Once upon a bathroom

When we first bought our house, the hall bathroom looked like this.

Awesome, I know. But since we were already repainting the rest of the house and doing various other projects, and I was majorly pregnant with Addie, and we knew we were going to have to gut the entire bathroom if we did anything in it, we decided to just leave it. The color was the only tolerable paint color in the house, and we figured we could live with it for 6 months or so until we got around to updating it. And then reality set in, and time passed, and money got spent on other things. We painted the vanity so we didn't have to stare at that ugly brown, and left it alone.

Fast forward 2 years. I was once again super pregnant, the bathroom was even more visually disgusting, but now various parts of it had ceased functioning properly. The shower diverter wouldn't stay up, the shower head leaked, the toilet leaked, the sink leaked . . . . We knew family would be coming out for the blessing of this soon to arrive baby, and we needed to have a functioning bathroom. Plus, Crap on the Curb day was coming, so with hardly a look back, we started the process.

Behold the final pictures of our awful bathroom. The stained linoleum.

The awful, hot halogen light fixture. The small medicine cabinet mirror.
The faux marble vanity top. The white plastic shower surround.
In my defense, it did look a little better than this. But I had taken down all of the decor before I remembered to take "Before" pictures. Bracken and friends got a sledgehammer and went to work. Before we could change our minds, the destruction passed the point of no return. We took everything but some drywall out. And then all this stuff started coming in.

This is what a crazy person looks like. This is a 9 month pregnant with crippling carpal tunnel syndrome, control freak crazy lady setting tile for the first time ever.
But we got it done. And then I had a baby, welcomed family for the blessing, had 2 surgeries, life, life, life, and I never posted pictures of the finished bathroom. Part of the hold up came because I was looking for just the right shelf to hang under the cabinet above the toilet. Then I questioned the mural I had painted on the wall and didn't want to post pictures until I had added more flowers. And I never got a new shower curtain. But I decided the other day when I finally gave my bathroom a good cleaning, that I really needed to post pictures of our home improvement project, perfect or not. So here it is--our finished (enough) bathroom. (Cue the triumphant music)

Obviously, the bathroom is small (about 5' by 7') so we couldn't change the basic layout or do anything fancy. But we are happy with how it came out.

The bathroom is the main bathroom our kids, and our guests use, so I wanted it to be inviting, but also fun for the girls. I had them each paint a small canvas, so they'd feel like it was their own.
This faucet was the first piece we picked for the bathroom. I just loved how the water poured out of it. That choice led to the Asian influence in the rest of the choices we made.
I also love my sink. It makes me happy, and is easy to clean. And this light fixture is sooo much better than the old one. It doesn't make me sweat.
Here is our shower. I subway set the tile, and ran it all the way up to the ceiling. We hung a curved rod for extra space in the shower.The main reason I haven't replaced our shower curtain is because this one is so great. Not only does it have mesh storage compartments which give the bath toys a home and allow them to dry, but we've been using for 3 years now, and it's still in great shape. I thought about getting a fabric curtain to go over it, but I think it would clutter the room too much.

Look at that sparkling water pouring into the deep soaking tub. We replaced the standard tub with a soaking tub that still fit into a standard 5' x 30" space. The elongated overflow allows you to fill the tub even deeper. It is also an incredibly comfortable tub. Installing the tub and shower plumbing was the only work we didn't do ourselves (thanks again, Logan).

Bracken, who had never been known for his skill as a handyman, did most of the demo, installed the toilet (and has since installed 2 more toilets), did the plumbing on the sink, and installed this light/exhaust fan combo all by himself. He's getting pretty handy now, I'd say.

I painted this cherry tree on the wall, next to which is our ever growing collection of hair clips for our ever growing collection of girls.
And finally, long gone are the days of stained linoleum. Now we have this lovely diagonally set tile.
And there you have it. Our bathroom makeover at long last. Really, I think the most impressive part is that I'm posting this a year after we finished the project by ourselves AND EVERYTHING STILL WORKS! Hooray!