I hope you guys aren't tired of all the before and after photos yet! It was so hard to take time off from blogging over the summer and I've been saving these photos to post!
Do you guys remember our awful upstairs bathroom? Most Toronto 1920's semis don't have the space on the main floor for a powder room so the second floor bathroom becomes the main bathroom. We have a bathroom in the basement as well but it's not in great condition and won't be redone until we start working on our basement. I can't see this happening for at least a couple of years.
The family who lived in our house before us included a daughter with some mobility issues and special needs. This meant that many of the rooms had been modified for wheelchair access and many of their solutions were pretty creative. Unfortunately, they weren't in a position to hire professionals to assist them so there were quite a few sketchy DIY renovations that needed to be undone.
The upstairs bathroom may have been the worst example of this. There was no storage (we assumed this was to maximize floor space) and there was no separation between the shower and the rest of the bathroom. To make matters worse, the floor seemed to slope away from the drain and out towards the door. Corey and I never actually attempted to use this shower because we were afraid of flooding the hallway.
Oh, also notice that weird tiled lip in the shower, which we thought was a ledge but actually hid some plumbing. The toilet also sat too far forward and almost in the centre of the room, to add to the weirdness.
We had also purchased a very heavy clawfoot tub from another house that was built the same year as ours. We knew we had to have it painted and refinished but there was no point until we actually began work on the washroom. We ended up just storing it in the bathroom for the first year that we lived in our new/old house.
I think one of the worst things, that you can't even see in the photos is how wobbly everything was. The shelves were not properly secured so if you knocked one with an elbow, I risked everything falling off. The floor was pretty stained as well and the bathroom never looked clean, even when it was freshly scrubbed. I told Corey I felt as though I was getting ready for work in the bathroom from the first Saw movie.
If you guys have been following, you'll know that the bathroom reno took a lot of time. It also happened to coincide with my pregnancy, which was especially difficult for me.
Here's a list of some of the improvements we (mostly Corey) made. You can read about them all in more detail in our old renovations posts.:
- Corey removed all the old tile and found a window in the wall, which we had replaced.
- He added insulation and reinforced the floors to support our heavy tub.
- He added heated flooring coils before tiling the floor.
- Corey tiled the tub surround and included recessed shelving for all our bath products!
- Corey created recessed spaces in the wall for towel hooks.
- I painted the bathtub (eek, I was pregnant and didn't know it yet...) and the feet before we had the inside professionally reglazed.
- We found hardware for the tub at a specialty store and Corey installed it.
- Corey installed a pot light above the tub that was rated safe for wet places.
- We bought an Ikea vanity and mirrored medicine cabinet for extra storage.
- Corey replaced all the drywall so we could paint and decorate.
The finished product offers us so much more functional storage!
It's hard to photograph such a small space but there's really room for everything we need!
We even have a small bin for all of Rudy's bath toys!
What an improvement!
