Master Bath Renovation Part 1

Don't you just LOVE a good home improvement project!?! 

The LAST DAY of my husband's paternity leave (well, technically it was vacation time... ) he decided that we needed to renovate our bathroom. I was all for it! Here I was barely two weeks post pardom, up all night nursing a baby, trying to recover from labor and delivery, lucky to get a shower, and now we will be ripping apart out bathroom! 

When we moved in our bathroom looked like this:


It is approximately 10'x6' -- if that! It wasn't anything spectacular, and as we cleaned it up and moved in we realized that it had interested features. 

Our home has fairly new copper plumbing throughout and you can see exactly where the pipes were run in the bathroom because the patch job wasn't all that great... like they never patched over their new drywall. 

We had a couple surprises along the way. 

Our medicine cabinet (which was mounted on the wall) wasn't actually attached to anything! 
When my dear hubby took it off the wall you could tell there was a patch behind it where there had been an opening. But it wasn't drywall. It was actually a piece of plywood. You can see it next to the medicine cabinet in this picture. 


The plywood was being help in place by a couple of nails strategically placed in the wall studs to keep the plywood from falling into the wall (the plywood was nailed to NOTHING!) Then it had been plastered over to keep it in place. 


So my medicine cabinet was held up by a piece of plywood sitting in a hole in the wall... great!

The walls had several different textures on it. At one point it had been wallpapered (at least 3 times based on the different papers we were peeling off) and part of it had been ripped off and painted over. So, you can imagine how nice and neat these walls looked! 

Then there was the lovely light fixture above the vanity:

My hubby worked hard to scrape the walls and remove as much of the wall paper layers as he could. Then he and I both patched and mudded (is that a word?!) the walls where there were obvious holes, dips, and other fun blemishes!! 

After weeks of patching, sanding, patching, sanding, and patching and sanding some more, the walls were smooth and finally ready to be painted. 

Once the paint had dried, we installed a new modern light fixture. 


So much better than the original... don't ya think!?! 


Next up the baseboards... and a special wall treatment for the bottom half of the wall that I am beyond excited for!! I can't wait to share it with you! Then a coat of paint for the trim and door, installation of the NEW medicine cabinet, and we are set!! 

We have been sharing the guest bath with the kids for a couple weeks now, and as much as I love my kids...  both my husband and I AND our kids are ready for us to have our bathroom back! 

Are you currently tackling any home improvement projects!?!? Once I post my final reveal I'm thinking of letting you all link up any home improvement projects that you have blogged about... what do you think?!? Any takers!?! 

1 comment

  1. If I was blogging then I would have had a similar story to share. Though we tackled both bathrooms and did our master first. It was completely gutted. We did a new shower (shower only), new vanity and sink. We also had wall paper but used the spray and it helped big time! The shower had been leaking before we bought our house and nothing had changed in that room since it was built in the 80's. The walls were horrible as well!

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