Bathroom Renovation - Before and Demo

The long awaited bathroom renovation started this week!

Here are the before photos from when we moved into the house:

This bathroom is HUGE. Obnoxiously huge. It is larger than an apartment bedroom. It is only slightly smaller than my studio apartment when I first moved to Brooklyn! The tub is oversized, the vanity is oversized, and the square footage is entirely unnecessary for a bathroom. And it wasn't in good shape. It was dated looking. The toilet was gross. One of the sinks was discolored and scratched all over. The faucets were janky. The counter was stained and the base was pretty beat up. The shower seemed usable but needed new grout and the pan was stained as well. It was probably the moldy lemon of the house in terms of condition. 

 

We used the bathroom for a little over two months before I noticed water damage on the ceiling in the dining room directly below the location of the shower drain. We called a plumber immediately. He came and looked at it and told me it wasn't a plumbing issue but the shower shouldn't be used and would need to be replaced. Whether there was a crack in the drain, the water was coming from loose grout, whatever...it was clear that water was accumulating under the shower pan. So we stopped using the shower that day and called for a bathroom renovation place to come give us a quote. 

As Murphy's Law would have it, the exact week we got a quote for the bathroom was the same time we discovered we'd need to replace the furnace. We couldn't afford to do both at the same time. So we got the furnace replaced and Dan and I just started using the kid's bathroom to shower. PERKS OF HAVING TWO BATHROOMS!!!! I was bummed to put the bathroom on hold but man alive it was $$$.

So we waited. The only real "work" we did in the bathroom since moving in was replacing the faucets and taking down the old dark blinds. We did the faucets the first month we moved in and we put up light filtering roller shades several months later. I had lots of ideas for making other improvements but those didn't make sense to do before the shower was fixed.

In the spring we called a different bathroom renovation place to come and give us a quote. We talked to the guy about what we could do about removing the tub but not necessarily replacing it. It didn't make sense to me to fix only the shower and have an otherwise mis-matched bathroom. I wanted to modernize it all at the same time. We decided we could spruce up the vanity ourselves. Get the sinks replaced and have someone else replace the floor and toilet. The bathroom renovators would demo the shower and tub and install a new standing shower. 

We decided to go for it and put in a down payment. 

THAT SAME NIGHT, we found out we'd have to replace the A/C. Murphy's Law in action again. For anyone out there who doesn't believe in acknowledging worst case scenarios or negative outcomes...what do you have to say about that? 

But, we'd already put in the down payment and the bathroom needed to be done. So, you pay for both and pinch in other places.

Photos before the renovation. Sorry for the photo quality. It is either blindingly bright in here or dark. This was about middle.

Yesterday they came and gutted the shower and tub and installed the new shower. The bathroom will still be relatively unusable for some time since the shower door has to be measured after install and takes a few weeks to arrive. Additionally, we have exposed sub-floor and drywall where the tub used to be. Here we are today.