Low Cost Bathroom Renovation

Finally the long-awaited post about my bathroom renovation, which was actually completed in August 2016. It was a multi-year event, mostly because we waited until August 2016 to settle on the shower enclosure.

Here's what our hall bathroom looked like when we moved it. It was hideous and the shower was like a cramped cave. We never ever used it and kept the door shut all the time.

 Yup, that's peel and stick tile just visible in the bottom left hand corner, covering up the original pink floor. The bathroom tile was baby pink on the floor and hideous peach on the walls.

 For some reason there was no medicine cabinet.

 There was also a window that led to a hallway (unresolved after a garage conversion).

The tile in the shower was cracked and the water damage wasn't fully revealed until we demo-ed.

Nearly all of the 2x4's that framed the shower had been decaying after years of water leaks. Some no longer touched the ground at all and the result is that the ceiling was being pulled down. We decided not to do a tiled enclosure and were planning on a glass surround, so only two walls needed to be repaired, the third was going away. The only part of this bathroom renovation that was hired out was the plumbing. We had a plumber come in and re-route the pipes to be along the bathroom's exterior wall, move the shower head plumbing to be overhead for a waterfall shower, and build a new shower pan. In retrospect, I do wish I'd bought one of those Schulter kits I think we'd have had slightly better results with the shower floor tiling, but hey it all worked out in the end.

Post-plumber pic. You can also see where we've reframed the wall to get rid of the rotted supports. Then it was time to start with concrete and build up the shower pan. Which was stressful because I had to take care not to puncture the rubber liner and work quickly since it's concrete.

By this time the new purple drywall and concrete backer board for the shower had also been installed.

We also had to patch part of the floor. Originally the built in vanity was sunk about 3 inches into the ground, so the slab had to be leveled for a new floor. Now came the fun part. We had 4 x 8 marble subway tiles leftover from the cooktop surround in the kitchen, 1/2 inch marble mosaic leftover from the master bath renovation, and I purchased new basketweave Carrara tile for Lowes. I decided to make a custom design with the larger tile around the outside, a double line of the mosaic (which was also used on the shower floor) and then inset the basketweave.  

I laid everything out and look at it from multiple angles since there was a lot of variation in the natural stone. When I started, I realized pretty quickly that I started in the wrong place and wasn't going to have the edges line up properly and quickly had to rip everything out, run it outside and start hosing off the thinset. STRESS.

But it all worked out in the end! Ringo liked it!

Tiling the shower was another big job. I went with alternating bands of 2 x 4 subway tile and 4 x 4 tiles, the cheap stuff from Home Depot. And installed a shower nook, again using leftover tiles from the floor. 

For further savings and recycling, my husband made the vanity using the leftover cut-out granite from our cooktop installation. He built the vanity base using some old steel square tubing and added a piece of copper for the towel bar. We bought an inexpensive ceramic sink and faucet off of eBay. The chair to the left is from Ikea.

One slight splurge was spending $300 on a toilet that has smooth sides. I DETEST cleaning the sides of regular toilets and all the dust that settles there.

I LOVE THIS TOILET. And I installed it MYSELF.

The final step that ended up taking FOREVER was the shower surround. We new that a glass surround would be about $1500 and because of a couple different financial uncertainties I never wanted to take the plunge and have that professionally installed. I was also worried that the bathroom would now be cramped with a big glass wall taking up a lot of space. Then this past summer we went over to visit the new home of a colleague who renovated an old warehouse into the most stunning home ever. And her guest bath was an INSPIRATION. Instead of a fixed surround, she had a 90 degree angle, double shower rod hanging from the ceiling. I knew that was what we had to have. 

The double rod is suspended from the ceiling and I got fabric from Ikea to make a custom outer curtain (it needed to be extra long). Boomer helped.

I realize that I need to upload one more photograph of the finished vanity and custom mirror that my husband made from an old Model-A Ford windshield!

I guess I entitled this "low-cost" bathroom renovation. I never really tallied up the cost, but it was pretty inexpensive. The toilet was the priciest thing about about $300. Oh and the double shower rod was also $300. We used 2x4s leftover from other projects. The special mold-resistant drywall and cement board probably only cost about $100, spent perhaps another $100-150 on tile, thinset, and grout (but much was leftover from other projects). The sink and faucet were less than $100 on eBay. The shower hardware was also about $100 for the handle (and valve) and then the waterfall showerhead. The plumber's bill was about $800. I would say the entire project came in around $1500.

What's Next?

