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! 

Bathroom Remodel Part 9: Concrete Vanity

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

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. 

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?

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.

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. 

Bathroom Remodel Part 5: Shower Tile

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

I've never actually looked forward to tiling (because, for the most part, it sucks), but this shower was an exception. Once we finished this tiling job, the world would be our oyster.

I did the tile layout in Sketchup and then transferred it to paper, where my OCD took over and I proceeded to plan out the cut list for every tile. Turns out it really paid off because even though I had ordered about 10% extra tile, it ended up not being enough with that many cuts! Luckily the store I got it from still had some extras, so we were covered.

TIP: Always buy at least 20% overage for any materials, and if your tile has a lot of cuts, make it 25%-30% to account for cuts-gone-wrong (chips, breaks). It may seem like a waste of money, but trust me when I say it is worth the peace of mind. 

Figuring out how to cut this tile was tricky. It came in 60x60cm (approximately 24" x 24") squares, so each square could be cut into four 15x60cm tiles. Initially we didn't want to risk our limited number of tiles on the score-and-snap cutter because of how poorly it cut the floor tiles. Unfortunately when we turned to our wet saw to make the cuts, it caused an unacceptable amount of chipping on the finish.

We tried everything to reduce the chipping, including turning the tile upside down, taping the cut line, and replacing the blade. None of it worked and we were pretty discouraged for a few hours while we tried to decide if we could live with that many chippy edges in the shower or if we should just buy new tile.

Eventually I decided to give the ol' score-n-snap cutter a try. What did we have to lose right? Well, it turns out that for this particular tile, the score-n-snap was an almost perfect match. It gave us clean cuts 80% of the time with no chipping of the finish! It did occasionally take off a corner, but we saved those pieces for the shorter cuts. The cut edges were a bit sharp, so we used a stone block to smooth it out. It worked amazingly well compared to the wet saw.

TIP: When using a score-and-snap cutter, be sure to score ONCE, firmly and cleanly and from edge to edge. When pressing the tile to break it, set the press at the top of the tile and apply firm pressure. 

Bathroom Remodel Part 4: Shower Tile Prep

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

With our floor tile in, it was time to focus on the daunting task of doing up the shower walls. Let me just preface this post by saying that if there was ever a time to hire out a job, this would be it. There is just SO MUCH engineering that goes into this tiny little corner of the room that it's impossible to learn every detail as a first-time-bathroom-remodeler. And it's not just that the details are numerous; it's that they're all important too! Omitting any of them could result in disaster (in the form of leakage, rot and mold). For this reason, I'm going to try to include as many tips (in blue) and nuggets of information in this post for any of you out there trying to find advice. Disclaimer: I am NOT a professional, so if you want a professional's expert advice, consult a professional. I repeat, I am not a professional.

The first thing we had to do was build out the underlying structure to give the cement board a solid and immovable foundation. We added 2x4s in between the existing studs (and probably went overboard) for the Hardibacker to attach to. Here you can see my niche structure with a few of the added 2x4s. You'll also notice the Hardibacker attached to the right. That was a mistake. I'll explain later.

I rerouted the wiring for a guest-bedroom outlet to go around the new niche. Back in the day, electricians liked to wire things pretty tight, which meant I had no extra slack to work with. I had to feed new wire in, which required me to explore our attic for the first time! It was kind of exciting, but mostly hot, cramped, dark and scary. Also, I think I left some needle-nose pliers up there on accident.

So back to the Hardibacker cement board. Hanging this stuff was quite the ordeal for several reasons. The first was that the material is a bitch to cut; no matter what we did score-and-snap would not work, we couldn't use high-speed power tools because it kicked up ridiculous amounts of cancer-dust (and dulled the blades), and it melted most of our jigsaw blades.

After destroying many tools to cut up the biggest boards on the back wall, I thought, "there has GOT to be a better way". I don't know why we didn't look sooner, but I found this video that changed our lives. 

Bathroom Remodel Part 3: Material Selection and Tiling

Part 1: Demolition
Part 2: Plumbing

We're still putzing along with our little bathroom renovation, moving at the speed of almost-frozen molasses. For this post, I'm going to take you back in time (November) to where we installed the tile flooring, which has surprisingly been the easiest part of this whole adventure thus far (but certainly not without it's own set of issues).

At this point I had been in the interior design field long enough to know that I should have ALL my finishes and paint colors selected before starting on anything. I went to a local tile showroom and grabbed way too many samples (tile samples are heavy, ya'll!).

I had also designed a cast concrete vanity and shower niche, so I made some concrete samples with increasing amounts of white portland cement to figure out the color we wanted.

Ratios of concrete to portland cement from left to right: 1:0, 3:1, 1:1, 1:3

Basically what you want to do when you've got all these samples is lay them all out along with your other bathroom elements. You can see we've got a sink, a brushed nickel pipe, concrete, and a brown wood tile as our teak-wood stand-in. It may be overwhelming to see it all at once, but here's the trick: rather than trying to decide what you like best, start by eliminating the things that aren't working for you. Hopefully this gets you to a manageable place where you can start making decisions. Of course even with this method, we still debated the choices off-and-on for an hour or more. 

I'm Going For It! *Creating With the Stars 2014*

You may or may not have heard of this little reality series that exists in our blogland called "Creating With the Stars". It's a fun and quirky competition not unlike Dancing With the Stars, except with less dancing in sparkly costumes and more spray paint and power tools.

The 12 contestants are initially chosen based on a single project entry from their 2013 or 2014 repertoire. From there, they are paired off with 12 "celebrity" bloggers who will coach them through four weeks and four rounds of eliminations.

I normally pass on this sort of thing just because I'm not sure I even have enough energy to make it through one week/project (and uhhh, our bathroom is still "undergoing construction"). But one thing got my heart pounding about it this year, and that is the CELEBRITY judge....

MARTHA. My idol.

Bathroom Remodel Part 2: Plumbing Adventures

Previously on the Bathroom Remodel:

Before we could put any new walls up, we had a few plumbing adjustments to take care of. Nothing too major, which is why when we got some quotes from local plumbers (coming in between $500 to $1000), Boyfiancé decided this would be a good time for him to pick up a new skill.

The new tub is wider than the old one, so everything needed to be moved over a couple of inches. We also wanted to move that shower head up because apparently everyone in the 60's was either really short, or really enjoyed squatting to rinse their hair.

Old plumbing

Then there was the issue of the new tub plumbing, but let's put off that very painful memory until later.

One Year Housiversary!

First order of business: Cheers! Happy New Year! Gong hay fat choy!

2013 was a big year for us! We came barreling into it already under contract to buy our very first house, which we totally managed to do! It's kinda weird to think back on this night a year ago, where we sat on the floor of our new house eating burritos by the light of a couple lamps and surrounded by ant bait poison. Ah, memories.

We haven't done a whole lot in the way of renovations, but we have managed to do a few of the important ones (and yes, the ants are gone now).