Again, so soon??!? Horrors!
Hello! I'm happy to say that our hall bath renovation is DONE! Long time coming, if you ask me.
Hold on to your hats, I'm about to get historical. Oh, hysterical you say? Maybe sometimes but not this time.
When we first bought our current home in mid-2013, this is the condition we found the (only) bathroom:
This bath serves as our kids bathroom as well as the bathroom any guests would use when we entertain.
We were content to put "lipstick on a pig" for quite a few years:
We painted the walls, added peel & stick vinyl tile, replaced the vanity and toilet.
But this last summer, enough was enough. It was time to renovate! The bathroom would be gutted, all the way down to the drywall, so we could insulate the walls, add an exhaust fan and remediate the lead paint that we had detected under layers of paint. Not to mention, replace the cracked tile, defunct caulk job and leaky tub faucet.
As a last hurrah, while we still had an extra adult around to help the kiddos navigate a construction zone (our au pair Landi), we started demo of the hall bath the last week of May 2026. The plan was for Gabe to take off half days for 2 weeks and the bulk of the renovation would be done--and the remaining details would be finished throughout the summer. HA! Boy, did we underestimate the time! But that is for you to discover along the way.
Judah helped Gabe with demo. First to go was the tile around the heavy tub!
Buh bye pink tile!
Fun with the (rehabbed) 4-wheeler:
My, that's a large, heavy chunk of tile & drywall you have there, Gabe!
We started with demo on only one half of the bathroom, for starters.
Demo is fun!! (well, for some.)
They put the new tub in:
Added concrete board, mold-resistant drywall, replaced copper piping for plumbing:
On to removing the toilet, tile on the other side of the wall and the flooring:
Then by the end of the first week, he had added concrete board to the floors and more drywall to the walls:
By Monday, he had the walls drywalled, taped, mudded, with the floor seams getting spackled:
On Wed, more mudding walls, waterproofing the floor, and starting on laying the hex tile floors:
Yay for progress!
Thursday he was finishing up the flooring, covered it with kraft paper and started on the wall tile:
By Friday, the end of his 2 weeks of working half days, he had made significant progress but we were still a ways off. The girls had been sleeping in the basement bedroom for those 2 weeks and it was looking like they would be staying down there for the near future.
The tile pattern is a 6"x6" run of square matte white tiles alternating with a run of 3"x6" rectangular matte white tiles from Bedrosians Tile. Overall, I was pleased with the quality of the tile.
That weekend, he took the kids camping with our church. Nothing a bunch of mosquito bites can't fix! :D They had a great time.
After getting as far as he could with the wall tile without having the tub surround, he moved on to waterproofing the shower/tub area. He also established the level baseline for the tile all the way around:
On Monday, he was back to working his day job with fuller days. But not quite up to the full extent he normally does--he was coming home at 2pm for a while to make more advances in the bathroom so the girls could move back upstairs. Progress did slow, but things were still happening!
Kids helping clean thinset off the tiles:
After getting as far as he could with the wall tile without having the tub surround, he moved on to waterproofing the shower/tub area. He also established the level baseline for the tile all the way around:
Cute pink, isn't it?
We also needed to collaborate and nail down the niche tile design before he started.
Then he installed the Schluter black metal edging all the way around the room (we used a different size in the shower/tub area--3/8" instead of 1/2"). This creates contrast and definition of the tile.
That next weekend, we were ready to grout. We had selected a black sanded grout (well actually "charcoal") from Home Depot for the wall tile area. This part always raises my cortisol levels because of how messy it is and how much patience is required before the desired look is achieved. I always step in to help during this part, despite my hatred of it. This time, I had cause for concern--and we miscalculated the amount of time the grout sat on the white tile before making sure most of it was off. This created new problems for us, discouragement and road blocks that definitely put us behind a few days because of the extra work and sweat equity it required.
What we should have done was make sure to wipe down the first wall before starting to grout the second. I think the grout was also mixed too thickly and the area was hard to have two people working in, so he just kept going.
I started getting overwhelmed pretty quickly when I saw the third wall being grouted and the first wall haze hadn't been wiped off yet:
We had all (capable) hands on deck at this point, working to wipe down that awful black from the white tiles!! It didn't happen fast enough and we were left with black staining on many of the tiles (especially on the first wall Gabe started with) that required some experimentation on what was going to do the best job removing it. After a few different methods including baking soda & vinegar, marble cleaning powder and various scrubbing tools, I landed on the most effective tool being the green Scotch-Brite scour pad, which still required some major scrubbing and elbow grease.
Please excuse the butt shot:
Judah took it upon himself to make sure we got a video of part of this process:
By Wednesday (4 days later) I had gotten most of the stains off and sealed the grout so that the toilet and vanity could be installed. Boy, did my back hurt after all of that! I made Gabe promise that we would do one wall at a time when we went to grout the shower/tub area!!
Toilet going in:
New sink vanity (well, it's the same vanity we had before, we just decided to buy a fresh one 🙈 ) going in:
The girls were finally able to move back into their bedroom from the basement and use the bathroom again. No tub/shower yet, but this is a start!
The girls were finally able to move back into their bedroom from the basement and use the bathroom again. No tub/shower yet, but this is a start!