My college friends came to visit over the weekend and got to see my home for the first time! It was exciting to show them around and one asked what was next (after we finish the marble herringbone backsplash).

So much on the to-do list, it's almost hard to answer that question.

1. As for the kitchen a lot still remains:
A sliding barn door to cover the washer/dryer stack. Probably something like the photo on the right so the air still circulates. The washer/dryer stack is right next to our water heater (currently blocked from view by the crappy louver door that won't close all the way in the photo on the left).

We still need to redo the floors. Previously discussed excitement over realization of hardwoods beneath the dining room. We'll probably extend the wood through the rest of the kitchen (we still have a bunch of reclaimed wood leftover from living room job.) It would probably be wise to install some kind of tile entry for the area around the back door. But this particular job is a long long way off. We'll let professionals handle the refinishing of the dining room floors and installation of the kitchen floors as we'll want it done as fast as possible.

2. The Guest/Hall Bath

This is the current state of the guest bath. This is the same view pre-demo. The floor tile is baby pink and the wall tile was salmon. The previous owners had applied a small portion of peel and stick gray tile (still visible) and the shower was cracked and cramped and gross. Our hope is to do a glass enclosure to open up the space, perhaps with a pony wall adjacent to the toilet (or maybe not).

3. The Garage

Hmm, I don't have any photographs of the garage. But it had been converted from a garage to living space a long long time ago. There was horrible wall to wall carpeting that we ripped out when we moved in. Currently the room is a large storage space, but eventually we'll turn it into a media/family room. The plan is to bust through the ceiling to open it up to the rafters, with a wall of sliding doors and windows. Maybe something like this: 

DIY Cutlery Organizers

It seems that I've never had a kitchen drawer that fits a cutlery organizer from the store, not to mention if you want to veer away from the molded plastic, you'll be shelling out a pretty penny. But the construction is so simple, I thought "I can make that."

So I went to Home Depot and bought a couple pieces of craft wood. Which are really cheap and come in (usually) 2 foot or 4 foot lengths and a variety of dimensions. I like to use my miter box and hand saw for smaller projects because it just seems easier that way.

 I removed each drawer and just measure the interior spaces and starting working on the grid pattern I wanted. It's really great to have a brad nailer for this job. It makes the assembly a breeze. I suppose you could also use screws, if you are careful and pre-drill. In some places I have used glue only, but over time these joints haven't held up as well.

 I just held the pieces in place when shooting the nails in. I wasn't too worried about perfect right angles.

 This particular organizer is for my utensils. I haven't created a bottom for it (but you easily could with some thin plywood) because I prefer to put a layer of that puffy shelf liner (that is anti-slip).

 You can see the green liner peeking through below.

And I made another one for my utensils. And each drawer organizer only cost (save the brad nailer and air compressor) about $4 in wood.

How to Slipcover a Chair

Truth be told, I hate making slipcovers! And I especially hate making two of them. But we inherited some lovely old chairs with a lot of sentimental value for my husband, but currently upholstered seemingly in honor of the Washington Redskins. UGH.

We are planning to use these chairs as the end chairs in the dining room and that current color scheme will just not work. And the gold chair is really dirty from years of wear and tear. It's not currently in the budget to spend a couple hundred on having them reupholstered (I'm thinking when that happens, we'll pick a gray velvet) so instead I hopped over to Ikea and bought some of their fabric for $5 a yard.

Sidenote: nearly all fabric stores in Houston (save for Joann Fabrics, which is terrible) have stopped selling fabric. At least upholstery fabric. You only option is to order it, which is a pain and means you are unlikely to score a huge bargain with clearance fabric.

Anyhoozles, the Ikea fabric was quite cheap and for $20 I bought 4 yards hoping it would cover both chairs.

On to production. My slipcover mantra is pin and sew and pin and sew.

First I made a pattern using old fabric. I laid pieces on each section of the chair and cut them out roughly the same size.

I used pins to hold the pieces in place on vertical elements.
Then I started to cut the fabric. When using a print you want to pay attention to where the pattern falls on the pieces, being especially careful if you are using something like a toile so that nothing ends up being upside down. This print was so bold, I really didn't worry about centering flowers on the seat cushion or seat back. Also I realized pretty soon on that I'd be really tight on fabric, so I didn't have a lot of leeway to center things.

You can see from the image that I gave myself a pretty big seam allowance (like 1.5 inches) this is because my methods are very far from perfect and I didn't want a tight fitting slipcover.

Then you start assembling the pieces together. You put the fabric face down on the chair and pin the seams and edges. Then you sew through the pins. You want to allow a good amount of extra fabric on the seat cushion so that you can tuck that excess into the gulleys of the seat. Otherwise, when you sit down the seams could rip open.

