Half The Bathroom, All The Fun - Part 2

Sorry I'm getting this out late! Things have been progressing well on our latest project, so hopefully that makes up for it. In case you missed the first part of this lovely bathroom remodel, you can see that here.

We still had some demo work to do, so we finished that last week. I took the toilet out and got the flooring up (both layers!). I borrowed an oscillating saw from a friend at work and used that to cut the laminate wood flooring at the doorway. After removing that I had to scrape up the old vinyl flooring that was under that. Now we have a blank slate to work with when the new flooring goes in.

Leslie finished patching and sanding the walls last week and we thought we were done... until we removed the old light fixture. Turns out they didn't bother with a fixture box or anything else for it, they just punched a hole in the wall and ran the wires through that. (Seriously, I think they just punched a hole. They didn't score the drywall and make a clean break, they just knocked a hole in the wall. It was all irregularly shaped and had bits still hanging on the edges and everything.) So I picked up a fixture box at Lowes, cut the hole out a bit larger so I could get the box in and mounted, and then had to patch around the area.

After getting that sanded and ready to go, we were able to start painting. We primed on Sunday and then painted both coats on Tuesday. Leslie picked a nice blue color and it looks great. Once it was done we were able to install the new light fixture. This was a lot harder than it should have been because there's a receptacle on the fixture. This wouldn't be a big deal if they hadn't placed it directly below one of the holes for the mounting screws. This made it especially difficult to get the screws (which were attached to a bracket which was attached to the fixture box in the wall) to come through the fixture when you tried to put in on the wall. The receptacle would cause the screw to deflect just enough that it wouldn't line up with the hole. I figured out a solution by draping a bit of string over the screw and having Leslie pull down on the string to pull the screw into position so I could get the fixture on. Then, once it was through she could just grab one end of the string and pull it out. Like I said, much more complicated than it needed to be. But hey, it looks great now!

I also got a new exhaust fan installed. The motor on the old one had gone out, as they tend to do, so I replaced it with a cheap one we got from Menards. I kept the old housing in the ceiling and modified the fan we bought so it would work with it. It took a little time, but it works now and, if nothing else, the new cover looks a lot better than the dirty old one did.

The broken old fan

New and improved fan

We picked up the new flooring yesterday (Friday) and got to work installing that. We used a product called DuraCeramic, which is a composite vinyl tile. It is easier to install than actual ceramic or marble tiles but can still be grouted for that tile look. It went down really easily and looks really nice in the space.

And I think that's all we have done for now. The tile still needs to be grouted, so we'll be working on that today and hopefully get most of the other major stuff (install toilet, vanity, etc.) done this week. From there it'll be decorating, mounting the towel ring, toilet paper, a shelf, and other stuff like that.

Thanks for reading and we'll be back next week!