The project sat for about 3 weeks with no substantive work done because we were fixing to go to SPAIN on a missions trip at the end of June through 4th of July!! ALL of us would be going, leading a team of 16 to support an RBC sent missionary with kicking off an English immersion camp at their local church there. We had SO MUCH FUN!
Here's a pic of the team before we went (minus Judah! 😢)
And here's a pic of some of the kids on the last evening in Spain, enjoying the shores of Cadiz:
Our project lay stagnant for about 3 weeks. After a shipping snafu with the niches, Gabe started the process of installing them, which included careful measurements of where the tile would go and just exactly what height it would be to make a neat and tidy tile design. I think he did a careful and thorough job of it (as usual)!
Cutting/prepping the holes, and inserting two pre-made niches:
Starting the install, complete with the Schluter edging:
What can not be seen in this picture is the scratching that took place on the marble accent tile AGAIN. We used the same marble tile as is in the shower in our master bathroom:
We thought we would not have the same trouble as before. Somehow, when I shopped for non-sanded grout for this explicit purpose (I bought sanded grout for everything else), the grout labeled "unsanded grout" still had sand in it. Rough! I'll share my fix-it story later--we will come back to this!
Plugging along with the white subway tile install:
Coming back in with the bottom edge last:
And started mid-September on the dreaded grout job:
We made sure to do one wall at a time this go around!!
It went much better.
I taped the corners so Gabe could easily caulk the edges:
We started in on mirror and vanity light placement next! I chose a sculpted rattan mirror from Anthropologie. It has since been discontinued and was very deeply discounted:
The square base design of the lights fits right in with my white subway tile, the arch of the connector to the base fits in well with the arches framing the mirror. All very art deco, by design!!
To give an idea of the process I went through to decide placement of the mirror, vanity lights and in-set (medicine) cabinets, here's a mock up on graph paper that I used:
By October, we decided to hire out the paint job to a sub that we had worked with many times before. I had been wanting to do a black ceiling that wrapped down onto the walls, like this:
The "black" is a very, very dark gray Glidden interior paint called Black Magic. It is very close to the exterior trim color Tricorn Black. I chose a satin sheen for the ceiling and walls. We went with the high reflective white color everywhere else: satin on the walls and semi-gloss on the trim. The line of demarkation between the black and white is the top edge of the shower/tub tile and carries all the way around the room.
I placed the light boxes where the line would bisect the just in half:
Next, to cut the holes in the walls for the inset medicine cabinets:
Image from a wider viewpoint:
The white vanity is 36' wide with a few drawers and narrow cabinet storage under the sink (and happens to be the same one we had before, we just ordered a new one, to freshen up the space--the old one was getting pretty beat up):
The single handle faucet is matte black:
Shower/tub combo fixtures are from Home Depot and are also matte black:
I have to say I'm very pleased to have an exhaust fan here in this bathroom for the first time EVER:
I have to say I'm very pleased to have an exhaust fan here in this bathroom for the first time EVER:
Some sweet arched wall shelves:
Sooooo, how about some AFTER pics?!? It's about time, huh?
First, an epic before & after side-by-side comparison:
Wow, I never realized just how much of a re-imagining of the space it really is! It really retains a majority of the original color palette, just distributed differently--a more modern take.
The bathroom is pretty long and narrow, so it's hard to get a really good, sweepin view of the space--hence pictures are a bit choppy.
The bathroom is pretty long and narrow, so it's hard to get a really good, sweepin view of the space--hence pictures are a bit choppy.
Pictures pan to the right, around the room:
The art over the door was one of the final touches in there! It's a gold/pink custom sign and we chose it to say, "la Toilette". I think it really adds to the art deco feel.
Notice the door was also recently replaced from a hollow core door to a solid core door--nothing much to notice except the hooks that were existing on the hollow door are not found on the new solid door as we don't plan to drill into our new door!
The hooks are now behind the door, hung at just the right height for our children to make use of them!
Ok, now to follow up on the scratched niche tile--Halloween evening, when my husband took our children out to a harvest party, I stopped procrastinating and took care of the problem. I purchased a black matte furniture touch-up pen and tested out what it would look like to try to black out the scratches....terrible. There are so many of them! And the streaks were just too noticeable. Ugh.
On to plan B. The new idea was to completely black in the tile except for the white veining. I thought for sure I'd have to buy another pen! Welp, I didn't. And I'm very pleased with the results! It's much better than the scratches at least.
Here's a pic to show the contrast--I had only blacked in the left side so far:
This image shows up close just how badly scratched the tile was. I'm not loving the sheen of the pen and the slight streaking but I prefer it over the nasty scratching!!
Here's an even closer look, with only a few tiles remaining to black in:
My method was to do a few strokes of the pen and then wipe it hard with a rag to minimize the streaking as much as possible. The was very minimal residue that came off onto the rag which makes me think this is a long term solution. I also sealed the niche tile/grout when I was done (as I had done with the rest of the tile and was waiting to do with the niche tile until I was done experimenting with my "fixes". I have wiped the tile a couple of times on different occasions with a wet rag and have had even less gray/black residue come off onto the paper towel. So I am optimistic that this will be a good long term solution!! NO more marble tile for us! :P
The latest image of the niche, all blacked over:
Thus ends our almost 6 month saga to complete our hall bathroom renovation. Man, am I glad to have it done!
On to the next project! (basketball season 😆)
