-month-old bathroom renovation that I talked about in this post. Yay!

{You will certainly notice throughout this post that I'm not a super good documenter of renovations. Sometimes I get on a good kick, and then I'll miss a vital step and that's just how I roll. So bear with me!}

Ahem.
This is the best "before" photo I could find, although please imagine that when we moved in, that top layer of laminate went all the way to the wall like normal flooring does (this was part way through demo, obviously).

I'd been dying to redo the floor in the bathroom practically since we moved in, because I felt like it (and the kitchen floor, oh the kitchen floor is so bad) just did not match the rest of our beautiful hardwood. The previous owner ripped out a bunch of green shag carpet right before relisting the house (and we bought it 3 days after it went for sale) and went down to the original hardwood and it's lovely. Aaaand then you'd walk in the bathroom and see this. It just didn't match!

I finally convinced David to have his parents come up and help us redo the floor.
We spent a long time looking at tile before deciding on this porcelain tile from Lowe's. I originally wanted something old-timey to match the era of the house, a hexagon tile like this one, but after weighing the costs and a lot of debate, we compromised on the wood-floor-like-tile (but it's not as dramatic as most are) -- mostly so we can eventually do the kitchen in the same tile without it seeming weird.

Demo took awhile - there were two layers of linoleum + subfloor, as evidenced in this photo which was layer #3 of 3 that we took up. Under this was a beautiful but in-terrible-shape hardwood to match the rest of the house. No surprise there, but wood floor and a bathroom do not mix, and it was pretty bad.

You can see in this pic in the back right corner how black and almost-disintegrated it was. The stuff near the door was in pretty good shape, but it was obvious why they linoleumed (is that a verb?) over it.

We lived for a few weeks with the above situation, being very careful to not let Kate anywhere near the bathroom because of splinters/big gaping hole in the wall/staples in the floor, and then got to work!

(Also pretty much anytime I say "we" in this process I mean David. I helped a little bit but he and his dad did 99% of the actual labor, while I provided refreshments and kept the toddler busy with his mom and sister.)

We bought cement board and mortar, David cut out pieces, and plopped it down. (Mind you, all this needed to be done in about one day because our house has only one bathroom. So we they booked it and got a lot done in a very short amount of time.)

Next step was laying out the tile, and then cutting the irregular pieces, one of those steps I didn't realize the importance of until we'd done it -- because your cuts and everything have to be exactly right, and don't forget the spacers for grout because you will regret it!

This is the part where I say I don't have any photos of David actually putting the mortar down and laying the tile back in, because...I don't know why. But I don't. Oops!

Let it dry the correct amount of time, and then grout! We went with a darker gray grout because we knew it was a hopeless dream trying to keep white or lighter grout clean with a kiddo and a dog and lots of traffic in one bathroom.

I tried to prevent Kate from drowning one of her baby dolls in the new toilet we bought:

I obviously failed.

After the floor was all installed and dried, we replaced the toilet and the vanity.  This listing was the closest I could find to what we bought for the vanity, although I think ours was a now-discontinued version because we spent way less than what they're asking for it now.

If you really need to know what toilet we bought, I can look it up for you...but I'm not going to right now because I doubt anyone really cards. It's a toilet! It flushes! The end.

So! All finished (mostly anyway)!

The new view when you walk in the bathroom just makes me happy-sigh. It feels like a whole new house with a fresh bathroom - I'm no longer ashamed of our wonky toilet that always left a little behind or the weird stains on the ancient linoleum.

Plus I am super duper happy with the tile we chose. It hides dirt great, it always looks clean (even if it's not) and it's cool to the touch -- I'm going to love it in the summer.

Look! Mucho storage! An actual ledge to put a toothbrush/straightener on! It's glorious, I tell you.

Top drawer of the vanity is fake (pipes etc. have to have a place to go, I guess) but the second drawer is full of makeup, hairties for Kate, pregnancy tests, tweezers, a hairbrush -- you name it. I went crazy with all the extra space. Plus now there's a spot to hold Kate's soaps and shampoo underneath!

We installed these shelves on the last round of reno, at the same time as doing the blue-pop ceiling. I finally got around to getting some baskets & lining the inside with some fabric to hide the craziness inside of them.

Seriously. Look at how much more room there is. 

We still have some odds-and-ends to finish up, including:
-paint the medicine cabinet some color (probably white, unless someone has a good idea? there are WAY too many mixing browns in this tiny room and this one has to go)
-get a new shower rod (we spray-painted the one that came with the house brown, and it's slowly disintegrating)
-move the hand towel hook up or find a replacement
-get a new toilet paper ring
-put the backsplash on the vanity
-do some general caulking and spot-filling
-get a new vanity light

But for the most part it's done, and it feels amazing.

(Mirrors on the wall from Target.)

A shot from the shower side towards the door.

Welp, that's about it! Congrats if you made it through this massive post. :)

Murph's barking in the backyard (more puppy pics coming soon, Amy, I promise!) and Kate is napping so I'm going to go watch another episode of House of Cards and try to finish a spring wreath for the front door. Have a happy St. Patrick's Day!
HG