Wednesday, August 28, 2013

The Bathroom Project

We built our house 27 years ago. The bathroom has pretty much looked like this the entire time:


It's been painted, of course, and once I had wallpaper on the walls, but the flooring had been down all of that time.


They were sticky tiles that we put down ourselves, because we built our house hands-on and did almost all of the work. After all of these years, the tiles of course had lost their sheen and were coming up. They also had ground-in dirt. They weren't made to last nearly 30 years, but they held up remarkably well.


All of the hardware in the bathroom, indeed in all of the house, was antique brass.


When I had surgery earlier this summer, we discovered (a) I had a difficult time getting in and out of the bath tub until I healed up a bit, because I am short (and older), and (b) the tub had cracked. My husband put a patch on the crack, which you can see in the left-hand part of the photo, but it didn't hold.



The tile really did look this bad.

It was time for a fix-up, don't you think?

 
The only way to replace the leaking bathtub was to tear it out. A new tub came in three parts and we were concerned about mold in the cracks.
 
 
So we decided to build a walk-in shower.
 

It has a corner seat. This photo is the closest to what the tile actually looks like, it is whitish-gray but for some reason it keeps showing up brown in my pictures.

 
Antique brass is no longer the "in" thing, so we went with oil-rubbed bronze fixtures.

 

We hired someone to do all of this. The tile man works a second job and it took 3.5 weeks but he wasn't here all of that time, of course. And no the flooring is not this brown!

 
But I am happy to say it is done now. And yes, we added grab bars so we could get in and out as we age. We are planning on being in this house until the caretaker comes and takes us away.
 

8 comments:

  1. wow it looks great anita! i love that the two of you built it, i mean, really built it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh wow! Nothing better than a bathroom remodel. Besides the kitchen it's always a used and abused room and water is hard on things. Bet you are loving this, Anita! Have you hung any of your own artwork on the walls? Send me a photo you took that you really like and I can print in an 8x10 for you. Would look awesome! Congrats on this gorgeous new room!! xox

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh what fun....well, not the work part, but the finished part. We remodeled a bathroom a couple years ago and it makes such a big difference.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It's fun to update once in a while, isn't it? Especially when the space is past due. Well done!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Love your bathroom redo! You were smart to remodel with the future in mind.

    ReplyDelete
  6. A new bathroom is a wonderful thing. You made some great choices.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Lovely tile work in the shower. I want a new bathroom floor sooooo bad. Thanks for sharing :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. I can tell you from experience that remodeling to make it easier to get in and out of the bath is worth every penny. The grab bar helps prevent accidents, which can happen to anyone, regardless of their age. The built in seat also makes it much easier to shave your legs in the shower.

    Essie Reed @ Valley Home Improvement

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for dropping by! I appreciate comments and love to hear from others. I appreciate your time and responses.