Bathroom Remodel: Weekend #2

Picking up where I last left off, after our long weekend working on the bathroom with my parents, I had a work trip to New York City for the rest of the week. While I was gone, Chip did a great job keeping the remodeling going. After finishing up the grouting and sealing, his next big task was working on the shower sliding door. Let’s just chalk this one up as another item we didn’t expect to be so incredibly complicated. From what I understand, while we did everything we could to make sure the tub was level when we installed it, it somehow didn’t settle 100% level. This meant that while the frame of the shower door went in fine over the ledge of our tub, we ran into trouble when trying to close the sliding doors. No matter how much Chip adjusted the wheels on the sliding doors and tried to add shims to the frame to see if it would help, when we would close the door we would be flush along the frame in the bottom corner, but have an inch or so gap at the top corner (or vice versa). It was so very frustrating and I feel so bad that Chip tried to tackle it alone while I was in NYC.

By the time I got back home on Saturday, Chip was understandably not in the best mood over the shower door (I don’t think I would have lasted as long). So after trying to figure it out together and even going to Home Depot for a new set (which, by the way, the HD employee was so not helpful with this return, glad all of our other purchases were at Lowe’s), we decided to just temporarily get a shower curtain so we could actually use the shower for the time being.

Now, it drove my parents crazy that we didn’t finish the bathroom while they were in town the previous weekend. Even though there was no way we could have gotten more work done during those four days, they felt terrible leaving us an incomplete bathroom. So for the next few days, my dad repeatedly asked if he could fly back out to help us wrap everything up. We knew his time and energy would be extremely helpful, but we felt bad having him fly out for a couple days on such short notice just to get this finished with us. What kind of homeowners were we that we couldn’t finish ourselves? (answer: the pathetic, unknowledgeable type) After talking it over for a couple of days, we finally agreed that we needed help; we weren’t any closer to getting the shower door up, had yet to touch the trim, were clueless on the vanity and light fixture, you get the picture. That and we were so ready to be done with this project that the thought of having us work on the bathroom for multiple more weekends made me want to check in to a hotel and just avoid it all.

With that, Handy Manny was back in town that next Friday and at our house by the late afternoon. The guys got started right away, tackling that pesky shower door right off the bat. My dad was able to get a transition piece to slide underneath the bottom part of the frame and this really helped solve the problem with the sliding doors. While they worked on the shower, I worked on making some paella and sangria for dinner, which was my promise to my dad for having him come visit again. Dinner was great and we felt encouraged that we would finish everything in the next 24 hours or so and even thought there would be enough time for my dad and Chip to go golfing on Sunday… that didn’t really happen, but more on that shortly.

Paella and sangria

Enjoying dinner on Friday

Chip’s dad also happened to be in San Antonio for the weekend, so we all met for breakfast Saturday morning at Magnolia’s Pancake Haus and then came back to our house to get to work. Those three guys were cranking through the morning! Chip and his dad got going on the second coat of paint in the bathroom while my dad showed us his woodshop skills, creating a missing piece of trim for our storage closet. It was then time to put up all the trim on the bead board, which meant I had to choose between the five different types I had purchased at Lowe’s. Trust me, it was a tough decision.

The most exciting part to Saturday’s work was when Chip’s dad successfully got our vanity installed. This was a huge deal. Remember how long it took me to even decide to purchase this vanity? Well, after that relief of having this key item purchased we realized it didn’t really fit pipe-wise with the plumbing coming out of our wall. After four or five trips to Lowe’s to try to sort through this, we were given two options: 1-cut out the storage shelf from the vanity to make all the plumbing fit (which defeated the purpose of getting a vanity with a cabinet for storage purposes) or 2-go buy another vanity. Confession: when this second option was first suggested, I thought I was going to cry in the middle of the bathroom aisle at Lowe’s. Thankfully, we didn’t have to decide on either of these options. I still don’t know how Chip’s dad did it, but he worked some magic connecting everything and was able to get it installed just perfectly without making any cuts to the shelf. Good thing Chip stopped working on it earlier in the week, we were ready to make some drastic hacks to the vanity.

The men hard at work

Had no idea my dad had these kind of woodshop skills

Handy Manny strikes again

Chip’s dad, Mike, installing the vanity

I had a bridal shower to go to Saturday evening, so while I was out, the guys did a little more work in the bathroom before having dinner at Alamo Cafe. I’m actually glad I had plans that evening and that they were all able to have a guys dinner together.

Sunday morning we all met for breakfast at Cafe Salsita before going to Redeemer together. After the service, we went home to get back to work! We are so grateful that our dads were able to give another full day to helping us out and getting this bathroom done! Honestly, we really wouldn’t have finished without them. That, or we would have lost our sanity trying to get finished on our own.

