Bathroom Overhaul

Tracy Andersen
Oct 29, 2017
3 min read

When we bought our house, I knew we would be re-doing the 90's themed ceramic tile bathrooms. Our home is a 4 bed 2 bath, and we literally don't use our Master bathroom because it is designed so horribly. After spending a couple of winter months in our house, we quickly realized we were only using the guest bathroom because it was ugly, but it was functional at least! Now, we had just bought our house and as many of you know, funds are usually tight. Our mortgage had gone up nearly $1,000.00/month for our new house and we were terrified of making the payments until things settled down and we realized we were good! (haha). When I had stressed to Joel about doing the guest bathroom, he kept pushing back saying that we just couldn't afford to make it work. As I always do, I created a 3D rendering using Google Sketchup to show him the difference it could be. Whenever I give him a physical presentation he usually is on board, but this time I even went through the effort of sourcing all the materials and fixtures and told him for $2,000.00 we could afford to do this bathroom. I think in the end we came in around $1,800.00 because we actually didn't replace the tub (MAJOR REGRET). Anyway, I finally got him board and so we decided over our Christmas break from work we would get this done (HA!).

Here is BEFORE:

We had only ever tiled our kitchen backsplash before and that house didn't have an existing backsplash to tear out so we weren't exactly sure what we were getting ourselves into... Demo took us almost a whole week, trying to figure out how to get the tiles up off the floor. Once we got the horrible vinyl shower surround down, we could see the mold behind it and we had to tear out all the drywall that was there. These days you would never use drywall in a shower, you're always going to use cement board or Schluter Kerid Board, anything rated for water. I was two months pregnant at this point and the moment we found mold, Joel wouldn't let me help with anything until he got it completely taken care of. Even one of our 2x4 studs had gotten moldy!!!

After he got the hardibacker up all around the shower, we began tiling the floor so that we could bring in the vanity and get the plumbing hooked up. As I mentioned, this was really our only functioning bathroom! Next we did the shower walls. I knew I wanted to do a feature wall of these Marakesh tiles and so I went with a very reasonable 4x4" white ceramic tile for the side walls and frame. I purchased the tiles from Arizona Tile (https://arizonatile.com/en/products/decos-listelles/marrakesh). They come with 25 pieces to a box and they are completely random. My first project was to separate all of the tiles into piles to figure out which patterns I received.

Once I figured out what I had, I was able to start laying out rows and handing them to Joel to start installing. Before each row, I would lay out a row on the floor and just make sure I wasn't repeating anything anywhere near each other. I also picked the pieces I liked the most to place in at "eye level" in the pattern.

We ended up shiplapping the entire bathroom because the texture was so awful and doing texture is a pain! So even though it cost us about $300, we decided it was definitely worth our time. Joel was able to install in a matter of a couple of hours. We did use a pressure treated exterior siding grade because it is in our bathroom. Everything in the bathroom seemed a little too monotone and a little cold since it was all grey and white so behind the mirrors we used a laminate flooring that looks like a rustic wood, just to give it some life!

We picked up these two mirrors at Home Goods for about $130 all together. The lights fixtures are from Lowe's (https://www.lowes.com/pd/allen-roth-Kenross-3-Light-8-6-in-Brushed-nickel-Cage-Vanity-Light-Bar/4764562?cm_mmc=SCE_PLA-_-FashionFixtures-_-VanityLighting-_-4764562:allen_+_roth&CAWELAID=&kpid=4764562&CAGPSPN=pla&store_code=1871&k_clickID=9c3e9312-a94c-45db-bce3-9b2b2a2bfb56&gclid=CjwKCAjw-NXPBRB4EiwAVNRLKmHRWag2L4nxl5sI9XUPxMr4PlXSa8wNf8k8IngthaYoHH8dBmxqxhoCcI8QAvD_BwE). Faucets and hardware are also from Lowe's. Tiles are all from Lowe's or Home Depot, except for my decorative ones. We used rubber molding from http://www.flexiblemillwork.com/ to go around the window. They have this really cool calculator where you give them a couple of measurements and they help you decide what pieces to order.

Here is the final product!