She Only Wants Me For My Beadboard (Bathroom Renovation, Part Two)

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I know you all are curious to see how this bathroom renovation has turned out.

...so am I.

When it came to what to remove from the bathroom, it was a pretty easy answer. Everything 1980s, beige-y and salmon-y, had to go (GOODBYE TILE!). But, then we had a few options for what to do once that was out.

Original plan:
At first, we planned on removing all of the tile in the entire room (including the floor tile) and doing a white hexagonal penny tile on the walls with a white-and-black basket weave penny tile on the floor (floor like this image). It would have been true to the era of this house (1910s = penny tile and marble all over the place).

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A change of heart:
But, after removing the wall tile, we took a good look at the floor and realized we really didn't dislike it so much. It was recently put in by the previous owners, so it is in great shape, and it has some white and gray in it, so we know we will be able to brighten things up by whitening the walls. By keeping it, we could make our bathroom renovation significantly shorter/cheaper, and avoid having to remove the tub and toilet.

So, we decided to keep the floor tile. Huzzah for slightly less renovation work!

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But what about the walls?
Next, we debated the wall tile idea. As it turns out, "penny tile" is much more expensive than its name suggests. We realized we would be shelling out four to six hundred dollars on the wall tile, alone. We didn't have a specific budget in mind, but we did want to be as price-conscious as possible at every turn, because this isn't a "forever home," so we want to be smart about how much we invest into it.

So, when the idea of beadboard popped into my head, it was really the price and time factors that confirmed it as a brilliant idea. For $80, we could get enough beadboard to do the bathroom with extra to spare, and it would take us less time because we found large pre-fabricated slabs of imitation beadboard at Lowes.

$80 vs $600... there was really no contest. So, we revised the plan.

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Getting down to business!
Once the walls had been patched and smoothed, we picked up the beadboard and started cutting it. We still had a large piece of the drywall that the old tile was attached to, so here's picture that show the color difference. I was immediately satisfied that this change would brighten and visually "clean up" the bathroom.

My in-laws came over to help us cut the beadboard to size. We measured each wall and cut it to size as best we could.

Then, we would bring it up to the bathroom and put it in place. If it wasn't a perfect fit, we went back downstairs to trim a little off.

Once we were satisfied with the fit, we glued the back with Locktite Binding Glue. We did a line around the edges and then every 4-6 inches in between.

We continued this process around the room, matching the pieces up as best we could. We tried to keep the pattern continuous by cutting the pieces so that the vertical "grooves"were always the same distance apart, even when moving from one piece to the next.

Once every piece was in place, we could still see some edges where the pieces met up.

Finishing touches:

The next step was to caulk all of the places where the pieces met up, including corners and one spot on each of the longer walls. We also painted all of the walls and beadboard, so that the everything would be wipable. The beadboard came pre-finished, but it did scratch during the installation process. I also read in reviews that it would smudge easily if it hadn't been sealed well with a few coats of paint. So, paint we did. We used Satin Snow (a white with cool, gray tones) and got to work. 

Once this process was finished, we could already see some major change in the bathroom. Next up was finding the right trim to put on top of the beadboard, cutting it to size and painting it, and dealing with the mirror and countertop! More to come... 

Bye Bye Bye to 80s Tile - Bathroom Renovation Part 1

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If you saw my upstairs house tour, you know there was one room, in particular, that needed some serious help. The upstairs bathroom, while technically functional, had been renovated (maybe in the 80s or 90s?) in a way that made it totally stand out from the rest of the house. From the fat upper trim to the pink-and-cream tile everywhere, we were determined to tackle this early on so that we could enjoy the bathroom.

Here is what we were working with at first:

For some reason, this tile simply looks dirty to me. Even after I'd given it a good old fashioned scrubbing, it had a grungy, grime-covered look to me. Not exactly what you want to see in a bathroom, where you're supposed to be getting clean.

On top of just being dirty looking, awfully colored tile, it was put everywhere. Even the countertop was tiled, which is one of my pet peeves in homes because it is so dang difficult to clean, and it's really easy to stain tile grout with makeup. They also brought this tile all the way around the walls of the room.

So, stage one of this bathroom remodel was to get rid of everything bad in the room, i.e. wall tile.

First, I removed the medicine cabinet/mirror that was hung above the sink. This was pretty simple - just a process of removing all visible screws and pulling the medicine cabinet out of the wall to reveal the lathe behind it.

The next step was to remove the trim. It had been caulked on top, so I used a box cutter to score a line in the caulk. This loosens the grip there so that the trim can be pulled off more easily.

Then, I used a chisel and hammer to get underneath the trim from above until it was a bit removed from the wall.