Chip’s dad carried the weight on Sunday caulking up every edge possible (Chip and I were lousy at it, we actually had to remove most of the caulking we had done… fail) while we painted the new pieces of bead board as well as the trim. We also cleaned out the storage closet and lined it with contact paper before painting the door and surrounding trim. Also, up until this point, we had the bathroom door out on the patio to help give us more space inside. We sanded the back of it, painted the edges and got it reinstalled so we could paint the back and finally have some privacy to be able to use the bathroom (thanks to Target for all of our one-item purchases so we could use their public restrooms).

Giving the shower door a final test

Using my OCD strengths to organize all the tools.

So thankful for all the help our dads gave us

Last bit of painting

By the time both of our dads had to leave late that afternoon, there were just a few last pieces to work on, so Chip and I took care of finishing the second coat of paint on the door and all the trim. After that, I finally got to start decorating our bathroom. My parents had gotten us some awesome fluffy white towels as part of our two-year anniversary gift in anticipation of this project and I couldn’t wait to get these out and ready for use. We also had a cute little bathroom care package from my mom and were able to use all the different peices to bring our bathroom together.

Thanks for the gift, mom!

And here are the pictures of the final result!

New shower

So nice and clean

Before and After

We love our new bathroom

Taking all 20-something receipts with us to Lowe’s for some returns at the end of the project. Side note: all of the Lowe’s employees we worked with were amazing, always helping us find what we need and give us any tips.

I know we’re a little biased, but we think the bathroom looks pretty darn awesome. It’s so much better than what we had ever expected and we love that this project has given us so many fun memories and stories to share with our families. While the bathroom is pretty much 100% done, there are a few things we still need to do: hang up the towel rod on the back of the door, find some fabric to make a Roman shade for the window, do a few last paint touch ups, and hang up a couple of frames with some pictures from our trips (how cute would a Nantucket landscape look in here?). We’re going to take our time on those details and just enjoy this bathroom for now!

Thanks again to our families for giving us so much help and support on this project! Friends, thanks for putting up with us while we were hermits, locking ourselves in the house to get this project done. You’re all now more than welcome to come over and I’m glad you’ll no longer have to see the awful black and yellow tile! ;)

Bathroom Remodel: Weekend #1

After our first long trip to Lowe’s Thursday night, my parents came over early on Friday morning and we all got started to a long day of work. We got the day started by taking out the rest of the tile that we still had in the shower and hammering out the cement board so we could soon get the tub installed, put up some new backer board, and start installing the tile.

Our living room turned into a mini-Lowe’s

Team huddle

Taking out the cement board

Mom’s turn

By the time all the cement board was hammered out, I had a conference call for work so I stepped outside for a bit. During that hour, the guys were able to remove the toilet as well as get the tub out of the bathroom. Now we had originally considering having the tub professionally removed instead of trying to do it ourselves; thinking about its age and size we figured it would be extremely difficult to get the tub out and had been told by the plumber that removed our old bathroom gas heater that we may even need to get it out in pieces because of its weight. We were worried that it would take us at least an hour or two trying to do this ourselves whereas a pro could do it without breaking a sweat (or so we thought). In the end, we decided to save money and just try to do it ourselves. Thankfully it wasn’t as difficult as we expected and the hardest part for Chip and my dad was just carrying it out of the house. We were clearly off to a strong start.

Getting the tub out of the bathroom

We tried getting Wrigley in the old tub. He didn’t think it was a good idea.

Cleaning out the tub area

And that’s when we ran into our first bit of trouble. Turns out some of our 2×4 beams that had been under and behind the tub had water damage. No bueno. As Chip likes to describe it, the wood was so rotted through in some places that you could scoop it out with a spoon. Yikes and gross. Guess it was a good thing that we decided to replace the tub, otherwise we would have unintentionally kept this water damage going for who knows how long. So needless to say, we had to reinforce those pieces of 2×4! We also went ahead and sprayed some anti-mold treatment, just to help address the water damage we encountered.

We also had my dad act as a plumber for a few hours… our old tub fixture had two separate valves for the hot and cold water, whereas the new fixture we had purchased at Lowe’s had just one valve. So we (my dad) had to solder this new valve as well as raise it higher to the recommended height from where the valves originally were. Definitely something we weren’t anticipating having to do that weekend! It took a bit of time to get this done, but definitely important to take our time and get it right.

