The New Bathroom

I know that the centering of words under these photos is disturbing to some, and I apologize.  I have struggled to get photos to be in some semblance of order.  The bathroom renovation is done. The shelving is up in the new storage area.  It would be to the far right inside the door here.

Just in front of us, is where the big garden tub used to be with the two huge mirrors surrounding the tub.  Now you see a portion of the end wall of the new shower unit.  

Obviously, you can see the new vanity and the new mirror that I ordered to go above that.  And you can clearly see the new wood flooring that we chose to go down in this space.  We guesstimated how much we needed and came out with enough for the room and the storage space with half a box leftover.  The contractor said we'd done really well in figuring that out which was nice to hear, because at the time, we didn't know that we were getting the new storage space!

I didn't realize that John had taken up the two throw type rugs and hung them on the line.  He so seldom uses the clothesline for anything anymore...  The bathmat and the other small rug of the same sort both faded.  The bigger rug didn't.  One day soon I'll replace them.

I didn't do anything to make this room look decorated at the time I was making pictures of it.  The picture to the far left has been hung on the wall.  The white plastic in the near left of the picture has been removed.  The towels are now neatly stacked on the storage shelves and the bench has been moved back under the window.   We just rehung the curtain today with the new rod I'd ordered.  I have a small wastebasket and a palm plant where the bench is in the photo above.

The new shower unit proved to be a small issue.  We thought we were ordering a 3pc shower unit and drain pan.  Nope.  We ordered a 9-piece unit.  That took the contractor and his men by surprise and required replanning the whole installation.  We had planned to build only partial walls to help enclose the shower but the way the shower walls had to go together meant we needed to have the support of a fully framed set of walls.  So, we not only had to frame up an end wall where there had been an open space, but the other two walls had to be fully framed out for support.

Because the old tub had an end drain, we naturally chose a shower base with an end drain, only to discover that in fact, there was a drain centered under the old tub and we might have avoided some plumbing issues if we'd had a center drain in our shower base.   And because of the way the shower walls had to be done we had to drop a section of ceiling over the tub.

And then because of the construction of the new shower walls, we had to place the handles a wee bit lower, and the shower head a great deal higher.  It all looks fine, and it works wonderfully well, but there was a lot of scratching of heads and refiguring things involved in putting in this shower that no one really planned on.

What you can't see here is that above that shower unit is open with a dropped ceiling built in well above it.  And the walls above the shower are also covered in beadboard that has been painted white.  The shower doors were meant to be a future purchase, but we were told that because we'd provided so much of the necessary materials, we had room to spare in our budget for the doors and to go ahead and order them.  

John and I initially wanted these marble look panels but the price was a good bit higher than those that looked like subway tile.  However, I told John I was tired of seeing subway tiles in every makeover and that I'd rather have plain white walls which he determined looked cheap.  He decided to spring for the pricier marble looking panels.  I'm glad he did.  They are just beautiful, and the seams are invisible to the naked eye.  I can run my hand over them and feel where they are interconnected but you truly can't see it.  

After 28 years in that tiny shower this shower feels likes a suite!  There's plenty of room if we do in find we need a shower chair in our more senior years.

No, we didn't get a new commode.  I am showing this photo for two reasons.  Number one, the wainscotting on the wall to the right of the toilet is what we installed years ago.  I'd wanted to finish off all the walls, but we didn't for various reasons.  

When I was stumped about how to finish the wall above the shower, the contractor looked at the wall we had done and said "Why not just do beadboard?  Then we'll do the half wall of all the walls and the full wall at the end of the shower."   I knew immediately it was the very thing to do and gave the go ahead.  I think that beadboard is just lovely and you'd never in a hundred years know that the original wall is considerably older than the new wainscotting elsewhere.

I am also showing this area because in the past there was a tall deep cabinet here with three sections that went from floor to about a foot short of the ceiling.  It was useless and for years I struggled to make it suitable storage.  Those cabinets were far too deep and too tall inside and because the doors faced out towards the sink there was just no good way to utilize the space.  

I did however, like the privacy of having a cabinet there and asked if we could have a privacy wall put up when the cabinet came down.  I'm glad I made that choice.  

And here's our new storage area.  

It looks so roomy and deep without the old shower unit there, but that unit took up far more room than it gave us in space.  When they took the shower down a nasty surprise awaited us. The drain was leaking as John had feared.  Good news/Bad news was that there was a foot wide hole there and the drain more or less stuck up from the plumbing pipes below, so all the water just dripped freely under the house and never damaged the flooring.  

I have considered whether I want to cover up this storage area.  I could easily hang a curtain at the lower half, or even go higher and cover it all, but I've noted we leave the bathroom door open, and it tends to shield that storage section from view unless we're in the room with the door closed.  So, I think I'll leave it as it is.

The men ran the beadboard as wainscotting in this area, too.  In future perhaps we might want to remove the shelves and put in a stackable laundry or make this a closet of some sort.  For now, we're pleased to have the storage.  I had things neatly organized on the shelves which will stay as open shelving for now, but I'm very susceptible to visual clutter causing me to fret.  I went to get bins to contain things and visually quieten the space.  I hope to find some larger lidden bins or baskets to contain the rest of the stuff under the shelving.  We're very glad to have all this extra space and it's far more useable than our former cabinets.