97% done!

Here are some pictures of our recent progress!!
We went a bit crazy in the last few days of getting it fully functional before family arrived:



I was so happy when we had finally made our last major purchase for the bathroom...



Adam really wanted to get a "comfort height" (a.k.a handicap) toilet. It's 2 inches taller than normal toilets. He loves it, but my feet almost dangle from it because it's so tall!



And here's the (nearly) finished product!!







Inside the shower is a nice niche for bottles and soap.



I think the tiling is my favorite part of all of it :)



And every blogger has to have one of these shots, right?



The roomy storage in the medicine cabinet and baskets allowed us to free up 2-3 shelves in one of our hall closets.



Close-up of the faucet.



This picture reminds me of an intriguing question I read in a blog post a while back:

Are you a "sink" or a "faucet" Christian?

“Sink Christians” view salvation like they would a sink. The water of salvation flows into the sink so that Christians can soak up all the benefits: eternal life, assurance in the present, strength in times of trial. Those who adopt this mindset concentrate solely on what the Bible says God has done and will do for them.

“Faucet Christians” view salvation differently. They look at the world as the sink and themselves as the faucet. The blessings of salvation flow to them in order to flow through them out to the wider world. They rightly see that the Bible describes salvation as something that God not only does for them, but also through them.

I know I definitely need to have more of a "wider world" perspective and not just in my own church or community of friends, but in the world I bump shoulders with on the street, in the store, on the train, etc.



I think we'll take a break from remodeling for a little while and start working on being better "faucets"!


**** Update!!*****
I realized I didn't add a "before" picture, so here it is!! The layout is the same, but otherwise quite different, huh!?



The other 3% includes some touch-up painting and building the baseboard heating covers! (same thing that's still not done in the kitchen!!) We're also thinking about getting a curved shower curtain rod :)

making progress

It's starting to look like a bathroom!!



After installing new insulation in the outer walls, we put up drywall and cement board around the shower.



Then we had to mud/Spackle all the joints. Peter came over and helped us for a while.



And Erica and the kids came to hang out for a quick lunch/guitar hero :)



Thanks again, Hangs, for all your help!!! You guys are the best!



Soooo many decisions to make about colors and tile...



The day we were going to start tiling (Wednesday) we realized we were WAY short on tile, so we had to wait till Friday to get more in. Finally, this past Saturday we started in on tiling. Once we got up about halfway, we realized the accent pieces we picked out did not go at all with the wall tile! So back to home depot we went to pick out more. (The problem was the tile we ordered has some variation in color from what we picked out in the store...)

Here's Adam cutting tile in the snow on Sunday!! It's a wet, yucky, and dangerous job, but he's doing great!



While he measured and cut tile, mixed mortar, and made dozens of trips up and down two flights of stairs, I was upstairs spreading mortar and laying the tile. Here's a sneak peek of it:



The wall tile is almost done, we'll just need to finish the shelf and grout. Then, we move on to the floor tile.



It's coming along slowly but surely! Our goal now is to finish before the warmer weather of spring/summer arrives for good!! (We got snow this past week, so we're doing ok!) ;)

demolished.

It's been a while... but we've been hard at work on the bathroom.

The last shot you saw was of the awful tile in the shower that did not want to come out. Well, instead of fighting it, we decided to take the entire wall out!





Because the wall was cement/plaster/wire mesh, Adam had to use his angle grinder to cut through it. Using it made a HUGE dust cloud with basically 0.0 inch visibility that was no fun. Poor Adam came out every time covered in dust head to toe. This is him going in...



Next, we discovered that our lovely pink tub was CAST IRON!! So Adam took a 16lb sledgehammer to it one night and we both carried it out in 2 hefty pieces.





The toilet is gone and now we're completely finished with demolition which is a great feeling.



Since then, Adam has been perfecting his plumbing skills and entirely re-plumbed the sink and shower.





Under the tub was a uneven mess of wood and cement so we had to experiment with some filler products. FYI, "self-leveling" is the way to go!! (We figured that out after 3 trips to home depot and 4 to menards.)



Just this weekend Adam started framing a shower niche, putting up drywall and test fitting the tub. I wasn't much help- I have a big proposal due on Wednesday so it was a working weekend for me :(



YAY for drywall! (this is where the recessed medicine cabinet will go)



We're getting there...
Our goal is to be finished by April 8th. Think we can do it??

in demolition...

We dove into remodeling our bathroom a couple weekends ago!







And boy what a tough project it is- quite possibly worse than the kitchen! We are still in demolition phase and this is why...




(This was the only the progress we made ALL last weekend!)



The tile on the walls around the tub was NOT meant to be taken off!! The tiles are set in mortar on plaster walls which has this metal mesh built into it meaning it is nearly impossible to tear it out!

But we are trudging along one chip at a time and building fabulous arm muscles!

Here are a few photos that are serving as our inspiration for how our new bathroom will look eventually. (I look at them daily to remind myself why we're doing this to ourselves!!)


[This Old House]


[This Old House]



[BHG]

That's all for now. We'll keep you posted on our progress!