I'm goin' back...to 2010 when I totally(ish) redid my bathroom with my bare hands.
The story goes that John and I started renting this fantastic little California bungalow in an amazing neighborhood. Just the two of us and a basset hound. We rented for about seven years and then started dropping hints that we wanted to buy it. So we bought a 783 sqft bungalow in LA County. And as soon as all the paperwork was signed, I started tearing that bathroom apart. It's the only bathroom! (Unless you count the random working toilet in the basement).
The first thing I did was rip out the floor. That heinous vinyl flooring was the bane of my existence. Always looked dirty and smelled!
I peeled back the layers and this is what I saw! It looked suspiciously like the original hex tile floor! Free floor! Well, sort of...
There were
five layers of linoleum and vinyl in the bathroom. FIVE! And the one that touched the original floor was glued or tarred or something. I called my neighbor over, she's an old house expert, and she informed me lacquer thinner will take that nastiness right up.
I started to wash that gunk right off of my floor. I think the slight buzz helped.
Once the floor was done, the evil cabinet from hell had to go. It was made of particle board which is the stupidest product to make a bath cabinet out of. It absorbed water that spilled on the floor like a sponge! And it smelled. Once the cabinet was gone, we had to reconfigure the plumbing for the new pedestal sink. It took almost a week to retrofit all the pipes and such.
Then it took another few days for me to drywall and sand and paint.
We also installed the baseboard, which I wanted to be simple pine boards. I loved the gray with the pine and the vintage floor!
When I took up the floor, I discovered that the new-ish tub that was installed was a touch thinner than the original. There was a 1/4" gap where the tile ended and the tub edge began. A 1/4" space I could look into and see the basement. It was super creepy. Like I was floating on a slab of cement.
I purchased some rounded tiles and installed them along the seam.
We did not put in a new tub (sad face) and we did not re-tile the shower (sadder face) and we still have the crazy jalousie window (angry face). Mostly because I know I'm going to discover some hot mess behind the walls and it will take weeks to refinish it. And weeks without a shower are not weeks I want to spend with 3 stinky boys. I need to wait until my mom visits and gets a hotel room. Free babysitting plus shower!
Here's the finished bathroom. Please forgive the photography, it's an east facing room and nearly impossible to photograph!
And here's a photo of the creative storage solutions for crazy people like me who wanted a pretty sink instead of a boxy toilet paper holder with a sink on top.
The bottom right corner of the photo is the door jamb. That is how small the bathroom is. 5' x 7'. Used by me and three boys.
It was a super low budget renovation. Maybe $300? Sink, faucet, baseboards, escutcheons, tiles, paint...mostly elbow grease. Which I should totally start charging people for.