This gets repeated over and over again, until you are finished. These chairs have wood edging and I wanted to keep them exposed, so I made little fabric tabs to keep the two sides together. I was going to have them button (see the 3 buttons on the floor) but I didn't have enough for two chairs and buttons are so damn expensive, I ditched that idea for now. These covers are really just a stop gap for the short term.

So there you have the almost finished chair (I can still see some pins!) Now to make the second cover. UGH. It's so hard for me to make two things identical. I'm quite sure one will end up much tighter fitting than the other. C'est la vie I suppose.

Wide Roman Shades: A Cautionary Tale

There is a reason, you don't see a lot of wide roman shades out there. They really just don't hold up to constant use. I suppose if you just wanted something decorative, it would be ok. But I made a double wide roman shade for our kitchen windows that was fully lined and pretty danged heavy. In the 3 years that we've been in the house, I've had to replace all the cords and it broke about every 3 months or so. The last straw came when a string broke and Mr. Pickles chewed a hole in it! Darn it Mr. Pickles!

Picking new fabric seemed like a herculean task, especially since it requires seaming to span the width of the two windows. I had already done the ENJE Ikea shade hack for the dining room windows. That turned out really well, so I decided to peruse the Ikea website to see what they had going on. Actually, in truth, I was looking at their blinds thinking I would mount two next to each other. And I saw this! I loved the fact that this print also had birds on it (so Mr. Pickles wouldn't be lonely) and it seemed a bit thicker than the Enje, so that it might stand on it's own.

Before:

After:

I might still make a valance to cover the very top, but I like how clean this blind looks!

Dining Room: Chandelier

When we moved in the dining room was hideous. One wall was painted a dark burgandy, it had 1970s track lighting, and the louvered doors. UGH.

Repainting was easy enough, ditto removing the doors, and there is still the hideous floor tile to be removed. But the lighting solution was a bit more involved. For one thing, the previous owners had decided to put an awful texture on the ceiling, but not popcorn, or something that could be "easily" scrapped off. We think they mixed drywall compound with gloss paint and applied it in a goopy fashion to create zillions of stalactites. Before we moved in, we had a new HVAC installed, which meant new vents in the ceiling and we removed the upper kitchen cabinets (which appear on the very left hand side of the photo above) to open the kitchen and dining room up to each other a bit more. So there was a lot of ceiling repair needed.

We went to Home Depot and rented a drywall sander that hooks up to your shop vac (to cut down on dust). It sort of looked like a metal detector, only you had to press it against the ceiling (which was hard because it was heavy). No pictures of the sanding happening, but below Dave surveys the work to be done. You can also see that we put up drop cloths to prevent dust from going throughout the entire house (the shop vac systems worked, but still a lot of dust was generated). Oh and we had to buy a special drywall bag for the shop vac, as the dust particles are too fine for the normal set up.

After the sanding, we painted the ceiling flat white, why oh why did the previous owners of both our homes paint all the ceilings gloss? The ceilings aren't perfect, but they look a lot better, and really how many people come in and stare at your ceiling?

Now we could move onto the fun stuff. A new chandelier!

 I got this chandelier at a neighbor's garage sale for $20. He contends it was hand made in Texas and is one of a kind! It's gorgeous and looks like something that would cost one zillion times the price at Restoration Hardware. Of course I then proceeded to spend $70 on new faux beeswax "candle" covers. But I'm so pleased with the final product. AND I sold the Italian glass chandelier from our old house on Craigslist for the same price that I bought it for on ebay all those many years ago.

Outside Updates: A Path Through Tree Roots

We went to Montana for vacation this past summer (which is GORGEOUS, book a trip right now) and saw such beautiful wild flowers! Outside of Glacier National Park, we stayed at the Izaak Walton Inn & Resort in Essex and got inspired by their landscaping.

This was a lovely brick pathway, edged by flowers. Once home, we set about recreating this look in Houston.

Obviously, we the plants have a way to go in terms of growth and winter was especially hard on them (this picture was taken in the fall). 
We scored these white bricks from the side of the road for free and used salvaged bricks that were here when we moved for the edging. We keep a pretty large gaps in between the bricks (mostly because of the amount of white bricks we had available) and then had many challenges with the large tree roots running at ground level. If you look towards the top of the picture you can pick out how the white bricks start to deviate from the herringbone pattern. We didn't want to jeopardize the health of our many trees by hacking these roots to bits to remove them.