After years of dreaming, we began pursuing this project once I was hired on last summer for a full-time teaching position. We knew we'd have a steady income stream again, so we began to casually look for a contractor. We had our living, dining, and hallway floors redone two years ago and the tile installer said that his favorite thing to do was bathroom showers, so we debated contacting him. However, we knew that we would be needing more than a shower changeover, so we thought about hiring out a subcontractor and recommending that he use the previous tile guy. This all sounded weird and controlling though, so we didn't pursue this path. We kept on casually looking, and one day on Facebook (I know, I know) I saw that a friend of mine had her pool deck redone and had used a local (to her) contractor. I clicked on his site and perused around and found that he does bathroom remodels and is very good at it. It looked right up our alley-- needing a bathroom remodel with somewhat strange ideas that we wanted to see become reality, and able to do the entire project start to finish without having to hire outside of his own company. I sent a quick message asking if they came to our area (he's about 45 minutes away) and I received a quick reply and we set up an appointment for him to come do an estimation. (On a whim a couple days later, I asked if he could also estimate the cost of redoing our deck which was rotting before our eyes, and he said yes which is how we're having both projects done simultaneously).
Basically, our bathroom consists of a garden tub plastic insert next to a poorly sealed frosted window, a plastic shower stall insert, a toilet, and a double vanity with under-sink storage and three pull-out drawers. Aaron cannot move around in the shower since it's so skinny, so we knew this was an issue. We bathe our kids in the garden tub since there's no toilet or cabinet blocking our way but this is something we'll get over when we begin bathing them in the hall bathroom with a smaller tub. Soon they'll all be taking showers anyway, so it's not a huge ordeal anyhow. The vanity is standard height, which believe it or not, is even a little short for me. My parents had "adult height" bathroom cabinets and this was what was normal for me. Then the first house Aaron and I bought had these higher height cabinets too, so we were a little surprised that the bathroom vanities in this house were so short.
Therefore, our plan became to remove the shower insert and install wooden shelves instead. Then we'd remove the bathtub insert and install a large tiled-in shower in its place. We'd keep the vanity itself, but we'll move it up four inches taller and keep our existing mirror. He did quote us a new counter top and undermount sinks, so we're doing this for a little upgrade on the vanity without replacing the entire piece. We'll keep the toilet and flooring the same for cost effectiveness and because nothing is wrong with them.
It's weird to think that after all of these years planning and dreaming of the more convenient bathroom, that it'll actually be done in less than three weeks! We went and picked out our tile yesterday for the shower. We plan to do white subway tile (3" x 6" ) with black grout. We also picked out a mosaic tile piece of gray, black, and silver (almost stainless steel looking) tiles to be an accent band around the middle of the shower wall. We chose a hexagonal slate colored textured tile to be the shower flooring. We'll order our shower faucet this week for it to arrive when the contractor needs it.
(The subway tile box:)
I cannot wait to share pictures of the "after" effect! Here are some "before" shots.
And my super impressive phone rendering of what the space might somewhat look like. :)
Until Next Time,
Much Love, Reba
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