Occasionally, switching to a bar helped me get more leverage against the wall.

Once there was a visible gap between the trim and wall, I pulled it off with my gloves on.

We weren't sure if we were going to re-use this trim or not, so we wanted to keep it intact and orderly - just in case. I used a permanent marker to write the location of each piece on the back, to avoid confusion later on if we decided to use them.

Once the trim was off, we also removed the light plates so that we could get to the tile underneath them. Then, we got to work on the tile, itself.

We used a chisel and hammer (and occasionally the bar) to remove the tile from the wall. The chisel was placed at a very slight angle, almost flat against the wall, and pushed up against the side or top of a piece of tile. We hit the end of the chisel with a hammer until the tile pieces came loose.

Note: If you are doing this, wear gloves! Chipped tile can be very sharp, and it's easy to get cuts all over your hands, so wear some leather work gloves for protection.

The first wall (above) was fairly easy to remove the tile from. Pieces fell off easily, and some even fell off in pairs.

As we worked our way around the room, however, we ran into some problems. Whoever did this bathroom remodel (clearly quite a while ago) had done each wall a little differently.

In some areas, the "1980s remodelers" put a piece of drywall up against the plaster wall and glued the tile to the drywall. Where this was the case, the tile was ripping the drywall, but this wasn't much of an issue - we simply removed the drywall piece along with the tile, revealing the smooth, intact plaster wall behind it (see photo above).

In other places, the "1980s remodelers" skipped the drywall and simply glued the tile directly to the plaster. Where this was the case, removing the tile caused the plaster to rip and crumble, revealing the lathe behind it (see photo below, and my terrified face).

So, we ended up with a mostly clean break where there had been drywall, but one wall looked awful and would clearly need to be repaired (hmm... guess which wall?).

We considered doing this ourselves, but ended up calling someone to come help us hang and screw in the drywall. After completely botching the removal, it seemed wise to get a little help. He hung the drywall and then mudded and sanded around them to make the patching look smooth.

Next, we got started on installing what would be covering up those walls. 

What do you think it was?!

My American Four Square - Upstairs House Tour

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I totally fell off the face of the earth for the last week due to a bathroom renovation that is driving me nuts and eating up a lot of my time.

Forgive me. Pictures coming soon. That makes up for my absence, right?

Now, picking up where the downstairs house tour left off... [If you missed it, click here to read it!]

As you head upstairs, the staircase turns inward and there is a beautiful stained glass window. The clear shape in the middle of this window mimics the mirror above the fireplace.

Stained glass window in stairwell

To the left, at the top of the stairs, is what we are currently using as a master bedroom.

Master bedroom

The floors in the bedrooms upstairs are in pretty poor condition because they haven't been refinished as recently as the downstairs floors. I have mixed feelings on this - it does give the upstairs a nice patina and historic look, but it isn't the most comfortable on bare feet, so we will probably cover any issues with rugs and eventually refinish it.

That said, many of these rooms have wonderful natural light. This part of the city is on a hill, so we are able to get extra light on this side of the house because all of the houses East of us are on lower ground. The natural light is what I love most about this room. It wakes me up softly every morning and makes it easier to get out of bed because there is no avoiding the fact that the day has begun!

There is also a door to the third floor from this bedroom. The door is around the bend to the left, by the window that faces East, and it leads up a stairwell to a well-lit and fairly large third floor that is currently empty.

Office #1

Across from the master bedroom is what my husband is using as his office. It's also on the side of the house with gorgeous natural light, so it will be a great space for him to work in (he works remotely, so he's in there all day). This room has a neat shape, and is very bright and spacious.

Office #2

Next to my husband's office is what is currently my office. It already looks significantly different than it does in this picture (posts coming soon), after a curtain change and a serious case of paint. In this picture, the walls are covered in a textured wallpaper that gives this room more of a beige look which I didn't care for... but the texture of the wallpaper ended up looking very cool painted! ;-)

Guest Room

Across from my office is the guest room. This is a view of the corner where the door to the hallway and door to the closet are. This room was pretty dark, due to some black out curtains, but we have swapped them out to give the room a brighter feel. Still awaiting furniture, which we are retrieving from Chicago this weekend.

And finally... drumroll please... the upstairs bathroom. This has been the bane of my existence for the past week because we are renovating it. The previous owners started the project, but now we are picking up the baton. It looks like one of the owners renovated it quite a while ago and it ended up having a very dated feel due to the wall tile, among other things. 

Stay tuned for a more updated (but still era friendly) bathroom post! 

^Go ahead and wave goodbye to that wall tile because it's not invited to stick around.

:)