Bathroom Remodel {3} - The tale of two toilets!

If you aren't already super annoyed by my endless photos of babies and food, then you've probably noticed we FINALLY started our bathroom remodels that we've been talking about for years. Don't believe me? Check out these old posts, Bathroom Remodel Styleboard from January 2014 and Bathroom Remodel {1}: Styleboard Update from January 2015. I thought it pretty fitting that I do another update in January 2016 about how far we've come. As I had hoped, 2015 was an incredible year!

I honestly cannot believe we're at this point, nearly finished with all the bathroom projects we wanted to complete to update this house. We started talking to who we contracted with to work on our house back in late April. Work began near the end of July and with a few breaks here and there, we're almost done! A few (okay, quite a bit of) things are left to be completed but that will happen soon enough. My guess is that it'll be closer to 2017 ;-)

This will be one loooooonnngg post with lots of photos but it will give you all a fun glimpse of what we've endured for the past six months. I'm so in love with all the new spaces and cannot wait to make them our own very soon.

I'll start by saying that I am so glad we contracted out the work. There is no way this could have been done because of our crazy schedules and having two littles. I.M.P.O.S.S.I.B.L.E. Okay, not totally impossible, but let's be real. Who could have a project like this completed in 2-3 months while working 70+ hours a week, caring for two littles and not getting great sleep ever? I'm happy to pay someone else to do the work and have it completed in a rather short period of time. I can live in shambles for a while. No problems there.

Here is what we started with regarding the downstairs. This was a wasted space for us - mostly used for storage since we moved in back in June 2012. That stuff made it's way to the basement and work began on July 20. It took a couple of days to demo the space because there was a bit more of ceiling material to deal with but I was really excited to see that progress to something completely different so quickly.

As you can see from the first photos to the second set, we raised the ceiling and opened up the doorway to this room. I have to admit, that might be one of the most exciting changes! Being pregnant and having to take dirty clothes to the basement was a struggle. I had that tiny doorway to go through and then the tiny basement door to go through and very narrow steps to walk down. One less obstacle in the way is greatly appreciated. By the end of day two, we had the new space framed up!

The new space is now our downstairs half bath. Over the next few days, we had the electrician and plumber do their thing. Seeing a bunch of holes and wires all over was pretty exciting but completely enticing for Peach Pickles. He's more of a trouble maker than Owen!

By the end of week one, we had a newly framed up half bath, lost access from our kitchen (A Okay with me!) and a leveled floor. As you can see with that last photo, the space wasn't accessible for about 2.5 weeks as we waited for our bath tub to arrive. Unfortunately, we couldn't start on the upstairs until that arrived and this created a couple of interesting issues for us to deal with during that time. For one, the upstairs plumbing was getting switched from the cast iron to the more updated plastic pipes. Of course, without the new tub, that portion had to wait. As most old showers do, ours leaked. Leaked a lot. Leaked a lot onto the floor below that never fully dried up. Oops. Travis had to redo that work when they started up again. Oh well. Secondly, the holes. Peaches would have literally fallen down to the basement had we left him to roam about. Not going to happen on our watch! Poor Peaches was sequestered to the 2nd floor for 2.5 weeks. How did we manage that, you ask? I forgot in the 2.5 weeks to take a picture of this but we put up two baby gates! We had to climb through the bottom gate to get to the stairs. The top one had to be there because our fearless cat figured out how to jump over the height of one baby gate and still does to this day. Let me tell you, having to crawl though a baby gate really sucked, especially in the middle of the night!

When the bath tub arrived, work began again and went pretty quickly in both spaces.

Downstairs
leveling fixed, flooring installed
door installed

master bath plumbing pipes replaced, then sheetrocked (you'll see this later when all the pipes were replaced)

Upstairs

master bedroom, nursery, bathroom doors replaced!

partial demo of bathroom

All in a day's work, right? 

The next few days brought even more excitement. The master bathroom pipes were fully updated, the downstairs toilet was installed, the new bathtub was installed and the window replaced. What's even better, they also replaced the outside siding that very same day. 

Once everything was in place, TILE was installed!!!!!!!! Now that was an exciting day :) I should mention that while we were in this stretch of the remodel, we showered a little less often than normal... A few weeks went by without an updated photo but we only had to wait a week or so before we could use our own shower again. Isn't it beautiful?

The next step in the renovation was the prep the walls for painting. It took a few days for this to be completed and we had a hard time keeping the kids' toys out of there! But soon enough, we got to paint! Let me rephrase that, I got to paint. Gspice is no longer a willing painting participant. I'll deal with that but man it take me a long time to paint by myself!

Here is where we have been for the past few months. The downstairs needs ceiling paint and a few other details added like outlet covers, vanity lights, faucet, mirror, etc. The doors still need paint and the upstairs bathroom needs a second coat. This is honestly the only photo we've taken of the upstairs since we painted! Owen was just too cute :) Eventually we'll make the last handful of updates but like I said before, you'll probably see those January 2017.

BUT AT LEAST WE HAVE TWO TOILETS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!