Bath Present

We got a nice gift certificate from my sister's family for Christmas so we decided to spend it on a finishing touch for our bathroom: a towel bar and shelf from American Standard. The end result is nice, but oh what a scare it was!

I read the directions several times to make sure I understood the installation process. Easy. Just screw in the special drywall anchors and then install the brackets and finally the shelf. No problem. We measured the template and I screwed the anchors into the wall. Upon mounting the brackets, however, I discovered a weak point in their materials -- literally. The screws which hold the brackets to the wall were small and their tiny little heads just twisted right off! Curses! I was pretty distraught. After messing around trying to get them to work somehow I gave up, removed the anchors and stared at the four holes in my new bathroom wall. Augh! I had purchased some drywall achors a few weeks ago in preparation for something like this so I grabbed them and tried to make them work. Nope, the holes were just slightly too large. Crap! I paced and fretted for a bit and then realized that I could just rotate the brackets a quarter turn and nobody would ever know since the brackets cover up the mounting screws. I grabbed the drill, drilled four smaller holes, inserted the new achors and mounted the brackets successfully! Yay! But then when I placed the glass shelf upon the brackets the holes were off by 1/16th of an inch. DOH! I thought for sure I had screwed up the wall entirely. But I tweaked and adjusted and I got them straightened out and the glass shelf installed. Finished. Whew.

Potty Break

Alas, here is a photo of our darn-near-completed bathroom project! Just last week, Michael and Tim came over to install our final Swanstone shower panel, so we get to shower with actual walls instead of sheets of plastic, yay!

You can see our swank hexagonal tile (we plotted out our pattern on paper and debated endlessly about how many black tiles we should have), and our subway tile with turquoise glass accent tile. The medicine cabinet is a '40s original, which we scored at City Salvage. There's some aging around the edges that looks wicked cool. The light above the mirror was an $11 bargain at Home Depot, and looks super retro.

The only things that remain are small details: toilet paper holder, towel bars, etc. But, the major things are done - I even took off the bathroom door and painted it.

Next project? Maybe painting my office. Pink!

Bathroom Tearout 4

We got our new floor tile put in today! Finally. Only took 3 tries to get the darn tile here. The Tile Shop failed to mention it was on back-order for over a month ("should take a week!") and then last week it was supposed to be in (it wasn't) and it didn't show up until today. I complained mightily (something like "You screwed up and now I ain't got no bathroom. I can't take a shower in my gol'durn toilet! whatcha gonna do for me?!") and got a discount. Should've been free to compensate us for traipsing around town using the facilities of our friends and families.
Oh, and we have partial (missing a panel) shower walls, too, made out of SwanStone (like Corian) instead of tile/grout (too hard to clean) or fiberglass (icky).

Bathroom Tearout 3

We were supposed to have a newly remodeled bathroom all finished upon return from our two-week Italian vacation. Instead, we got this. Nothing like being on the road (or on a plane) for 24+ hours and coming home to no bathing facilities. The tile shop failed to mention that the tile we picked has been on back-order for over a month even though they promised a one-week delivery and the shower panels (SwanStone) never got the rush-delivery applied to the order, even after three phone calls. So we have a toilet and some sheetrock. Oh boy. Well, we did get a new window, too.

Bathroom Tearout 2

Meghan's brother Austin came over today and helped me do the complete tearout (walls, ceilings, etc) of the bathroom. It was a laborious, dusty job, but we had fun(?) and got it finished just in time to go to Becca's birthday dinner at Fuji-ya. I was sorely exhausted. But I do love me a nice demolition job!

Bathroom Tearout 1

Apparently this is why the previous owners put up that nasty fiberglass shower surround over decent tile. Water leaking down through the window frame rotted the wall from the inside out. And they didn't even attempt to fix it! They just covered it up. Out of sight... out of their friggin' minds.