The Bold and the (soon-to-be) Beautiful: Part 1

It is SO MUCH FUN having a husband who is as nuts as I am!

 

We've been talking about what to do about our downstairs bathroom ever since the day we moved in. It's not only small, they managed to make a small space even more cramped with some poor design choices, which also made the small cramped space feel dark (in spite of a large window). After hemming and hawing for a whole year we made a plan. Last Tuesday after dropping Patrick off at school Joe wondered what we might do that day; I raised my eyebrows and said, "Well, we've been talking about doing that bathroom..." and BOOM. Joe grabbed a hammer, a crowbar, I grabbed my camera, and within 24 hours here was the progression:

 

 Walking into the bathroom (through the laundry room) you see our new sliding door on rails, aka barn door, installed 2 weeks prior.

 

Kind of a cool rough, industrial look. We'll be playing off that when choosing finishes. That implies we will be finishing things, of course, like painting and putting new trim around the door frame.

 Here's as you walk into the small bathroom - the water heater has a room of its own. It looks ok, but it takes up a lot of space, particularly because it's directly across from the boxed-in shower, seen below.

 

 

See? Pretty narrow, especially with the door swing. 

 

Basic and boring... but I won't get too down on it, since we're not changing much. The water heater room will stay, in spite of its insatiable appetite for floor space.The ledge, though, is getting downsized, and towel bar has already bitten the dust.

World's narrowest sink. The wall on the left had that ledge that stuck out an extra 2 inches and cramped your left elbow, the wall on the right extended past the shower form a good 4 inches and made it seem like a small hallway to get to the sink, PLUS a towel bar in your way cramping your right elbow.

 There's the shower it boxed in. Thanks to the wall blocking light from the only fixture in the room and the overhand blocking light from the window, the shower was seriously dark.

 

 It was all a game of smoke and shadows.

 

 24 HOURS LATER...

 No Wall! No water-damaged sink! No mirror! No cheap light fixture! NO WALL! (Did I mention that?) There is, however, pipes hanging down in the middle of the room because that's the wall they plumbed the showerhead into. Don't worry, we'll take care of that later...

 No drywall! No shower! Just a drain in the floor and a big ol' trash can to catch all the stuff coming out of the small (but feeling bigger) room.

 No ceiling, either! Had to take it down so Joe could redo the plumbing. Like the free-floating showerhead?

 

A better idea of how weird it is so have plumbing just hanging around.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where crazy amount of progress is made in less than 2 weeks...