Master Bath: Before and After

The shower glass and mirror have been installed.  Fini!  This remodel made a huge difference and our bathroom has gone from meh to wow.  I guess maybe the shower leak was a good thing after all.   Without the leak, it would have been years (if ever) before we did this remodel.

First, before and after shots of the entire bathroom.  We started with the toilet to the right, by the window, and the shower to the left.  We flipped their locations and doubled the size of the shower -- borrowing space from the reeeeeealy long vanity.  Now we have a larger shower and a smaller counter - but the bathroom feels like it doubled in size.

The shower went from minuscule to huge.

And we don't even miss the long vanity and counter space.  I love the wall size mirror, the trough sink, and the linen storage on the opposite side (where there had been another sink).

Bathroom Update

The end is in sight!  I can hardly stand it.  Last week a couple guys came and took away the extra slabs of granite that have been sitting in the garage since we bought the house.  They came back the next day and installed the counter tops.

Monday, the walls got another coat of paint and the towel racks were hung.  The medicine cabinets were also installed.

Today, the plumber came and installed the toilet, the shower fixture and the sink faucets.

We have a wide trough sink with two faucets.

This morning I moved my toothpaste into the medicine cabinet.  Brett told me to stop moving into the new bathroom.  He wants to put on another coat of paint (in his favorite brand; he doesn't love the paint used by the contractor) and then he needs to put sealant on the tile.

The mirror, shower glass and window are on order so it will be a few more weeks before we are truly finished.

Random Friday

1.  The master bath is coming along.  The tile guy is meticulous.  He shows up after breakfast and works steadily all day.  We're okay with the tile taking awhile to complete because it looks gorgeous.  When we picked the tile, paint and vanity colors, I crossed my fingers that they would all work together like I imagined.  They do.

The shower tile on the walls looks beautiful in a vintage sort of way.  The shower floor is a mix of pebbles in shades of grey, bone and bird's egg blue.

The floor tile looks like old barn wood.  Perfect.

And the shaker white vanity looks bright and cheerful against the grey walls.

2.  On other fronts, we continue to have warm dry weather.  You wouldn't know it from the state of Jackson's coat and his trail boots.  He must spend all his time in the mud by the pond in his pasture.

3.  My daffodils are blooming, bringing bright yellow patches of happiness to the front lawn.  I picked myself a bouquet when I got home from work.

4.  The longer days are welcome.  I'm counting down the days until the time changes.  As it is, I was able to help Brett with the evening chores today after work.

5.  Lastly, we continue to battle ticks.  Flash and Mufasa, in particular, are tick magnets.  Brett found two on Mufasa tonight.  I spent some time with Google and learned that ticks are particularly numerous in wooded areas; they lurk in the tree bark, the leaves carpeting the ground, and the downed wood.  The arrive courtesy of the deer -- but also the other critters looking for acorns to eat and trees to climb.  The boys pasture is heavily wooded with oak and pine.  We are going to try Equi-Spot -- the stuff you squirt on particular spots every few weeks, similar to what I put between Kersey's shoulder blades once a month.  The comments I read said it works well for ticks, not so great for flies.  If it works for the ticks, I'll be happy.

Fix One Thing...

...find ten more.  With an older house, that's how it feels.  Particularly with an older house with crummy construction.

When we were in escrow and the pre-purchase inspection was done, mold was discovered growing in the linen closet that sits on the other side of the wall from the master bath shower.  Plumbers ripped out the dry wall at the back of the linen closet and checked the pipes.  No leaks were found so we believed the leak to be ancient history.  The mold was treated/eliminated and the hole sealed up.

We moved in and all was well.  One night Brett was upstairs taking a shower while I made dinner.  Water began seeping, then plopping, and soon a rapid splat splat drip was coming out of the ceiling and landing on my counter.  I ran to the base of the stairs and shouted up to Brett.  He couldn't hear me, of course, but finished his shower and turned off the water.  The dripping immediately stopped.  For a week, it didn't happen again.  Then it began to be an intermittent problem and I kept a big metal mixing bowl sitting on a towel spread on my counter top.  Another plumber came out but he and Brett could not get the shower to leak.  They filled the pan with water.  Brett put on his swim suit and sloshed around.  Nothing.  So, we stopped using the shower and waited to gather enough money to replace the shower.  Thanks to a generous gift from my dad at Christmas, we are able to not only replace the shower but remodel the entire bathroom.

It isn't a large bathroom and while we didn't like the flooring or countertop much, it was bearable.

Brett couldn't turn bend over to wash his toes without hitting his head on the side of the shower, so we are expanding it from it's matchbox size to something more reasonable.

Today demolition began.  The bathroom looked like this when I got home tonight.

They were taking out the sink while Brett ate his breakfast.  He noticed a puddle of water on the floor next to the kitchen table.  They don't think that there was another leak there -- just a plugged up pipe that broke loose when they knocked it out.  They also noticed daylight in the hole they cut where the sink pipes go into the wall..  The siding is gaping, leaving a nice hole for water and critters.  Brett looked around outside and is convinced there are more holes.

They also found a 3x5 glamour shot of a blond woman, smiling coyly, in the wall.  Brett took the picture over to Marv's house and he identified her as one of the previous owners -- the one who built the barn.  He said she didn't look glamorous while she lived here -- she was running a horse breeding ranch.

And, they think they found the source of the shower leak.  It wasn't in the shower pan as suspected, nor was it in the drain pipe.  There was a crimp in the pipe waaaaay up at the top of the shower.  Water must have been seeping out there, running down the pipe onto the subfloor, and then spilling out into the kitchen.

So, once the bathroom is done, we can add siding to the list of things that need to be replaced.