Finishing the half bath - a.k.a "we have completed one room in our house...woohoo"

We have now been living in this house for two years and we have completed one room in our house.  But hey, that's progress...right?

It is probably fitting that the smallest room in the house is the one we finish first.  It also happens to be the least used room but hey, progress is progress.

I'm not sure how you would describe this bathroom when we first saw it.  Weird...ugly...god-awful, all come to mind.  Already a tiny room it was made less usable by having 3 doorways.  One to the kitchen, one to the cellar and one to the front room which was being used as a bedroom.  It had a toilet and a shower but no sink.  There was a sink in the bedroom though.  The wall adjacent to the kitchen was at an angle, at that time we believed that to be a modification to the bathroom. 

looking into bathroom from kitchen

kitchen - bathroom in top left corner

looking from kitchen, through the bathroom into the front room

front room, this is the sink for the bathroom

looking from front room, through bathroom into kitchen

 We began work in the bathroom by tearing the shower out.  We knew that regardless of how we ended up remodeling this room we would rather have a sink than a shower.  We also believed at that time that the slanted wall was a modification to fit the shower in.  We wanted to get the shower out to decide if we would move the kitchen wall back.

 Behind the shower we found the lathe that had been behind the original plaster. We also discovered that the slanted wall was original. the original framing was there, the lathe and behind that the old cast iron plumbing.  This was quite puzzling to us.  We have not been able to find any house plans from this era (1910) that would have had a bathroom layout such as this. 

 Next, we removed the wall separating the shower wall, this was recent construction, not the original design. 

Behind the shower wall we found the rest of the window trim.  Behind the trim we found the window weights from the original windows.

window trim that was covered up by the shower wall

window weights from the original window

another lovely feature...

bathroom with the shower removed

view of bathroom from kitchen, shower removed

As we continued gutting the house the remainder of the bathroom was torn out. Plaster, lathe, floor, toilet, we removed it all. 

bathroom in top left, view from kitchen

looking from kitchen, through bathroom into front room

looking from front room, through bathroom into kitchen

 Since we were spending all of our time working on this house we decided it would be helpful to have a toilet back in this bathroom.  For a semblance of privacy I hung sheets to cover to surround the toilet.  Still no sink, but at least we had hand sanitizer.  Hey, it's a construction site after all. 

 We were now to the stage of putting things back together.  We decided to frame in the doorway leading to the front room, so that would no longer be a doorway.  The slanted wall on the kitchen side we had to rebuild but we decided to keep it in the original location.  Since the wall had been compromised when the installed the shower we had to rebuild the wall. The wall supported the upstairs landing so we used floor jacks to support the landing while we rebuilt the wall.

Was the framing was complete we ran the new electricity and installed lights and an exhaust fan. The drain for the toilet was working, we just had to add a drain for a sink and run new water lines.

Once the plumbing and electrical was complete we installed the insulation.

bathroom, ready for drywall

 Next step was the drywall.

   During the drywall work the toilet was broken, I was not sad to get a new, clean, toilet.

view from kitchen, looking into bathroom

 After the drywall work was completed and the walls were primed, we installed tile on the bathroom floor.
Once that was complete I began painting.  The paint palette I had a chosen was a tannish-mauve color with accents of grey and teal.  I was planning to make our vanity and planned to paint it grey.  This color scheme looked great on the Valspar brochure but I wasn't as keen on it once it was on the wall. However, there was way too much work to do on the house to worry about the paint color for a half bath. 

In our desire to move forward with this room we decided to just buy a vanity so that we could get a sink in the bathroom and move on.  I picked out a vanity that would fit in this space.  Remember the slanted wall?  Well, that means most bathroom vanities do not fit in this space.  Because storage space is so limited in the house I really wanted a vanity rather than a pedestal sink. 

 But...once we got the vanity installed and the light fixture in I was even more convinced that I didn't care for the paint color.  It was just too dull. The grey door didn't compliment the new vanity.  The vanity made the walls look more brown than mauve.  So, much to my husband's annoyance I went back to the paint counter. 
As you may remember from our previous projects, picking out a paint color can be quite challenging for us.   
My husband's method is to find something in the "oops" section and pretend that is the color he always wanted.  
My method is to narrow it down to something fairly specific like "earth tones" then collect about 80 or 90 paint chips, at least 10 paint samples and start from there.

painting 100+ year old trim is always fun!

After numerous false starts I finally found a color scheme I was happy with. Until I got it on the walls...sigh...

Meanwhile, we moved forward with cutting the trim for awkward doors.  It turns out that no matter how long you stare at the wall angle and try to memorize it in your head you still can't cut it correctly without making a template. 

I finally came to the conclusion that the door color just wasn't going to work.  No matter how lovely it looked nestled up to the wall color when they were on the paint chip, they just didn't work in real life. So back to the paint department... My husband was so in love with me at this point. 

But finally, it came together. I was happy with everything except the curtain (still looking for something different), and my husband was happy that I had finally made a decision and put down the paint brush. 

Oh, and check out this doorknob!!  We decided our kids really don't need to go to college and so we would just use their college fund for doorknobs!  Sounds reasonable....right?   

'till next time...