bathroom gut

Over the long 4th of July weekend, we gutted the upstairs bathroom! A lot of people were surprised to hear that we were gutting it. Really, it looked pretty good! The tile was updated and none of it was broken like in the kitchen. However, it's not really the look I'm going for and most importantly, the tub was no longer in the best of shape and to get a big old cast iron tub out, you pretty much have to tear up the tile around it. Plus we suspected the plumbing may not be in the greatest shape. Turns out we were right. I felt a little silly before, but now I'm definitely glad we gutted everything. I hate to think that we would have been living with everything in the condition that it was in under all the nice tile.

Here are some before shots.

There are some cute little built ins and the tiny, tiny little vanity. I will probably replace that with a pedestal sink because there is plenty of storage in the built-ins. I also think it will look more "period".

So I love the built ins and I love the bead board! That stayed for sure. And the toilet has its own little private room! 

 Here is the after!

The tile was really hard to get off of the wall. But it did reveal some water damage to the far left beam. It gets a little gross from here, so if you don't want to read, then you've been warned :)

Here is the toilet right before we took the tile out. Then it gets gross. We took the tile out and then the toilet.

That is the water damaged floor. If you click on it, it will make it larger. If you want to actually see that much detail. The white wad is a towel, to clog it because of the lovely smell of 90 years of "human DNA" as my dad loves to call it. The wood is rotted, which looks like it isn't the first time, because that lighter wood is new that someone probably used to replace another series of rotted planks. We are taking out that old stack out and replacing it so that we are sure it won't leak anymore. And of course replacing the wood.

I would also like to note that I, along with my Dad, carried out that lovely toilet, with a trash bag wrapped around the bottom of it. I believe carrying a toilet that has been connected to a 90 year old stack down a flight out stairs and through the house to the backyard makes me an official home renovator.

And I even had a photo taken for evidence that I took the toilet out. I mean I, of all people, carried a nasty toilet out of my house. I wanted evidence that I actually did it. And didn't drop it.

But that evidence is now in the dump, buried under thousands of pounds of junk. Why?? Because my Dad went to the dump a couple of days later, went to Menards, and tried to call me when he realized he had no phone. The iPhone 5S phone I finally bought him this past Christmas after he had kept his iPhone 3S for four years was no where to be seen.

It had fallen off at the dump and into the trash. He went back and the great people there helped him search for 40 minutes, 30 minutes past closing. They called it and even heard it ringing, but they were never able to find it. Add that to the casualties of this home renovation. So now my poor Dad is back to his old, archaic iPhone.

Now we have started on the downstairs bedroom and its transformation. So much is happening, much quicker than I thought it would! It's exhausting but I'm so grateful that at this point that we are ahead of schedule! Let's hope it stays that way. I already need to write another post :)

-katie