Welcome back! If you missed my last two blog posts, I have been taking you through our latest renovation.

So far, we’ve covered the planning phase — getting quotes and prioritizing your project. This involved deciding what we could do ourselves, and what we needed to hire professionals to do for us; determining what needed to be done when; and establishing a projected timeline.

Next, I walked you through the first stage of our renovation. Our first priorities were determined by the time of year. The outside projects had to be done before the weather got too cold — we do live in the north after all! To read about our exterior renovation, click here!

Today, I am going to tell you about the second stage of this renovation. Our next priority was determined by our greatest need in order to move in. Our current house was already listed for sale. Whenever that house sold, we would need a place to live. In the home that we were renovating to move into, the one thing that needed to be updated before it was livable was, coincidentally, one of the more difficult rooms of a home to renovate… The Bathroom.

A few photos of what we had to work with!

This bathroom was not only dated and dingy; but needed to be completely gutted to the studs. There was some water damage, so we painted the affected areas with a sealer to remove all odours. For more information on this and the product we used, please feel free to ask me about it!

The bathroom originally had a window in the bathtub/shower area. We prefer NOT to have windows in the shower, as they can be a harbour for moisture and mould. We chose to forego the natural light, in lieu of a more water-tight, mildew free option, and framed the window in. (Read my last blog post to see how we made this update invisible from the exterior.) Because we covered the window we had a ceiling fan installed by Primus Electric.

The door was widened, and now it was finally time for the fun, pretty things — all new fixtures, tile, flooring, paint, and accessories. We wanted this room to be light and calm so we chose a lot of white, and some soft greys as our “palette”.

FIXTURES

White. White. White. For a classic, clean, bright bathroom, that is not going to look “dated”, white is my most recommended option for fixtures. We opted to start with the biggest fixture in the bathroom — the bathtub. We had never removed a tub before and took some time to research how. We watched an online tutorial, and went to work! Why reinvent, right?! Once that was done, we moved on to the sink and cabinet. This is the only bathroom on the main floor. We took advantage of its size, and installed a wall hung, double sink cabinet from Ikea. It is a beautiful glossy white, with nice wide basins and clean, simple lines. Ryan Primus (who is now Primus Projects) installed the cabinet for us. We finished both the sinks and the tub off, with modern chrome taps. These updated fixtures were already brightening the place up. This old, dingy bathroom was starting to look new, fresh, and CLEAN!

TILE

Since we had chosen a classic tub; without an attached surround, we needed wall tile (which looks nicer than a surround, anyway). In keeping with our “fresh, calm” palette, we used a white, glossy, textured, 12” x 24” tile called, “Waterfall”. Ryan Primus install this for us as well. He’s quite a handy guy! He installed it vertically to take full advantage of the wavy pattern and provide a more dramatic, overall look. To add a bit of colour to the white, we used a white, grey and aqua, glass and stone accent tile. Both the large wall tile and the accent were installed, not only in the tub/shower area, but behind the toilet and the sinks as well… tying everything together. He did a fantastic job, and I highly recommend his workmanship.

FLOORING

For the floor, we (or should I say, Geoff) installed a product called Alterna. It looks like a tile and is grouted like a tile but is a vinyl/stone composite. It is quite a bit warmer than tile, meaning we didn’t need in-floor heating. The colour is actually a light grey slate, but unfortunately shows brown in the photo.

PAINT & ACCESSORIES

Now… time to paint! With all of the bright, white fixtures, and tile, we already had plenty of white in the bathroom. We decided on a soft grey (Cloverdale Kitchen & Bath Pearl White Base CA187/E Platinum) paint for the walls, which tied in the flooring and the accent tile perfectly. A traditional white for the trim and doors finished everything off beautifully. Even though the paint colour is one of the last things to choose, it should be applied before installing the tile, sink, toilet, light fixtures, and trim.

We used the biggest mirror that could fit, to make the room look even bigger and brighter. The frame of the mirror was done at Michael’s in a chrome, to coordinate with the taps, lighting and door knob.

You may have noticed, I haven’t mentioned anything about the toilet yet — one of the most essential pieces of any main bathroom. It was the last thing to be installed, and it wasn’t done until the night we moved in! Talk about timing…

Here are a few photos of the final project! The flooring looks somewhat tan in this photo. In real life it is more of a slate grey.

A bathroom is a large project to tackle, but don’t let it overwhelm you. Take it a piece at a time, choosing each piece to match whatever “feel” you are hoping to achieve. As always, if you would like any advice or help choosing fixtures, tile, flooring or colours, come see me! I’d love to help.