the bathroom is done!

A sigh of relief, almost exactly 6 months later, our bathroom renovation is complete.

The lovely before:

In this first post we ripped down walls, fixed a rotten spot in the floor, and put up the new drywall.

Goodbye ugly weird walls!

In the next post, Doug and Dad put up the new shower liner and faucet with handheld shower

The next post Doug installed the new light. And I must have started painting the cabinets because I see them in the background pics.

The next phase we paid our friend to do the mudding for us. I wish we would have got the nails in a little deeper under the drywall because already you can see nail head outlines! Sheesh, I guess nothings perfect.

Next we painted.

And note my nice white repainted cabinets. The painting involved many detailed touch ups here and there, and I even painted 3 more layers later on the upper cabinets to make them look bright white. Lots of work.

Then we prepped the floor for tile.

At the end of that post we had also re-installed the vanity with a new top.

Then we put in the tile! and a new toilet.

After that I debated on shower curtains and bought/returned 6+ curtain and rug combos before I finally found something I liked.

The next step were all the finishing touches.

Doug went to Menard's Black Friday and got 4 6-panel doors. I spent the next week painting them with 4 coats each to give our bathroom and 3 bedrooms nicer more polished looking doors.

We put up ceiling trim, and floor trim a week later

I spent hours caulking around every bit of trim and around the cabinets and shower liner

This last weekend Doug re-grouted a crack by the tub (which cracked again, so it's gonna stay that way!), and grouted the wall tiles behind the toilet

And besides still needing to scrape a few little things off the tub and re-do a couple chips in the tub's glaze, which there is no rush to do, we are done!

welcome to our bathroom

I am especially proud of my caulking in the what-was huge cracks around the vanity since our walls weren't perfectly square

And found a toothbrush holder to fit Doug's massive electric one and a soap dispenser at Bed, Bath & Beyond that nicely corresponds to our brushed nickle fixtures

The final winning curtain was this one from Target. I know Doug said 'no flowers' but I think he appreciated I tried valiantly in the previous 6 attempts, and he didn't want to go on his own hunt. I liked this one because it was slightly off white so it wouldn't clash with the white cabinets and it had grey, blue and green accents. And I loved this soft silver-mist floor rug from Target too. We went with a silver-gray grout thinking that it would hide mildew or other such stains, but didn't realize it would be so hard to find a rug that looked good with it too.

One more time the before:

And after:

Yay!!

When we started I never thought it would have taken 6 months, even with all the help from Dad and Mom and Thor too. I don't think it ended up being that cheap after all the supplies and endless trips to Lowes for this-and-that. I think we spent under $2k, but probably very close to it. But I am very glad to have a pretty new bathroom that feels much more open and nice. It was worth it. We learned a lot along the way, but we can both say we're glad it's done!