Bathroom Update

 In late June, Ben and I had a little "whiteboarding session" in his office. We were looking at our finances and making plans- things we needed to save for, home projects on our list, and trips to do. The home project list had several things on it and we weighed the pros and cons of each project, the cost and which should take first priority. Ben had said last spring that he still felt burnt out from our huge remodel 5 years ago, to which I responded that 5 years is more than enough time and we needed to start tackling some of these! The conclusion of this little meeting is that a little bathroom update would be our first priority.

The upstairs bathroom had always been annoying to me. It was in good enough shape when we bought the house (unlike the rest of the house that needed more immediate attention). All we did to it before moving was paint. The toilet wasn't moved when they sprayed the walls, so when we replaced the toilet a few years ago you could see bits of bright pink paint left from the previous owner. I'd never gotten around to getting all the hardware for the vanity. The tile in the floor was broken and the grout was coming up. And the light fixture in this room had always bothered me, it was just ugly. So we made a little plan to update that stuff "when we had some time". Well, about a week later Ben declared it was TIME. He could not have picked a busier week. It was right in the middle of me teaching swim lessons, he's crazy busy at work, it was right before the 4th of July (the next weekend) and our camping trip (the weekend after). But the motivation had struck so Ben declared it time to tackle the project. And since I wanted it done so badly, I pretty easily agreed.

I had planned to do a lot of research and shopping when picking stuff for the bathroom, and all of a sudden we were just doing it! Ben stopped by Home Depot on his way home from work and FaceTimed me some options for tile and we were off! Chase and Davis demoed the whole floor! They loved it! It was darling to see Davis being so helpful!

 This is the cracked tile- you could pull all these pieces out and put them back together like a puzzle. It was super annoying (and sharp).

 This is the ugly light fixture. I don't love this vanity, but we couldn't afford to replace it. I thought if we updated the rest of the bathroom I wouldn't mind it as much.

 The new floor! This took Ben (with some help from Will) a whole day to do. It turned out so beautiful, I kind of want to replace several other floors in my house with this tile now!

 After the tile was done we pulled out the old light and mirror and I painted. I agonized over this color, trying to decide if it was too dark (it was darker than I anticipated). Turns out I love the color! Once that was done we put in new baseboards (the old ones had some water damage from bathtub splashes. Once they were in and newly painted, it made the existing trim and doors look dingy, so I painted them as well.

 It was easy to install the new light fixture and mirror. Then Ben replaced the whole outlet and light switch. The old ones had been painted and chipped and just looked terrible. Ben rewired it all like a champ and it looks so much better to have clean, white outlets there!

We finally put new hardware on the vanity! It all made such a difference! The vanity still isn't my favorite, but with everything else updated it looks so much better! I love this bathroom now. Hudson said "This bathroom used to look so 90s, now it totally looks 2020!" I got new towels and shower curtain at Target and overall the look is so much sleeker, more modern and cleaner than before!

For the tiny budget we had to do this project, I think the result was awesome! It took us about two weeks and $500 and some elbow grease, but I think it turned out great! I'm so glad we did it!