Handy Manny at work

Couldn’t have completed this project without Handy Manny

We also weren’t expecting how difficult it would be to find a vanity I would like for our bathroom. While the guys were at Ferguson’s to get all the tools needed for the soldering, my mom and I went to two different Lowe’s, Home Depot, Pottery Barn, and even Restoration Hardware in search for a vanity. I had initially thought I wanted a simple white vanity, but then realized that in front of the white bead board, there would be a whole lot of white going on. So after all this shopping, we were vanity-less and I was confused on what to envision for the color/design scheme. #bathroomremodelingproblems

We were originally hoping to have the tub installed and the tile in the shower area done by the end of Friday. With all the plumbing work we had to do, we had to end the day without either of those two tasks and instead have some fans run all night to make sure everything was dry before installing the tub on Saturday.

Friday night

Saturday’s priority was to get the tub installed and get the tiling done. We couldn’t put the tub in right away, we had some leveling work to do first, which I don’t know all the details of since I was running to Lowe’s as needed for random purchases throughout the morning. By lunch time the tub was in and my mom and I got to painting. We did two coats of Benjamin Moore’s Glass Slipper on the walls and I started to doubt the idea of having Cloud White on the ceiling. It was just so… white. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it threw me off initially and I did a great job voicing my concerns while my mom diligently did the first coat. I even compared it to a hospital at one point. Overly dramatic? I’ll just say it was my vocal Lopez genes. Many thanks to my family for putting up with me debating back and forth if the white was a good idea (in the end, I really liked the white and love the way it looks now).

Painting the shower area

By the evening, we were finally ready to get going on the tile! This was probably my favorite part of the whole remodeling process and has made us fairly excited for a future project of re-tiling the kitchen, laundry room, and guest/entertainment room. Chip quickly became a pro at laying down tile and I’d like to think I got pretty good at measuring and cutting tile over the course of the evening.

The hardest part of the day was putting up the little glass tiles as a border near the top of the shower. It took us a while to figure out how much thin-set to put on these strips of glass tile and I was pretty much ready to just toss these out and return them at Lowe’s, but thankfully Chip figured out the best way to get these up.

Ready for tiling

Mixing the thin-set

Dad putting up the first row of tile

While dad worked on the first row of tile, Chip was cutting backer board to put up behind the bead board

Wrigley’s contribution to the weekend

The family that tiles together, stays together

Chip’s turn at tiling

Working on the glass tile

By the time we had the row of glass tile up, it was quickly approaching midnight so we called it a day and showered at my parents’ hotel. While we were behind schedule, we were happy with the progress we were making. Still, we knew we had our work cut ahead of us for Sunday! We were able to finish tiling the shower and got most of the floor tiled as well as put up the bead board.

Getting started early on Sunday morning

My dad autographed the back of the bead board. He’s a champ.

This remodeling has been brought to you by Lowe’s. Let’s build something together.

10:00PM and tiling the floor

Where we left off on Sunday

Unfortunately, for as much work as we did finish on Sunday, we didn’t get as far as we had wanted (surprised? ;)). Thankfully my very gracious parents rescheduled their flight from Monday morning to later in the afternoon so they could keep working on the bathroom while we were at work. We still had a chunk of work to do on Monday: grout all the tile, install the toilet, purchase and install the vanity, put up the new light fixture, purchase and install the new mirror, cut little pieces of bead board around our bathroom closet, etc. So my parents came over at 6:00 in the morning and my mom and I went to Lowe’s for the up-teenth time while the guys Chip and my dad got going on some of the remaining perimeter floor tile. Note: the benefit to being the first people at Lowe’s as soon as they open is having lots of employees helping us find what we need and not having to wait in line at the check-out counter. I’m happy to say we finally found a vanity that we liked as well as a few last items. We came home and helped with some last bit of tile cutting and thin-set mixing before heading out to work for the day. I felt bad having my parents working on the house while we were gone, but they felt terrible leaving us with work once they had to fly back to Arizona.

First customers at Lowe’s

Ready to go on Monday morning

Helping with the vanity during our lunch break

Mom working on the grout

Group picture before my parents flew home

The day went by pretty fast and I was able to make it home just before my mom and dad left for the airport. My parents worked so hard while they were in town for the weekend and we are so grateful for all they did to help us. Sure we didn’t finish that weekend, but we got pretty close. Chip and I thought we would be able to finish the rest off, so we felt fairly confident after my parents left. How hard would it be to install the vanity, seal all the tile, install the tub/shower door, do the caulking throughout the bathroom, etc.? Harder than we thought! More to come on our next weekend spent working on this bathroom with Chip taking on most of the work while I was in NY for a work trip pretty much all week…

Bathroom Remodel: Prep

As I mentioned in my last post, Chip and I finally got to remodel our bathroom. When we first talked about this project, we weren’t thinking too big, we really just wanted rid of the awful yellow floor tile and find some type of solve for the black wall tile (we even discussed painting it thanks to something I had seen on Pinterest). Then we considered taking the black tile out of most of the bathroom and just leaving it in the shower hidden behind a curtain (classy, right?). Then we decided to get rid of the black tile all together. We soon started talking about getting a new vanity; we had a pedestal vanity and thought it would be better to have one with storage. Chip also disliked our tub since it was so old and big, so he started a campaign to get that replaced as well. By this point, we were consulting with my parents on how to tackle this project and my mom agreed with Chip’s plan to replace the tub and suggested we do the toilet as well, since everything else was being updated. Suddenly we had a major remodeling project on our hands.

