bathroom rehab ~ painted guest vanity

The last time I posted about my guest bathroom it still had quite a bit of work that needed to be done, but I'm happy to report that I've made some good progress. It's not all done, but close. I painted over the circus tent stripes, I filled in the nail holes on the baseboards and painted them, and I refinished the vanity! Changing the vanity really made a big difference in the bathroom.

Here's what it used to look like

And here it is now!

I sanded, primed, painted it a bright glossy white, and added these knobs.

While I was waiting for paint to dry, I started on the bathtub cleanup by pulling off that nasty strip of plastic someone had stuck along the edge of the tub. I'm baffled by it. You would think the purpose would be to keep water out of the gap between the tub and the tile, but then they also put caulk along the bottom edge. I have no idea. And it obviously did not seal the edge because you can see that there's mold under it.

All I know is NASTY. That mold is what was peaking out from under the strip. It was easy to pull off, but now I see a lot of scraping and bleach in my near future. I'm hoping with the mold gone and some new caulk it will look clean again.

But for now, the vanity is looking good and it gives the bathroom such a clean and bright feeling. I'll leave you with this pretty picture so you can get the moldy one out of your mind.

I'm loving it!

bathroom rehab ~ guest bathroom progress

Continuing on with the progress in my bathrooms, today I'm going to show you how things are looking in the guest bathroom. You can see the before pictures here and the changes I made to the master shower here. 

There were angels singing in the heavens when these first 2 pictures were taken. Split pea soup was not meant to be a wall color, and they know it. It was so exciting to get rid of it! This is just the first coat of primer, but primed walls are a gigantic improvement over the mess they were before. It took quite a bit of primer to cover it, but once that was done it only took one coat of paint, so it was worth taking the time to make sure the green was completely covered before painting.

I missed a step in my picture taking, but at this point the ceiling has been painted white to cover all the green that never should have been there, the walls have been painted Gray Beige,

and I've measured, leveled, and taped some stripes.

And here's where things went wrong. I bought the Gray Beige in flat and glossy thinking it would make stripes that would be subtle enough to not overpower the small bathroom. The problem is the glossy paint dries very yellow in comparison to the flat which definitely has more grey tones to it. 

I hate it. It's not at all the look I was going for and I just see a circus tent when I look at it, so now I have to paint over the stripes with the flat paint again. I normally wouldn't use flat paint since it's not very cleanable, but it is what it is.

These are the new baseboards I picked out. They are about an inch taller than the old ones were and I love them. Getting a taller size was for functional reasons because there was a lot of patching that needed to be done where the wall was moldy and crumbled when the old baseboard was removed, but I would love to have tall baseboards all over the house and was happy to have a reason to need them here.

So, that's where things are right now. Honestly, after all the hours of scraping, priming, painting, changing water valves, baseboard installation, and toilet replacing...I'm losing my steam. But last night I had some time to kill and went to Home Goods. I bought some fun stuff to decorate this bathroom and I'm hoping it's the motivation I need to power through and get the rest done.

Here's what I still need to do in this bathroom:

 paint over the stripes

fill in the nail holes and along the tops of the baseboards and paint them

clean the bathtub/shower, use Grout Refresh to brighten up the grout, and re-caulk

sand and refinish the vanity

It's still a lot, but I think I can have it done by the end of this month. That's the goal anyway!

bathroom rehab ~ master shower

Last week I showed you the before pictures of my 2 bathrooms (you can see that post here), and now that you have had a few days to recover from them I want to show you what I did to clean and update the master shower. I have to warn you that picture quality in this post is not going to be good. My bathrooms get no natural light and when you're taking a picture of white tile with white grout it's kind of hard to see. My apologies in advance.

The first thing I did was scrape out all the old caulk. It wasn't a fun job and was pretty gross, but I knew it would make a big difference and be totally worth it. Next, I took out the shower doors and removed the track. I wasn't sure if I was going to clean them and put them back up, or if I would leave them off completely. That question was answered when I saw this:

I had started scraping away the mold on the right side but you can see that there was a solid line of it under the door track. As soon as I saw that I knew there was no way they were going back on. It took lots of scrubbing and lots of bleach to get rid of it, but it's so nice to know my bathroom is now mold free.

There was mold on the wall behind where the door track had been too

The next thing I did was brighten up the grout using this stuff

It goes on with a toothbrush, and after a few minutes you go back and wipe off any that got on the tile. The application part goes very quickly and you can cover a pretty big section in just a few minutes. The wiping part takes quite a big longer though (I would call it scrubbing, not wiping), and I ended up spending about 12 hours on the grout in this shower. It wasn't fun and I was so relieved to be done, but the end result is amazing and definitely worth it.

I know it's hard to tell, but in this picture of the corner the wall on the left was done and the wall on the right was not. Can you see the difference in grout color?

On this tile the grout lines on the bottom and right side were done, and the lines on the top and left were not.

Once I was done with the grout, I applied new caulk on all the edges of the shower, and I was amazed at how clean and bright white everything looked. I'm so happy with how the grout looks, and I'm hoping it will last a long time.

