If you looked at the 2004 pictures and saw the picture of our main-floor bathroom, surely it burned an unforgettable and painful image in your brain. It truly was ugly.
Finally, over nearly a two month period of time and after some issues I won't go into quite yet, we now have a nice new bathroom.
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This is what it looked like when we moved in. The sink looked like chocolate-marble ice-cream. The floor was a mix of colors that didn't match the sink, and the walls were striped with wallpaper that didn't match anything. Yuck! |
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Nearly a year after we moved in, it
was finally time to remodel the bathroom. Deciding on the
colors was difficult, but anything would have been better than
what was in there! Here is a close-up of what the tile looked like (I'd just removed the toilet.) |
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When we started stripping off the striped wallpaper, we found that below it was more neutral wallpaper of small flowers. Below that was a God-awful print that looked like fern leaves, but mainly yellow and gold. (I guess things could have been worse than the stripes after all!) |
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Removing the tile was laborious...and
noisy. If you look closely, you can see I had to wear ear
plugs. No comments about the thinning hair spot please. ;-) |
| After removing the tile,
I found that there was a 1-1/2 inch thick "mud" (cement) bed
underneath, and for the new tile, which was thicker than the old, to
not be up too high at the door, that all had to be removed and
replaced with a more modern under-flooring. I opted to not do
this myself, even though I had hoped to do it all.
I found a tile installer that gave me a good price, was very friendly and who showed up promptly on the day he came to give me an estimate. He was from A-1 Tile in Stone Mountain, GA. On the day he was to do the work, however, he never showed up. I wasted a vacation day. He then failed to come the next day. I never even heard from him either day. After the weekend, we spoke and re-scheduled for the following week. He never showed up again....no call...didn't return my calls. I guess he didn't want the job after all. Talk about unprofessional though! The end result was having to pay more and go through a hassle to get Home Depot to install the tile (mainly a hassle because I bought the tile at Home Depot Expo, not Home Depot, and there was some confusion about the installation. (Expo would have cost even more and was backed up so they wouldn't have gotten it done in the needed timeframe.) Eventually everything got worked out with Home Depot and the "mud" was removed and the new tile was laid. Now that I've seen it done, I can probably do the tile myself in the next bathroom we do. |
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Here you can see the new marble tile. The color is "Cappuccino Beige". What an improvement! |
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We went with a Silestone vanity top
(the color is "Ivory Coast"), and just repainted the existing vanity
below. We actually got the vanity top, including the attached
Kholer sink on-line ( We need to get a better matching shower curtain - that's one we had already. |
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All of the fixtures are brushed
nickel. The towel and TP holders match the faucet (Price
Pfiester), but the others are "close enough" and from other
manufacturers. The wall color is Behr's "Spring Hill". (The tile installer liked the wall color so much he called back the next day to get the color from me so he could use it in his house.) |
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This one is with the lights off so you can see the light fixture and the full mirror. I'm surprised the picture came out so good because I took it in total darkness. The mirror is from Quoizel (ordered on-line from LampsPlus.com). (It was special order locally for the same price, and would have taken longer and been non-returnable, so the on-line ordering worked out best again. I love the internet! |
