Hall Bathroom Makeover: Part 1

Back when we were first looking at this house, the one thing we knew we would want to do was to add another bathroom on the second floor, even if it wasn't exactly obvious how we could do it.  In the end, we divided up the large-ish existing bathroom, carved into some extra closets and created two where there was once only one.  Success!  To keep the potentially astronomical costs of renovating two bathrooms down, we had the rooms "roughed in," allowing us to take over the work once the pluming, electrical work and walls were in place.  While we were still full of energy and motivation we got right to work tiling the floor of our master bathroom (read the full posts here, here and the reveal here), which turned out to be a fun and incredibly satisfying project, though definitely time consuming and a bit back breaking.

Months later we still haven't gotten around to finishing "the other" bathroom, the one that we'll need for guests when they come to stay with us.  It's amazing how such a tiny room can be the source of so much frustration, but with a wildly uneven floor and some rotten subfloor in one corner, needless to say the prep work dragged on longer than expected.  Because we didn't really want to try out hand at leveling and supporting the floor ourselves (know your DIY limits:)), we called in professionals to get the surface ready to be tiled.  Better safe than have to tear it all out later from cracking or sinking!  

Here you can see the hall bath after the plumbing and walls were finished but before the floors had been dealt with. Yikes.  The toilet on the left was left in place from the original bathroom, which helped save us money on plumbing expenses.

Here you can see where we are after we had the floors leveled and prepped for tile.  Much better! We also had a shower pan made and installed rather than trying to tile our own base.  I kept imagining horrible scenarios in which we had messed up slightly and water damage from the leaky, uneven shower ruined the whole house.  So I'm thrilled that this thing is impenetrable, perfectly level and comes with a warranty.  Sometimes paying a little extra for peace of mind is totally worth it!  (Oh, and the toilet is just temporarily in the shower for now, in case you were wondering.)

I have made several trips to Home Depot and Lowe's to check out their tile selection, but the most fun and helpful destination when trying to get a vision for a bathroom is a place like the Tile Shop.  There they have created life sized bathrooms and kitchens for display that really give you a feel for the looks available.  

We both were leaning toward using large slabs of marble to tile the floor, a look that's so clean and beautiful, but I have read that sometimes people don't like them because the floor is so slick and slippery.  Instead, we're now thinking of using a marble mosaic that I have been obsessed with for a while now because of the variety of colors, grays, whites and yellows all mixed in together.  I had always loved the look, but actually seeing it on display at the Tile Shop confirmed that it's my new favorite thing.  Most importantly, the warmer tones in the mosaic will tie in the yellowy counter top of the vanity we'll be using in there, which isn't my favorite but came with the house ( i.e., it's free, so we're keeping it).  

I love how that display also confirmed that these mosaic tiles can compliment the cooler gray tones of white marble, so we can still use 12x12 inch marble tiles to cover the shower walls.  

We have a LOT of work ahead of us, but this is it!  Time to turn the music up and pretend we're in a tiling montage.

I can't wait to show you our progress!

Liza