Gone

Our bathroom is officially gone.  We hired a couple of guys to come and demolish the room for us.  It was the best money we've ever spent.  You'd think destroying would be the most fun part of the whole experience.  Grab a hammer and take out your frustrations on every wall, tile, cabinet and fixture.  It's not as great as it sounds.  We did the guest bathroom all by ourselves.  I have the scars to prove it. (those tile shards are sharp!)  Even though it is a little fun to watch things shatter and crumble; it's the cleaning up of those shatterings and crumbles that's not so fun.  Not to mention the dust and insulation particles that still manage to get in your lungs despite wearing a mask.  No, we were quite happy to pay someone to do this dirty work and cart it all away at the end of the day.  It only took them 2 days to complete the whole thing. (I think it took us more than a week for that tiny guest bathroom)  They were very neat and did such a good job of preventing the dust from spreading into the house.  Now we're waiting on a bathroom design.  We decided it was worth it to have someone else design this room for us.  We hired the same guy who designed our kitchen for us.  Since we're expanding the bathroom and moving plumbing and adding a tub we thought it'd be best to have an expert help us.  So, we wait ...

All the walls gone! The tile is where the old bathroom was.  The concrete floors are where the 3 old closets were

That tiny little triangle was our old shower

Door removed from the entryway closets

2 full loads in this trailer!  Amazing how such a small space can create such a heap of debris!

What's left

I'm standing in our bathroom doorway looking to the entryway.  We have plastic covering it.  Not beautiful but it keeps the dust contained and makes it feel less like a project zone.

Standing in one of the entryway closet doorways, looking toward the bathroom door in our bedroom.

Here We Go Again ...

It's time for a new project.  We've been dragging our feet as long as possible on the last two bathrooms. It's not that we don't want them done, it's just that the process is so painful!  When we did the guest bathroom we could close the door on the mess and walk away.  But with the master bath and the boys' bathroom it really affects our day-to-day life.  We'll have to move out of those spaces and walk around the mess everyday.  It's going to be delightful. : / But both bathrooms are disgusting.  They're old and musty and gross and it's time.  So we've been trying to figure out which one to do first.  Finally the decision was made for us.  A leaky shower has made the final call ... the winner is The Master Bath.  Here's what our bathroom looked like before we moved in ...

Ugly, pink and tiny ... but totally useable and not that bad.  It's only gotten worse.

It started as a small drip around the shower handles.  It would drip for a few days, then the lovely Midland water would cause the handle to corrode and block the leak.  This happened off and on for months.  Then it slowly got worse.  The handles were getting so old that we were worried one day they would just fall off into our hands as we adjusted the temperature.  We didn't want to hire a plumber to fix the problem because we knew we eventually wanted to tear the whole thing apart.  So Jeff got creative and installed this handle.

  

So instead of turning the hot and cold handles we just kept them at a constant temperature and used the "custom-made" black handle to turn the shower on and off.  Great idea in theory except that "constant temperature" was a little different everyday.  Somedays it was scalding hot and other days freezing cold.  But we dealt with it.  Then the leak started up again.  And this time is was more like a small waterfall.

I'm not sure how much water we were wasting each day but it was shameful.  And incredibly annoying.  How is it that we paid good money for a water feature in our backyard but a "water feature" indoors caused us to lose sleep at night?!

(I really can't believe I'm showing you these pictures - oh my they are embarrassing!  We really did keep the shower clean, there's just not much you can do with corroded handles and disappearing grout!)

So we finally conceded.  Jeff knocked out the tiles and capped off the water supply.   

I've been working on getting our stuff moved out.  We'll be using our guest bathroom for the next few months - thankfully it is newly renovated! :)

We plan to greatly increase the size of our bathroom.  We'll take out the closet (the closed door in the above pic), and the two closets in the front entryway (the open doors in the below pic - they butt up to the open cabinets in the bathroom and the closet in the bedroom).

We're going to have a huge square to work with!  It makes me giddy thinking about it!  We just have to get through this remodeling phase.  It's going to be a mess.  I just gotta keep thinking about the final product!! :) 

Time Flies

2009

Hudson (2) & Cooper (5 mo)

2011

Cooper (3) & Garrett (7 mo)

Garrett has started doing this funny face where he scrunches up his nose.
Hudson calls it Mean Baby :)