Saturday, December 20, 2014

Bathroom Remodel Part 10: THE REVEAL

Part 1: Demolition
Part 2: Plumbing
Part 3: Material selection and Floor Tile
Part 4: Shower Tile Prep
Part 5: Shower Tile
Part 6: Walls and Caulk
Part 7: Bathtub Siding
Part 8: The Mirror
Part 9: Concrete Vanity

Here we are. It was October of 2013 when we started this bathroom remodel, and over a year later I am relieved to say it is now complete as of December, 2014. During this time Boyfiancé and I have both changed jobs, had new adventures, made new friends, acquired lots of new tools, and learned an INCREDIBLE amount of home improvement skills. Most importantly though, we've learned that the limited free time we have is FAR more valuable to us than trying to save a little money doing it all ourselves.

I'm not proud of how long it took us to complete this project, but I'll be damned if I'm not swelling with pride for both the results and our hard work.

So without further ado, I present to you our hallway bathroom.


I'm still amazed at how far we've come.

ORIGINAL DESIGN

BEFORE



















Some detail shots:





And of course the ever-present reminder to myself to be patient, not act rashly, and bring in the Boyfiancé for backup. 


Usually I do a budget breakdown for my projects, and I even had budgeted it all out at the very beginning, but because of the long timeline and my lack of diligence in updating and tracking new purchases, I'm going to have to give this my best estimate.

My budget sheet says we spent about $5500 on materials and labor (labor being the electrical work at $1100). I probably left quite a few things out including minor purchases like gloves, lint free cloths, painters tape, etc etc, so I'm going to add +10% to that number. This brings us to $6050.

Now, this doesn't include all the new tools we bought for the project, some of which were pretty big ticket items (table saw and wet saw to start). I would estimate we spent about $1500 on tools, which we can continue to use for future projects.

A lot of bloggers have written about the subject of hiring vs DIYing, and after this project, I feel compelled to throw my two cents in as well. While the cost of a full-gut bathroom remodel was relatively low for us, we paid for it in other ways: loss of free time on evenings and weekends, having to decline friends' invitations for get-togethers, shame at not being able to offer our guests their own fully-functional bathroom, not being able to host events as often as we usually do, and not allowing ourselves to tackle any other house projects until this one was finished. I think the biggest eye-opener was when we hired out the electrical work, which took our electrician four hours to complete (it probably would've taken us two or three weekends in addition to having to learn how to do it in the first place). We realized that not only does a professional get the job done faster, but they also keep things moving along. When it was just the two of us, it was easy for Boyfiancé and I to say, "We're tired, no bathroom work this weekend", which caused things to drag on for so long. If we had hired out more of the work, especially the unpleasant tasks that we procrastinated on (hanging cement board anyone?), and reserved the more enjoyable tasks for ourselves, we wouldn't be finishing this thing on the doorstep of 2015.

Basically next time we take on a renovation project and ask ourselves "What will it cost?", the term "cost" will encompass not only money, but time, energy and impact on our relationships with each other and friends.

Thank you to everyone who followed along with us on this journey. And thank you especially to our friends and family who, at times, put up with no toilet, no sink, washing hands in the kitchen, using our ghetto master bath, and for being super understanding while we stumbled around figuring this all out. We promise to have a party for you where you can use the toilet and wash your hands all in the same room :)

Cheers! 

Friday, December 19, 2014

Bathroom Remodel Part 9: Concrete Vanity

Part 1: Demolition
Part 2: Plumbing
Part 3: Material selection and Floor Tile
Part 4: Shower Tile Prep

The vanity. Ohhhhh the vanity. This thing has been in the making for over a year, though if I'm being honest, most of that time it was sitting out on our deck during the summer while we tried to ignore the feelings of shame it conjured up. I'll explain in a bit.

At this point, I'll refer you back to the original design.


As you can see, between the shelf, the towel bar, the sink/faucet inserts, and the continuous three sides, this was not going to be the most simplistic thing to create. 


Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Bathroom Remodel Part 8: The Mirror

Part 1: Demolition
Part 2: Plumbing
Part 3: Material selection and Floor Tile
Part 4: Shower Tile Prep
Part 5: Shower Tile
Part 6: Walls and Caulk
Part 7: Bathtub Siding

Of course because this project was not already super difficult and involved, we designed and fabricated a custom mirror frame complete with overhead lighting as well. Because I guess we hate life and having a life.

The mirror glass itself I got from a coworker who was doing a bathroom remodel of his own and was giving it away for free! They were almost the perfect size for our project, but unfortunately not for my car. He was kind enough to drive 50 minutes round-trip to drop them off just to get them out of his garage though, and in return I gave him a bottle of wine. Fair trade, right?



Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Bathroom Remodel Part 7: Bathtub Siding

Part 1: Demolition
Part 2: Plumbing
Part 3: Material selection and Floor Tile
Part 4: Shower Tile Prep
Part 5: Shower Tile
Part 6: Walls and Caulk

One of the major design elements of this bathroom is the Teak wood, or in our case, Afrormosia "the poor man's Teak" wood. This stuff is seriously beautiful, just wait.

Since my favorite hardwood store (Macbeath's in SF or Berkeley, if you're interested) only sells these boards at 12" widths, We decided to join two skinnier 8" pieces together to give us the required width for the side of the tub.


Monday, December 15, 2014

Bathroom Remodel Part 6: Walls and Caulk

Part 1: Demolition
Part 2: Plumbing
Part 3: Material selection and Floor Tile
Part 4: Shower Tile Prep
Part 5: Shower Tile

We had a lot of polish work to do before the shower looked complete. One thing that we had been dreading was fixing the large gap on the left side of the room. Since the niche side of the shower wall had to be shimmed out by about 5/8", it was now sticking out a lot farther than the opposite side. We thought about just finishing it with a bit of painted wood trim, but we thought it might accentuate the fact that the tile edges didn't match. Instead, we decided to add a 2nd layer of 5/8" drywall to the left side to bring the wall out to meet the tile edge the same way the opposite side did. This probably makes zero sense to you, so I'll just show the pictures now. 

This is what it looked like right after grouting (and pre-haze removal). We cut away a little too much drywall during demolition thinking we were going to extend the tile out beyond the tub edge. Plans changed.