The Bathroom Renovation: "while we are at it..."

When we bought the house there were a few things that needed to happen in order for us to move in, and while replacing the cat hair carpets were important, another was installing a shower into the upstairs suite bathroom. The bathroom renovation was completed in a couple of stages. We started discussing how to tile the shower, and that is when we said, "well, while we are at it...", we should replace the pink tub.

Stage 1:

L-R: The original, partially tiled, fully tiled and usable!, prep for stage 2.

This part of the renovation was the necessary installation with the added on bathtub replacement (and toilet too) leaving the original flooring and vanity with the wonderful pink sink and countertop intact. While we had great hopes of doing the tiling ourselves, in order to get all the other renovations done we brought in a tiler to do the shower. We spent the first two weeks living at our house and showering a few blocks away at my parents place.

As we were tying up our renovation commitments with the bank we discovered that we needed to replace the sink and tap as per our original plan. And that is when the words only said in renovations came about, "...while we are at it..." we should replace the floor and the vanity; it should only take a weekend?


Stage 2:

L-R: Baseboards ripped off, Dad and Husband tearing apart, demolished, myself in the almost put back together room.

What you are unable see in the final "after" photo of the bathroom is how wonderful the tile feels. You see while we were "while we are at it"-ing the flooring and the vanity, we then had the discussion, "while we are at it", we should install in-floor heating. And while this part of the process only added a few more hours and a fair amount more to the budget... it was SO worth it. We used the ditra-heat Schluter system to install and the boys were very excited and amazed by the process. While I didn't participate in the actual installation, I did watch the video and it does seem quite slick. If you are planning on installing in-floor heating this may be the way to go.

The vanity was a bit of an adventure for us. When looking at the different options for an 82" counter, with approximately a 50" vanity the costs were insane. So we decided to figure out a different option. With the recent release of the Skelton Ikea system, we chose to use the 15" shallow cabinets as our vanity. We had about 21" of room to work with, so for counter support as well as cabinet attachment we installed the cabinets offset by a few inches from the wall with a support bar in behind.

All in all, the Ikea countertop and cabinets worked extremely well! We ended up having to upgrade the drawers to the higher end drawers as the overhang of the counter extends a bit further than normal, but for such a small space we managed to balance the maximization of storage, and minimized the cost.

For me this image above shows the drastic changes that have been made. My sister thinks that if we ever sell the house we should post the original photo in the bathroom just so whoever purchases it can appreciate the changes. I am hoping that the choices we made while updated at "modern" still have a classic feel and won't follow the same trend lines as the pink fixtures. 

Here is our favourite little guy enjoying the almost finished state of the bathroom (just a few paint touch ups to do!).

Supply Suppliers:

• Toilet: Lowes
• Tub: Rona
• Tile- Shower: Tile Town
• Tile- Floor: Tile Town
• Ditra-Heat: Tile Town
• Sink: Local re-use store
• Faucet: Home Depot
• Vanity: IKEA
• Counter: IKEA
• Light Fixture: original