Our rough sketch of the bathroom

Thankfully, my parents were more than willing to fly out and help us for a long weekend! Once we picked the dates for my parents to come out, Chip got to work getting rid of as much of our old tile as possible so we could get started right away when they came to San Antonio. He got the hang of it pretty quickly!

Slowly getting rid of the black tile (and the broken gas heater)

Showing the tile who’s boss

Don’t miss these yellow hexagons at all

Under construction

Sending this tile back to the 1960s

Getting rid of the cement board behind the black tile

While Chip worked on the tile, I set out to find some paint for the room. Overall, we knew we wanted the bathroom to be much lighter than it currently was and after some initial trips to Lowe’s, we were leaning towards light tan-ish floor tile, white bead board, and a light blue paint for the rest of the walls. After talking to my friend Haley about different types of paint, she quickly sold me on getting some from Benjamin Moore. Six samples later, we finally found a color we were happy with. The first few samples we bought were less light blue and more along the lines of “Congrats! It’s a boy!” blue… not exactly what we were going for. So at the end of the trips to Sunset Ridge, we finally decided on Glass Slipper for the walls and Cloud White for the bead board and trim.

I carried the paint chips around everywhere for a couple of weeks. Some of them are now bookmarks. Good recycling, right?

Trying to find the right blue

My parents got into town on a Thursday evening, so after a quick dinner at home, we made our way over to Lowe’s ready to purchase everything. Thankfully we had a couple of gift cards as well as a home project fund we had been working on for a while to help cover this project. By the time Lowe’s was getting ready to close on Thursday night, we had everything we needed to get to work early on Friday morning!

Getting tile and helpful tips from one of the many helpful Lowe’s employees

Cart full of tile

Ready to go

We love Lowe’s gift cards

Bathroom Remodel: The Reveal

That’s right. We (finally) finished remodeling our bathroom! I’ll be posting throughout the next few days details on the actual process, but for now, here’s a reveal of what our bathroom looks like now.

First a refresher on what we had a few weeks ago:

Black and yellow tile EVERYWHERE

And here’s what we have now after 22 trips to Lowe’s, 3 trips to Home Depot, 3 trips to Fergusons, and 5 trips to Sunset Ridge Home and Hardware. So happy.

A much needed improvement. Hooray for a new serene space.

Stay tuned for more on our weekends spent working on this bathroom!

Farewell, 1960s Bathroom

Finally. After a little over two years in our home, we are finally getting to re-do our bathroom. We’re so excited at the thought of having a new bathroom by Sunday night (if everything goes smoothly, knock on wood). I may open a bottle of champagne at the end of this.

When we first bought our home in April of 2011, Chip and I really liked the unique layout the house had and all of the great windows for some natural light. But it’s an old home, so we quickly noticed how small the closets were (hooray for being bigger consumers than our previous generations) and how ugly the one bathroom was. I promise I’m not exaggerating. While other parts of the house had been updated over the years, the bathroom had been left to stay in the 1960s with light yellow hexagon floor tile and shiny black wall tile throughout. My first thought when we saw the house was “whoa, looks like a bumblebee”, and that was followed shortly by “I wonder if I could find a way to paint this tile on Pinterest” (if you’re curious, the answer is yes). However, we left the bathroom alone, buying a few floor mats to cover the yellow tile as best we could for the time being. As I’ve mentioned before, Chip and I don’t have a whole lot of knowledge when it comes to home improvement projects. I may have a vision of how I want a room to look, but we definitely need help getting there.

We have a pretty clear idea of what we want the bathroom to look like and we’re so excited to remodel this weekend. But don’t worry, we’ve got reinforcements coming in to help us! That’s right, the master-tiler himself known as my father and his trusty helper (my mom) are coming in to town to help us with this project. To prep for this weekend, my dad has been great at giving us (really just Chip) prep work to do and has checked on our (really Chip’s) progress during a few Skype sessions over the last couple of weeks. I’ve been so impressed at how Chip has jumped into this project and has already removed most of the tile in the bathroom.

We’ve got plenty of work to do this weekend once my parents get in. Get excited to see all the nasty yellow and black tile out and replaced by much prettier floor tile, beadboard along the walls, freshly painted walls, and a new vanity, shower/tub and commode. Wish us luck!!

Here are some pictures I’ve been looking at for inspiration…

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