I'm sure at some point I will buy new doors for the shower, but for now I'm using a shower curtain and I'm completely fine with it. It looks much better than the doors and gives me a chance to add some color to the bathroom. This is how it looks right now. The towel and rug have always been there, and the curtain I've had for years but it was hanging in the guest bathroom before. I just moved the curtain rod and everything into this bathroom. I still love this curtain, and it goes with the colors in my master bedroom. My plan is to buy new towels and a new rug so everything isn't all the same color. 

 

Next I'll be going back to the guest bathroom to show you how things are coming along in there...

bathroom rehab ~ before pics

I have 2 bathrooms in my house and both of them were in need of some updating/cleaning/overall rehab. I had been dreading it for a long time and finally decided my Christmas break from work was the perfect time to finally tackle them since it's the only time I will have 11 consecutive days at home. Today I'm going to show you the before pictures, and all I ask is that you remember 2 things: 1) the bathrooms do not look like this anymore, and 2) I am a clean person. Really. These pictures are kind of embarrassing and I can't believe I lived with them in this state for so long. So here we go...

This is the master bathroom. I realize there is nothing "master" about it, unless you count the fact that it's about 3 inches bigger than the guest bathroom. It's small and cramped with very little storage, but that wasn't my concern for this break. My concern was that shower. 

It doesn't look so bad in those first 2 pictures, but let's look a little closer. This corner was missing caulk and was growing something completely uncleanable, but you can also see to the right of that corner that even in places where there was caulk, there was still mold under it. I don't know if whoever put it in didn't do a good job, or if it just wore away over time and started letting water under it. Either way, gross.

This is the track the door slides on with uncleanable mold and grossness on it and inside the shower (on the right side), and on the left someone put gobs of caulk that pretty much served no purpose. 

I know it's hard to tell what this picture is, but at the bottom is the tile ledge the door track sits on, the track, and the bottom part of one of the doors. There is a grey strip that goes around the door and seals it so water doesn't get inside, but there was a gap about 4 or 5 inches long where there was no grey seal on this door and every morning when I took a shower it would fill up with water. I would get as much out as I could after my shower, but it was pretty much a breeding ground for nasty things that should not be living in the same space as humans. It makes me cringe just thinking about it.

Are you remembering that all of this disgustingness has been fixed? Please do. Okay, on to the guest bathroom.

Again, it doesn't look that bad until we look closer. I'm realizing I should have taken a better picture of it, but can you see that there are 2 boards around the top of the bathroom? One goes wall to wall in front of the shower curtain rod, and the other goes above the toilet and vanity making a box of sorts that holds the light.

You can kind of see the light more here

 Moving on to the most hideous shade of green there ever was. It closely resembles the color of split pea soup and I can't imagine why anyone would ever use it intentionally. The only thing I can think is that it was supposed to be a different shade of green and when it came out this horrid sickly color the previous owner didn't want to deal with getting a new can of paint so they just went with it.

But there is absolutely no explanation for the paint job. Seriously, anyone who has ever held a paint brush can manage to keep it off the ceiling. And anyone who is holding a paint brush for the first time can wipe the paint off the ceiling if a mistake happens, so I have no theories about how this mess came to be.

This is the board in front of the shower curtain rod, and it looks like at some point there was a wallpaper border on it, but rather than remove it someone just painted over it. Lovely.

In a stroke of DIY brilliance, someone put this strip of plastic around the bathtub in place of caulk. It manages to accomplish nothing but growing mold and looking atrocious. 

See?

Here we have the results of water damage, although not from a leak inside the wall. This is just from water being allowed to puddle outside the bathtub without being wiped up. Bleach will clean the floor, but the water soaked baseboard expanded and became the fat ugliness you see here.

And what in the world is going on with the white paint? It's like they got some white paint on the green wall, and rather than fixing the mistake they just painted a white strip along the top of the baseboard. Or maybe they were trying to make the baseboard look taller by painting above it, but if that was the intention I can't imagine why on earth they didn't use something to make a straight edge. This is clearly free handed, and anything but straight.

What I have spared you from is the mold behind the baseboard and the wall that just crumbled away when the baseboard was removed. You're welcome

Here we have a toilet that is just a toilet, except for the fact that it made so much noise that it would wake me up in the night. This resulted in me turning it off, which resulted in any guests at my house being forced to walk through my bedroom and use the master bathroom. Not ideal.

And even if guests were allowed to use the guest bathroom, this is what they would have seen inside the toilet. Believe me, I have tried to clean it and nothing works. Nothing like making your guests think you're disgusting and germy.

You can relax now, we have come to the end of the repulsiveness. These last few pictures are just a few more shots of the bathroom. You will see nothing else that makes you think I'm disgusting and germy.

The counter and sink ~ not pretty, but not awful

This is the last you will see of that medicine cabinet in the corner

And this has a good sanding and painting in its near future

So there you have it ~ 2 of the worst bathrooms known to man. I actually forgot how bad they were until I went back and looked through these pictures as I was posting them. It really looks so much better now, and I can't wait to show you the transformation! I'm going to start with the master shower, so check back early next week for that!