And so the remodeling goes...THE BEFORE

I've had many requests for bathroom updates lately.  Shame on me for not posting sooner.

We're just wrapping up Week 5 of Extreme Makeover Master Bathroom/Closet Edition.  Once you see the before pictures you'll understand why there was no possible way we could save ANYTHING.  It all had to go!  I honestly don't know what the builders of our house were thinking when they designed this space. 

So walking into the old bathroom, this was pretty much your view.  The toilet.  Yep, just sitting there in between the windows.  Right in the middle of everything, just hanging out.  There it is.  Brilliant!  And all those windows, they're on the front of our house.  The really big one to the left being right above our front door.  While on the potty you could open the shutters to wave at your guests arriving.  Really???  A note about the shutters...these are the only ones we have on our 2nd floor.  I like things to be symmetric.  And when you look at our house from the front there are about 6 different window coverings you see...gotta work on that.  Needless to say these shutters will not be making an encore appearance!

Over in the room next to the toilet was possibly my favorite amenity.  A giant jetted garden tub.  Not just any tub though.  One that made a 80-90 square foot space completely useless.  Did I mention the tub grew vivid shades of green & blue goop all the way down the side of it under the always dripping faucet?  Only purpose it served us was to hold Moe & Bluebell's litter boxes.  And yes that is lovely mauve tile you see on the floor.  Niiiiiiice!   

So upon entering through the door & looking to your right, here's what we had.   A nice little nook for Jason's vanity next to what I called the 'coffin shower'.  Dun dun dun...scary right?  Apparently the idea is to pull open that glass door & immerse yourself into the coffin to bathe.  Anyone claustrophobic?  I tried to be brave & use it for a while until the old rusty brass shower head blew off one day & almost decapitated me.  Pretty sure Jason only used it once & that was when we had company spending the night which prevented him from using our guest bathroom shower.  He has very high cleanliness standards & swore he would catch a disease from showering in there.  Honestly in the 1.5 yrs we've lived here, the guest bathroom has been our go-to bathing facility.   

And upon entering through the door, here's what we had on the left.  My vanity complete with cat feeding station below.  Favorite detail has to be the shell-shaped sink.  In fact, every sink in this house was shaped like a shell when we moved in.  Now I love a good beach theme but really?  Glad to know we've learned a lot from the 80's, sinks shouldn't be in the shape of an object that had a dead sea creature living in it, ya know what I mean?  Also I would like to point out the nice drywall detailing to the left of the sink.  When we moved into this house our bathroom was decorated with a neutral brick-patterned wallpaper.  No big deal I thought.  So one of my very first house projects was going to be to remove the wallpaper & paint.  That would make the room more tolerable until we could afford to remodel.  Oh Caitlin, Caitlin...so naive!  I scored the walls, sprayed them with fabric softener (like HGTV says to do) and then started pulling layers off.  And I pulled and I pulled and I pulled.  Turns out there are at least 3 different layers of wallpaper & what looked like 1 layer of paint somewhere between layers 1 and 2 of wallpaper.  Oh & the bottom layer of wallpaper is glued straight to the drywall.  For anyone out there contemplating putting wallpaper up, that's a no-no.  Please apply it correctly, whoever lives in your house after you will really appreciate it. 

You may be wondering why we bought this house...well deep down I guess we knew it couldn't get any worse:).  And we kinda saw the vision of what it could be.  But at least now you understand why it all had to go right? 

And so we've lived...until finally the torn up walls, coffin shower, tub monstrosity, very public toilet & nautical sinks were too much to bear.  5 weeks down and probably at least 3 more to go...