Back with Bathrooms

It's been a while since I've posted here; in that time, we've had to fix our front porch (leaking and rotting wood). Aside from painting the porch ceilings "haint blue", there really wasn't much interesting about that project, so I didn't document it on the blog.

We are now on to another huge project, remodeling all three bathrooms at once. Well, technically not all at the exact same time---we have to have at least one working toilet, sink, and shower in the house, so for now, that is the master bath. The powder room and boy's bathroom are completely gutted. While taking on all three at once is a major undertaking, we figured it is better to get it over with!

Our reasons for tackling the bathrooms are many. First, they were last renovated about 20-30+ years ago (aside from perhaps a new faucet or toilet, but the tile work, tubs, sinks, floors, and countertops are at least that old if not older). Second, both the master and the powder room have seriously defects in layout; you could fit three toilets in the WC portion of the master, and the powder room was just wrong in one very major way I will explain below. Third, we are making some changes in amenities that will increase the utility of the spaces; right now we have a lot of cavernous, impossible to organize cabinets in all three bathrooms; poor water flow and pressure; one tiny sink for three growing boys; poor lighting, etc.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take "before" pictures of the powder room and boy's bathroom (PR and  BB henceforth) pre-demo; I will see if I can dig some up for a later post. Here are some photos of the work done so far--a lot in one week!

from hallway into BB

where BB bathtub used to be (toilet moved there after removal)

some fun wallpaper that was uncovered

more groovy wallpaper where the sink used to be

In these next photos you will see our biggest issue with the powder room:

the entrance to the PR is in the dining room. this is awkward.

at least only the corner sink was visible from the doorway, and not the toilet

here is the front hallway where we want to move the entrance

new doorway is cut!

it's always so interesting to see the guts of this old house

door frame of new foyer entrance

old dining room door and trim removed, looking through to new doorway

new dining room wall! all old chair rail and baseboards from foyer were carefully removed and  saved for reuse on new  DR wall

The new section of wall is also being insulated to hopefully provide some kind of sound barrier. We are also reusing the original door, albeit with a new or repaired doorknob---that thing hasn't worked right since we moved in.

Thanks for reading!