Bathroom: Before and After

(or the evolution of a bathroom!)

Ok, I admit it … I love some good before and afters.
I even love some not so good before and afters lol
I just love to see the changes. Improvements. Decide if the changes made something better or worse, etc.
And yes, for a while there I was pretty addicted to HGTV lol It’s pretty much a before and after kind of channel!

Anyway, we’ve done a LOT to the house since we bought it two years ago. Some massive changes, some more subtle and some are still ongoing.
We’ve not only made structural and decorative changes, we also tried to make the place a LOT more energy efficient. And a little greener – literally and otherwise ;)
But I will come back to the energy efficient improvements around the house in a later post!
Our house was a typical 1986 house. No insulation to speak of, the windows were a joke, the water heater was wasting energy and with the hard water pretty much on it’s last leg etc. The other typical 80s thing was cheesy brass fittings everywhere, fake gold marble sinks and counter tops to boot. Builders doors, fixtures and the dreaded blinds.
Thankfully most of the floor in the house is tiled, so we didn’t have to tear up any icky green carpet! Not that I’m a great fan of the tiles, but at least they are neutral enough to work with most things. And our previous house had brilliant white tiles throughout and with two toddlers, I was about losing my mind, so any type of tile that didn’t show every hair and fleck of dust was fine by me!
So the other day I was going through some of my photos and thought it might be fun to put up a few of the before and afters. Unfortunately I didn’t think to take too many befores and the ones I have are from our initial walk through at the first viewing. But it will give you an idea!
So today, let’s start with one of the more dramatic and more expensive ones. Pretty much everything in there was old, broken and outdated and really not worth the salvage!
And the problem to boot is that there is nothing “master” about this master bathroom. Another thing they did in the 80s. Tiny bathrooms! So, the challenge was also to fit in storage in there without making it look tiny and crowded!
So, here is the photo from the initial listing (sorry, a bit small) and one that I took on the walk through:


I did a mini make over, which made quite a difference for the feel good factor in that little bathroom, but it was still missing the bath tub of course and all the issues were still  present. I just beautified it all a bit. But I always knew it was temporary :)
I painted the white cupboard a dark brown and changed the hardware on the cabinet.
Took down the mirror wall and chose a smaller mirror. Painted the walls a cheerful green, changed the faucet, put up a stripy shower curtain and put up mirror tiles in the shower cubicle to give the appearance of more space.


Then, 2 years later, we brought in the big guns.
And this happened:


Yep, we went right down to the studs and started over.
But then really good things started to happen :) Our bathroom isn’t even 5 ‘ wide. I am 5’ 11”, my DH is over 6’. So obviously we couldn’t go long, we had to go deep if we wanted to have anything like an actual bath! And it IS deep! I real soaker!
I can’t begin to tell you how I had missed having a bath tub. A good soak sets so much right for me and my world!

And we ended up with this after it was all said and done!  Want to see that again? Ok, here we go:

Before:

After:

 

Gorgeous, right?

The accent mosaic border is from the left-over glass mosaic backsplash in the kitchen !

Ok, one more time!

So, that’s the evolution of our master bathroom! I think I can call it a master now. It may not be big, but it is masterful :)


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