After this past month, I will never look at an older home, specifically the bathrooms, in the same way again! A few events have opened my eyes to what is really probably behind the walls in everyone’s home… if they have indoor plumbing and the house is more than a few years old!
Well, we have decided to remodel our bathrooms. We didn’t exactly decide, actually. It was decided for us. There was a minor crack in the downstairs toilet after guests had come for Christmas – nothing visible, but the water wouldn’t refill after flushing so we knew there had to be a leak – so we removed the toilet. Thought we’d just replace it with with a new toilet and postpone remodel plans. However the flooring was discoloring and looked ugly and we knew that bathroom had to be redone. It was a small bathroom. Then we found out Sergio, a skilled craftsman and mason who has done lots of work building rock retaining walls in our yard, was available, and he also specializes in tile. We looked under the flooring and realized we really should not postpone this any longer! And it’s a good thing, because we discovered water had been leaking from the other bathroom directly above it, and oops! Water leakage in a house is never good.
In looking online for decorating ideas, I’ve seen a couple of blogs. so I decided to start one about our adventures in bathrooming. I will never be able to keep up with the couple who is remodeling their entire home at the same time as having a baby AND keeping up a blog. But they have inspired me to log our own home remodeling experiences.
We knew we wanted a retro or vintage bathroom look. I say like the bathrooms from historic mountain lodges and Daniel says like the bathrooms we’ve seen in Europe. But they are similar. Lots of tile, halfway up the walls, on the floor, and around the sinks. Black and white seems traditional, although I wasn’t brave enough for such start contrast in the little bathroom downstairs. We chose a soft gray and white instead. But we will probably do black and white upstairs.
Oh, did I mention that once we got into the walls, we realized we have to do the upstairs bathroom too?
So, at this point, the downstairs bathroom tiling is done (beautiful!) and we are in the process of moving everything downstairs so we can live downstairs for the next few weeks. Daniel finally went through a closet that has been in limbo for almost 20 years. He’s just been wearing the clothes on top of the shelves and had forgotten about all those underneath. We donated half his things to Goodwill. There were all those shirts he had received as gifts but never quite fit right and never worn, as well as the shirts he loved best in the 1980s!
Here is amazing Sergio, and the finished tile work. Next, to paint the ceilings and walls, then set the toilet and sink.
