and, frankly, everyone who enters our home, we have begun renovating our bathroom. Hoorah! For those of you not familiar with the horrible mess that is that most heinous room in our house, here are some photos from when we were looking to purchase the house. Nothing has really changed. Since we knew we wanted to redo it, we didn't even bother to paint. Because there was no vent in the room, the tile and walls were always damp-looking and icky. It doesn't look that bad in these pictures since they had the house all gussied up to sell, but I vow to you, they must have performed some sort of magic to make it look this good because it never did again.



Here, the extremely low camp-style sink, toilet, and painted-shut window, all courtesy of 1951. Ah, how the floor tile cracked and always looked dirty ...


And the linen closet, which is right behind the door, so that when it's open, that door prevents anyone from opening the door into the room, resulting in lots of banging and annoyances.


And finally, the little mirror/medicine cabinet that we never used, with the awkward light fixture that we actually removed, so that we've been living with a bald lightbulb for approximately three years. (Such flattering light!)


The opportunity to renovate came upon us rather unexpectedly when on Friday the plumber and contractor said they were available on Monday. Luckily, Mom and Dad were headed out of town and said we could take over their house, so we've moved up in the world, and are currently rolling with the Mountain Brook crowd. I think it suits us ...

But really, here's what the house looked like by the end of the first day:


Since we were replacing all the fixtures and it would be very challenging to find tiles that could match perfectly to patch the holes, we decided to take down the walls entirely. (I tried to sound disappointed that this would cost more, but deep in my heart, it's what I really hoped for because I was not digging the tile walls all over.) Interestingly, back when they built these houses, they slapped about an inch of cement on the walls and then tiled over it, so we'll gain like three inches all around the room now that there's not all that tile.


Turns out, to tile the floors, they had a wood subfloor on level with the rest of the house, then poured three inches of concrete on that, and then tiled over it. Apparently, it's not the most effective way of getting the job done because all the tile had cracked, and the wood underneath had rotted. And at any given moment, I could've been giving little TK a bath when, like that terrible lullaby, down would go TK, bathtub and all—right through the crawlspace. Of course, to give TK a bath, we would have to shove a washcloth in the drain or something because the tub plug disappeared long before we came around. But all that will be rectified soon, when we get the tub a new drain and reglaze it.


There are now walls again and they tiled the tub surround, so we should be able to move back in around Tues. If I get new pictures, I'll post them, but just know it's going to look amazing. TK will be so happy ...

1 Comment

1. kevinandemilyray on 1/27/09 11:05 PM

   Oh yea...it's for the baby....right...
   ;)