We've lived in our house for 8 years now. I believe on the first day we lived there, we had plumbing issues. Then, within a month or so, all the pretty ceramic tiles in our kitchen and this bathroom started cracking. As it turns out, the people who lived in the house before us were terrible at home improvement. And they didn't know that you should put some sort of padding down under flooring. We were not happy. But we went with it, fixed the plumbing problems as they occurred, and started just watching our step so we wouldn't step on a crack.
But we noticed that there was a leak into our garage coming from the bathroom recently and we could no longer ignore the issues we were having. Christopher thought he would try to re-seal the toilet and caulk the tub and see if that worked. But naturally, we were so sick of the bathroom situation. I hated stepping out of the shower onto cracked ceramic tiles. So we went on a trip to Menard's and as usually happens, ended up with more than we intended to purchase. We decided to get a whole new toilet, new flooring of course, and what better time to paint than when the bathroom was going to be torn up?
While looking at paint colors I was considering the normal boring neutrals. But then I saw this picture of a bathroom with blue paint and just started smiling. So I knew that had to be the bathroom color. I've never made a paint decision so quickly in my life.
So we had about 5 days without a main bathroom. Thank God for the other toilets in the house and the fact that I have a gym membership. I did not enjoy showering at the gym but I am so glad I had the option! And on the 5th day, which coincided with the kids' last day of school, the new bathroom emerged.
Here are some pictures of the process. The bathroom was in pretty bad shape before and I didn't think to snap a before picture. I mean, most people don't have a lot of pictures of their bathrooms, do they?
First, this is just a picture of the tiny space we were dealing with. The step stool is where the toilet normally is. At this point, the new floor had been installed already. Ideally I would have painted before the new floor went in, but nothing is ever ideal in this life.
The tub was a wonderful space to store various bottles of cleaning solutions, as well as a perfectly dangerous spot to prop a step stool in. There were several times during the painting that I thought I was going to kill myself and I'd end up being some internet joke. But alas, I survived.
Here is the wall where I first started painting.
My big viral-worthy hack of the job: Placing gallon bags over the light fixtures so I wouldn't get paint on them. Ideally we would have taken the fixtures down but again, nothing is ideal. I used a lot of tape all around the trim, and it worked out alright. It was hard to get the paint brush behind the lights, and I did end up with a fair amount of paint on the bags so I was glad I had them.
Oh and did I mention I just used a brush for the entire paint job? In this small space, I didn't see any other options even though a roller makes painting go so much faster. That made for a long job for such a tiny room.
And yada, yada, yada, the final product! I invested in a new shower curtain (from Target) but in trying to keep things frugal I re-used the curtain rod (which needed some major cleaning-yuck!) and hangers. I SO wanted to buy new towels and a bath mat, but they just weren't necessary for now. With three kids and 5 indoor pets (one of whom, a cat, was given a bath in this very tub yesterday morning thanks to my oldest daughter for no good reason), I'm just sick of buying new things and having them ruined within minutes. So maybe we'll get new towels once the youngest is off to college. I did purchase some new wash rags, and arranged them in a pretty pattern.
Well that's it! Off to ponder the next transformation.
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