Ugh, y’all. Do you remember the month it took me to reno my bathroom last time? Well, it’s time again.
Hubbin and I have been in this limbo area for a while now, and it’s incredibly frustrating. Our house is small, at 1248SF, and there is ONE, TINY BATHROOM, y’all. There is little to be left to the imagination between a couple when you have to share a bathroom. And we have two girls. We are outgrowing this house so quickly. There are too many people in too little space. There’s not a single closet that exists outside of a bedroom – let that one sink in. Nowhere to put coats, or linens, or whatever people put in pantries. Nowhere for the vacuum cleaner or broom. There is storage upstairs, which consists of only two bedrooms, (and takes up room space to give you the closets), but it is hardly adequate for me and my shopping issue family.
We’re in limbo about where to move – we want a different school district, but we live in between two cities and one of us works in 45 minutes east and the other works 35 minutes west.
Adding to the frustration is the fact that our home is zoned residential/commercial, which is great if you want options and awful if you want to know if you should put any money into your house. I’m not opposed to putting money into the house, but I am opposed to just throwing it in the garbage, which is exactly what will happen if it sells commercial and they raze it for the awesome lot it’s on. But if it sells residential, it needs work. So we’ve been in this balancing act, wondering what is truly the “must do” stuff to get this place ready for the market.
One of them is that it is a huge downside to have a one-bathroom house. And on top of that, it’s a SMALL bathroom, because at some point, they gutted 1/4 of the bathroom to build out a closet for the room next door. Adding another bathroom really just isn’t an option because there’s nowhere to put it, so the result is that if we have to have one bathroom, it needs to be a good one.
And I am too tired to do this again and too unskilled to do much more than, essentially, lipstick on a pig. The last renovation/makeover of the bathroom was essentially lipstick on a pig but made a drastic difference and I’m super proud of how phenomenally different it looks and how I seriously did all of that pretty much myself (Hubbin did the things I asked him to and stayed out of my way for the rest). However, what you don’t see in the after photos is that the camera shots are incredibly carefully planned. Overall, I am happy with the last makeover, but there are things that just have to be changed. For instance, the shower surround constantly gets mildew no matter how much I caulk it. It just always comes back and it looks horrible. And, the super high-end flooring (aka a high class peel and stick wood “look-a-like”) is moving a bit and it smells like…bathroom.
And if one, tiny bathroom isn’t enough, there’s not a single window in the entire tiny room. So, while I still love that Blueblood color, it’s just too much for how small the bathroom is. Balanced with the floors, it’s too dark, even with the board and batten. We finally agreed that the bathroom needed a true renovation by people more skilled than myself, and chose the super-awesome Daniel Adams with Tentmaker Roofing & Construction, planning to pull the trigger some time in November. Then we realized that, um, when are we going to not need our bathroom for a few days so this can happen? Well, how about when we go on vacation, which was like…three weeks away. Because why simplify things and take your time when you can make serious decisions in totally limited time?
So our bathroom is being renovated while we are on vacation! I am super excited. I’d picked out the paint a few months ago. We picked out new rectangular tile flooring, glossy white subway tile for the shower (YAY no more falling down surround!!), a new vanity, new faucet, and new shower faucets. In addition, I grabbed some glass mosaic tile that I scored for $3.27/sf to add accent to the top of the shower. We are ready and elated.
Then we realized that we had to get ready for Back to School (The Oldest One will have to miss the first two days, since when booking our vacation for August 10th, I didn’t consider that school would be back in session. Why? Because HELLO IT IS STILL THE SUMMER LOOK AT THE CALENDAR!), order and receive all the supplies that we chose to purchase separately, pack for a family of four for vacation at a Castle in the Sky (no, literally), work full-time, paint the bathroom, prep the bathroom, fix the bathroom fan, assemble the vanity, and, as a plus, I’ve been in a walking boot for the last 3 weeks because I have ignored Turf Toe for the last six months instead of taking care of it and I’m like half-crippled now. (I’m actually out of it as of yesterday, thanks to properly treating the injury by consulting with Dr. Google and her partner Dr. YouTube (yes, her – Google knows everything so obviously it is a woman), which really solve everything so I don’t know why I bothered with the orthopedic surgeon in the first place, who wasn’t sure what it was and thought I should wait it out because apparently six months of pain is not enough. I’m walking fine now and essentially threw in the half-crippled part for dramatic effect and I think it worked well.).
I am tired, y’all. I cannot wait to leave for vacation and I cannot wait to get back from vacation to my actually remodeled bathroom. Because this post is long enough already, I am not adding links to all the fun things I’m putting in there. We’ll save that for another post.
And for anyone that might be interested in buying our home, all the things I said above are totally exaggerated, it is a sprawling mansion and there is so much room we cannot find each other half the time and I haven’t seen Grumpy Toddler in a month but I’m nearly positive she’s here somewhere.
Yes, one of those differing accounts is a great exaggeration. I’ll leave it up to you to decide which one.
Also, just for fun, look at the view from the private pool at my castle:
Yeah…that’s JUST ours.
Is it time to leave yet?!
