WHAT. A. YEAR.
This post is way overdue. 

Our third floor bathroom is one of the first projects we finished that we get to really enjoy, enjoy. Yes—safe, functioning electricity that isn’t 100 years old is nice and all, but who doesn’t want a remodeled bathroom?! We also decided to move our master bedroom to the third floor. Oh yeah, and we also built ourselves a walk-in closet off the new master bedroom—but I’ll write a little something about that later.

Where We Started

What you see below is essentially how this bathroom looked my entire life. When I was very young, there was a water leak that was repaired and finished off by pouring concrete rather than replacing the floor. Did I mention I grew up in this house? I think my dad did some wallpaper work at some point to dress it up a bit and probably replaced the lights above the vanity, but a remodel wasn’t something my parents, raising 3 kids, could manage. So besides some simple repair work, old pealing wallpaper, and super-basic upgrades, this bathroom hasn’t been touched since the day this house was built. 

It was mid-March and Hannah and I just started working from home after Covid shut down most of the world. And probably like many people, we decided to start tackling some home improvement projects. We decided to get this remodel started ourselves—which didn’t last long at all. Demo is the worst. I’ve gone through this type of old-home plaster-and-lathe demo before in my old rental, and all the trauma returned quickly. We weren’t going to be able to do this ourselves—nor did we want to. 

The Plan

Prior to finding a contractor I took some time learning SketchUp and designed a few layouts of the bathroom. My goal was to help visualize for prospective contractors what we were looking for. The design gave an idea of the general layout, where fixtures were to be placed, and help iron out any details or problems. For Hannah and I, the SketchUps helped us have “very calm discussions” about the types of fixtures we wanted, where we’d store toiletries, where towels hang, what kind of tile do we like, should we do wainscoting…sink options…counter tops…showers vs tubs…heated flooring…bidets (I’m still fighting for this one)…paint colors…metal finishes…shower heads…accent tile…medicine cabinet or mirror…faucet styles…hand towel holders…and maybe a few other things we needed to calmly agree on.

“The Ideal Bend”

What a disappointing thing to learn about. Multiple plumbers used the phrase “the ideal bend” when discussing moving the toilet. I tried to find a definition online for what this means, but the closest thing I could find is “the closet bend.” I thought “the ideal bend” had to do with how the waste pipe from the toilet connects to the main stack, however, I think that’s simply the sanitary tee. But I digress... 

We were hoping to move the toilet to the opposite side of the room, which would allow space for a double vanity…something fairly standard in master bathrooms today. It was possible to do, but it meant having to lower the ceiling in the room below for the pipes to run properly. Unfortunately, the room below is our other full bathroom, and doing this would cause too many issues in that room. So we stuck with the original layout. :(

The Design

Hannah led design on this project, but we both had a lot to say about everything, so there’s plenty of “collaboration.” We both agreed on a light vibe for this, and we really wanted it to feel fresh, simple, modern (but not too modern), and a little sophisticated. Hannah’s My Big Dumb House Pinterest is amazingly organized, and this really helped us find and organize our bathroom inspiration. 

We had a budget to stick to, so compromises had to happen. The biggest compromise came with our sink and medicine cabinet. Ultimately, we really like our choices but there were so many other options we had our eye on. We bought our vanity from Walmart, but it was available everywhere…Lowes, Home Depot, Amazon, Wayfair…we were surprised to see it on so many sites, and at so many different prices. At some point I started searching for products based on their image, and was able to find all the sites that sell the same product. If this link still works, here’s a Google image search of the vanity we bought available at all of these sites and more. 

The other compromise we made was on the medicine cabinet. We really wanted to do just a mirror, but because this bathroom is so small, with essentially no storage space, we had to find something to help keep the little things organized. The Kholer medicine cabinet we got is very functional, and stores all our basic items well.

Where did we not compromise? The DreamLine shower stall adds a layer of sophistication we were looking for. There’s not too many glass shower system options (that we’re aware of), but we’re really pleased with the design of this one. We also splurged on the marble flooring from Floor and Decor, and finally, our Hansgrohe shower system.

I want to give Floor and Decor a little shout out because we had a really nice experience there. Up to this point in our planning, we were doing a lot of shopping online, but this was one of our first in-person shopping trips where we worked with a designer at one of their showrooms. It turned out to be a very productive trip, and got us excited about the madness that was about to happen.

The Execution

We hired a contractor I used for work at my old rental. His prices were reasonable, and since I already had a relationship with him, I thought it would be a good option. I’m not going to call him out here, but let’s just say we’re not hiring him again. His guys did a good job up until the end. However, their finishing skills were not great. 

Crappy finishing details that stand out include a couple broken floor tiles (it was hard to notice them after install), a shower curb that’s not finished well, and some rubber moulding around the shower that was poorly cut. Beyond that, we felt like our general contractor never really kept a close eye on what his guys were doing. We were very involved with this process, down to communicating with the guys on-site some of the details of the project—something we feel our GC should have been on top of.

And finally the timeline. What started as a “10-day job” took almost 2 months to complete. We weren’t in a rush to finish this, but we didn’t appreciate being told, “just a few more days”, for about 4 weeks.

The Result

We learned a lot through this process. I think having the preliminary SketchUp designs were helpful in the beginning, but they could have used more detail to guide the workers through the project. If we had more experience, we would have had more stamina at the end for reviewing finishing details. Details such as the shower curb size, good niche sizes, or how high the tile should be on the wall. We were also buying some of the materials and finishes while construction was in process, something I think our contractor should have helped us more with in the beginning. Running to Lowes, Home Depot, or Floor and Decor after work to buy last minute things we didn’t have, multiple times, was exhausting. And finally, we need to be more clear, and firm, about our expectations for how the project should look when finished. Next time. Right?