The team started on the upstairs bathroom last Monday. They’ve been making a lot of progress over the past week and a half, so I thought it was a good opportunity to share some photos of where we’re at.

First, let’s revisit where we started:

Once the bathroom cabinets were cleared out, Oliver couldn’t help but seize the opportunity to fully explore every nook and cranny of the room! I also snapped a few final before photos of the room in a widescreen format to give you a better idea of the layout. You can see additional before photos here, along with more details on what we’re planning on doing in this space.

This was the end of the first day of demo. The team needed to remove tile before they could remove the lath and plaster to bring the room down to the studs. You can see that we had some water damage where the tub was, but fortunately it was limited to the floors, wood we were removing, and insulation that would be coming out anyway. Apparently all of that insulation you can see in this image was wet. We’re incredibly lucky that the exterior wall and studs were all in good condition.

After tearing out the linoleum flooring, we discovered that our red oak floors had originally extended into the bathroom — as you can see in the opening image of this post. It’s a shame that the wood wasn’t in good shape and it had been patched in a few spots with plywood. I would have happily pivoted my design plans to have hardwood in here!

We also learned that our floors were hilariously uneven. Overall the subfloor was in good condition and they just needed to replace some of the subfloor that was next to the toilet due to some rot. After putting in the new board, they leveled the floor with various heights of materials to even it before installing the backer board for our future tile.

Here’s where we were at yesterday morning. We’re going to have two built-in cabinets flank the shower and they were able to frame the new one to match the original within an eighth of an inch in width. Also, removing that counter on the right side immediately added so much more room to the space.

The team is working on roughing in the tub and shower plumbing today. They’re also working on replacing the window that will be in the shower. We bought a new window that’s half the height, but the same width. This will allow us to keep the natural light that we love in there, but offers more privacy than that frosted window cling did. We chose a window that won’t open to ensure that the space remains watertight. We’ll be keeping the window at the left of this photo. It was important to me to save the original trim of the remaining window and the door, and we’re incredibly lucky that the old wood didn’t crack or break during demo.

This is one of my favorite additions: an electrical outlet inside the built-in cabinet! This is going to allow us to charge our toothbrushes in the cabinet and not on the counter! Seriously, if you’re doing a remodel of any sort, think of those ugly yet practical things that take up space and figure out a solution for them. Each contractor that we spoke with to get a quote thought this was brilliant and was going to suggest it to future clients. I should really get a commission. 😉

I’ll check in again once we’ve made more progress!

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Our bathroom renovations begin next week! While we’re starting with the powder room, I wanted to give you a look at the main bathroom this week. Today’s post is the “before” tour of what it looks like now, along with some “before-before” images of what it looked like during our inspection and after we closed on the house. On Friday, I’m sharing the full product list of what’s going in the space!

Now, I want you to know that while it would have been great to do a remodel for aesthetics alone, that wasn’t exactly the case here. About 18 months ago, we had water leaking from the bathroom into the kitchen below. Fortunately it wasn’t an issue with the plumbing, but years of water seeping around poor caulking that led to the damage. Additionally (as you’ll see below), there’s a window in the shower with original wood trim. We’re covering it with plastic for the time being, but it’s not the correct way to do this by any stretch of the imagination. And to make this room even more obnoxious, we have an old drum trap which barely drains to the point where we’re standing in ankle-deep water after a shower. So, we will be gutting the entire room in order to find and address all of the water damage, and correct someone else’s poor DIY attempt at a renovation.

Here’s a photo from the doorway and a pretty good overview of what we’re working with. The room is large at about 8′ x 8.5′. I love that built-in, but the wood isn’t in great shape. So, we’ll be flanking the centered tub with two built-ins that will echo the style of this original one. There will be white subway tile going to the ceiling in the shower, we’ll be putting the plumbing into the wall, and we’ll continue with tile around the room midway up the wall (approximately 48″ high). I’ll be using this paint color again for the top half. (The paint is reading brighter here with these iPhone photos than it does in real life. IRL it’s more subdued.) The linoleum flooring will be replaced with marble hexagon tile. I really want the renovation to be classic and appropriate for a 1929 home and most of what’s in here now isn’t original to the house.

Going in the room a bit further, there’s a window to the left that will be staying and we’ll keep the original trim. We’re also keeping the original trim of the door frame, and we’ll copy the trim style for the two new built-ins to make it look like it was originally part of the house.

We’re not going to move any of the plumbing since that’s entirely too far out of our budget. Fortunately, though, I like the location of the fixtures in the room. So, the sink will be staying where it is as will the toilet. (Fun fact, our toilet isn’t level. I kept thinking it was a little tilted for the past few years and finally got the level from the basement to prove myself right.) We’ll be doing a pivot-style mirror above a vanity so it can “float” in front of the tiled wall. We’ll also replace those sconces with new ones. I absolutely love the flattering light of side sconces by a mirror. We’re not going to go with any recessed lighting in the room as I think that looks too modern for an old house. We’ll have a ceiling fixture, the sconces, and light from two windows.

Here’s the window that’s inside of the shower. I love the light that it brings in, but there’s no doubt that this isn’t water tight. We’ll replace it with a new window that’s the same width, but half the height for privacy. I can’t wait to finally get rid of that second clingy shower curtain!

On the other side of the tub, you’ll see this long counter that extends into the shower area.

Plus, there’s another mirror. Chances are that this was someone’s makeup table. The tub likely didn’t have a shower attachment originally, thus the window and its wood frame. This is very clearly all being ripped out. The tub is smaller than a standard-size bathtub, so we will be replacing it with a slightly larger one. The second built-in will go on the right of it. We’ll put a towel bar where the mirror is now.

I probably should have staged some of this photos, huh? Oh well, there’s all my junk and the reason why I’m eager for a second built-in cabinet.

This collection of snapshots are from shortly after we closed on the house. It’s been fine and serviceable up until the water damage, and some minor cosmetic changes like adding paint and replacing the fluorescent light fixture made a big difference. The photo in the lower left here cracks me up, though. It’s so illustrative of the mess we purchased with the horrible wood stain on the floor in the hall, the crappy paint job, and a broken glass doorknob that was taped together.

But this, my friends, is the crème de la crème:

This is what it looked like when we first toured the house and put in an offer. What can I say, the house has good bones and we fortunately were able to look beyond this horror show. 😉 (I cropped out the questionable stains on the floor towel for you.)

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