Gut Job Weekend

Photo of the half bath during our home inspection
before finalizing the puchase. Notice the tiny counted
cross-stitch on the wall and the overall beige palor.

How do YOU start a new year? Starting Friday, we gutted the half bath and laundry room.

To the right is a photo of this area of the house when we were going through the inspection process. Other than moving in, replacing the previous owner's washer/dryer with our own, and putting a much larger picture in the spot of the counted cross stitch on the wall, the bathroom has basically looked the same.

Notice the fantastic counter extension over the toilet. If you're wondering "why," the obvious answer is that, in the late 90's, it was positively unacceptable to place your Kleenex box on the back of the actual toilet.

The wall-to-wall mirror was an added bonus.

Eric moved out the washer and dryer, then worked on removing the cabinet and counter top. The toilet came out next, and then we made the decision to take down the mirror. We had a small thought that we could take it down, cut it down, and frame it to be more realistic for the size of the bathroom.

Ha.

The contractors not only used the sticky foam tape stuff, but stuck large, thick spots of liquid nails along the center line of this monstrosity. There was no easy take down of this thing. I'm lucky Eric didn't put a hammer through the mirror and the rest of the wall.

But good thing we don't believe in superstition, otherwise we'd certainly have seven years of bad luck.

After it was all out, I decided that we just couldn't live with beige walls when I had perfectly good paint in the garage. I more or less grabbed what we had the most of, washed down the walls and went to work. Two coats. Then, Eric got to work on the floors, putting in "luxury vinyl tile." It isn't ceramic, but it's quick and looks fine. You can even grout it, which I did after Eric got the tile down (and that's a decent sized job, which he did admirably!).  Add a replacement light fixture, mirror and shelves for the walls.

Toilet back. New sink and cabinet - thank you, Home Depot Black Friday deals. I would have shopped ReStore but you just don't get that kind of thing there... I did, however, get the paint for the bathroom there, along with a sweet light fixture to replace the brass-and-glass monstrosity in our upstairs hallway, but we aren't talking about the fact that I can now do lighting by myself now...

Anyway, happy new year. Welcome to our totally redone bathroom.