Master Bathroom - Before and During

"Do you hate your life?"

"I love my wife," he replies. 

Always the same answer when I ask the question. Evasion 101. But for reals, John has many reasons to hate his life. I actually had to give him a haircut Saturday night to cut out all the primer that was sprayed across his head. Because that's right, folks. The contractor said we needed to hire someone to come in and sand all the old already-removed popcorn ceilings and then prime them all with oil-based Kilz before the drywallers would skim coat. But, why hire someone when you're married to a free someone? Glad we agree. Deadline is Wednesday and he still has three bedrooms to go. But otherwise this husband's doing me real bad proud. And with a surprisingly nice attitude. When I went to Sutherland's to buy a respirator for this awesome experience I was oh so tempted to be cheap and get the $10 one. But I figured it was bad enough that I manipulated him into this project, I should atleast splurge, buy a good quality one, and give him the chance to smell food again. Because 2400 square feet of ceilings with Kilz kills you. That's where they got the name. No joke. Say goodbye to the ability to use your nose again for atleast a week. Oh, and say goodbye to a half inch of your hair.

Anyway, while John has been rolling his heart out on the ceilings, I decided to tackle the one room in the entire house that didn't have popcorn ceilings and is thus not waiting on skim coating. Basically, it means that this "master bath" (or for us - the family room bath) is the only room we could theoretically bust out in its entirety before move-in day. So down came the wallpaper, drapes, medicine cabinet, sconce, and sink. But not without a few - ahem, a lot - of hiccups.

Just to get your bearings, below is a shot of the room on the first floor that leads you to this bathroom. Clearly, the previous owner's favorite color was yellow. It's EV-ER-Y-WHERE.

We decided to stay with a pedestal sink and because we already had it in the house and it was still uninstalled, we went with the Kohler sink I originally bought for the powder bath. The original pedestal sink wreaked of outdatedness. It's hard to put your finger on what makes something look old, but this had Goodwill written all over it. Plus, like all the other faucets, it leaked.

With that in mind and with a swoon-worthy sconce on its way in the mail any day, here was my game plan. We're keeping the square tile because it's in relatively good condition, is white (thank you Jesus) and would be hella expensive to tear out given we discovered they tiled over old tile.

Then, I stumbled upon a great mirror on sale at Wilson Lighting on Saturday. And I headed out to Nell Hills yesterday and forced myself to finally commit and buy some fabric to make a shower curtain. So, this is the direction we're headed:

In an effort to stay within budget and make things easier I reused all the paint samples I bought for the exterior of the house. I have a thing for gray. It's hard for me to force myself to paint a room anything but some shade of gray. At first, the seven options (one not pictured) overwhelmed me. But thankfully just holding up the fabric I'd already bought clearly eliminated several options. Sometimes with the way the cards fall, it seems easier to pick a paint color for a room first. But I swear, having a fabric or a rug as your anchor makes everything go so much more smoothly. It's a hundred times easier to find a paint color to match a particular fabric than it is to find fabric to match a paint color. If you hear nothing else, hear that!

The colors obviously read nothing like they do in person, but you can atleast see the spectrum of gray I was sorting through. In the end, Sherwin Williams' 'amazing gray' was the winner.

And below is the edge of my super exciting new mirror.

But now for the problems. Taking off the giant medicine cabinet revealed a huge patch that had never been properly mudded or sanded. It had huge puck marks from where the mirror was screwed in and having never been painted, the whole patch sits a little lower than the rest of the wall. PLUS, they stopped the tile to go around the medicine cabinet. Now a non-pregnant, money-to-blow (or maybe just good) renovator would definitely patch in new tile AND skim coat the wall. This woman, however, did one layer of mud and called it a day. If it drives us crazy, we'll fix it some other day. For now, I just want ONE room to be finished.

Except that as you may have noticed, when we took down the Hollywood style, horizontal, 4 bulb sconce, we discovered that the electrical box isn't centered over the vanity. It was way to the right of center, in fact. So there went any visions I had of nearly finishing this room in one day. We now needed an electrician to slide it over.

Oh but there was more fun in store for us. After a half hour of grunting, John finally pried the old sink out and unlike in the other two bathrooms, they actually cut the tile around the pedestal. Of course our new pedestal had a different footprint. Because why would this process be easy? And just for kicks, neither the sconce's electric box, the plumbing OR the pedestal footprint line up. Very bizarre. And very annoying.

Well this was the part in the evening where when I asked John one more time if he hated his life, I could tell that he was at his breaking point. Something had to give. 

So here's the new plan. I'm going to chip away at the broken tiles tomorrow and find new 4 inch white tile at Home Depot. I'm counting on it not being difficult to match (please!). Then we'll line the new vanity up under where the sconce is already wired to go - and eliminate hiring an electrician. The sink won't be square in front of where the plumbing comes out of the wall, but again, something has to give. I really don't think you'll notice given how small the bathroom is and how confined any viewpoint you have is while you're in there. And really all the water lines will be more or less tucked behind there to where it won't probably matter.

That said, I went ahead and painted the first coat of Amazing Gray on the walls. And because I'm me, I made John prop the mirror up so I could get a taste of the future.

Without the sconce the lighting right now is terrible. But you can kinda sorta see the shower curtain fabric. In person the main fabric is all but identical to the wall color, so don't be fooled by how dark it's coming off.

And only the bottom quarter of the curtain will be this cinnamon linen. I have high hopes to track down a really killer gold rod that I saw used in a store showroom as a room divider for the shower rod. I asked the owner of the store where they got it and she couldn't remember but gave me the number of someone to call who might know. Fingers crossed. It'd be a game changer in here.

So that's where we are as of now. Only, I'm afraid that might be where we are for a good bit, because it dawned on me this morning that my sewing machine is in our POD in a very inaccessible spot. So unless I can borrow a machine, showering might be a bit breezy in there for while. 

And speaking of the POD, we did get out move-in date. September 18th. Yikes. I hope this baby can hang tight inside for another five weeks...

...and I hope this bathroom project is downhill from here.