Vacation or A Working Shower?

Vacation or a working shower is the question we were asking ourselves a couple of weeks ago.  Since last fall we have been planning to take a vacation this year for our anniversary.  However, when it came time to bite the bullet and put down the deposit for the vacation, we had second thoughts.  I pointed out that we hadn't been able to use the shower in our master bathroom in almost a year due to leaking, and we agreed that should take priority. 

Initially, the thought was we might be able to do both but would have to tone down the original vacation plan.  That's still what I'm going for, but we will see how that turns out.  Never enough bills in the wallet to do it all!

Several weeks ago, on a Friday night, we found ourselves roaming the aisles of Lowes.  We were there to price out what the master bath remodel might cost us.  Somewhere between light fixtures and toilets, we realized it wasn't going to be cheap.  Don't worry, we didn't go into it with false expectations that it was going to be done in $1,500.  We are talking about a total gut job after all.  We knew the subfloor was going to need work after the water leaking fiasco last spring.  As anticipated, once everything was torn out and we got to the subfloor, there was some pretty substantial water damage around the toilet area. 

Night one was demo, complete with the discovery of striped wallpaper. 

Then we tore out the leaking tub, which was a major ordeal.  It was one whole piece, which had to be cut apart to get it out the door.  May I suggest wearing some kind of mask to keep from inhaling the dust from cutting apart the fiberglass shower if you ever find yourself taking on this type of project.  We didn't do this... bad idea. 

Once all that was out, this is what Andrew found when he started breaking up the beautiful hunter green tile in the bathroom...

That's right, that is some lovely linoleum.  I'm sure it went quite well with the wallpaper we found behind the cabinet on the wall.  Once we got all the tile up, we discovered this lovely mess...

That, friends, is a massively water damaged subfloor.  Needless to say, we will be cutting that out.  In the midst of this, we had to start picking out what would go into the new bathroom.  Everyone thinks it sounds like fun picking out finishings for a bathroom... it's stressful.  I wanted to pick something we were both going to be happy with for years down the line.  I don't want to get in the habit of tearing apart the bathroom every few years.  First, we picked out tile, so we headed off to The Tile Shop one Saturday afternoon.  Here is what we came up with

The marble tile will be the shower walls and will be tiled all the way up to the ceiling.  It will be broken up by a mosaic strip running around the shower slightly above eye level.

The gray tile will be the floor tile.  The actual floor tiles are slightly larger than the one shown in the picture above.  The one I have pulled out will actually be put on the wall rather than having a baseboard.  The wooden baseboard that was in the bathroom before was totally shot from water over the years. 

Once the tile was decided on, we still had to decide on a shower base, shower doors, vanity, toilet, light fixture, fixtures for the shower, etc.  Man, does this stuff add up quickly.  Suddenly, you find yourself standing in the toilet aisle at Lowes wondering, "do I need a toilet that can flush a bucket of golf balls"?  No joke, this is a selling point on one of the toilets we looked at.  Do you want an elongated or rounded bowl?  Do you want regular height or chair height?  So many questions. 

When it came to picking the vanity, I had it narrowed down between a few different options.  I wanted to go with gray, I thought.  When I took the tile to the store to hold up next to the vanity, I wasn't sold.

 This was the gray vanity at Home Depot I had my eye on.  I thought it looked a little too matchy for my liking.

The white vanity was much better with the tile, so that is what we went with.  The top still needs to be purchased, but it is picked out.  It will be a marble top to match the tile for the shower.  We have the light fixture as well as the shower faucet and shower head.  However, we still need to buy the toilet, some more cement board for the floor of the bathroom as well as a different shower base and the shower doors.  I just decided on a paint color, so I also need to pick that up.  Every time I try to pick out gray paint, I'm reminded why I hate doing it.  Gray either pulls blue, green or brown.  It is hard to find a gray that doesn't pull any of those colors.  I wanted something that wasn't too dark either since the floor is a little darker.  The bathroom is a small space, so I don't want to weigh it down too much with dark colors.  I'm excited to see everything as it comes together!  I will be sure to post regular updates for everyone.