A Long Overdue Bathroom Renovation
Several years ago, my husband and I planned on renovating our twin boys’ bathroom. We bought the vanity, picked out tiles, and ordered plumbing hardware (sink faucets and shower faucet). Then, we unexpectedly hit the pause button! We could not agree on the type of bathtub to get. My boys and I liked something different from my husband and since no one was ready to budge we stalled the project. When we decided to move forward with the project, the worldwide pandemic occurred. Having various workers in the house during the pandemic was totally out of the question. Hence, a few more years went by. At this point, our builder/contractor who had done many other renovation projects at our house was convinced that we either moved out of town or got the project completed by another company.
We finally got back in touch with our contractor at the end of 2022 and got ourselves on his new year schedule. Much to our surprise, he started the project on January 2nd!. We still hadn’t found the bathtub, but luckily our contractor was able to secure us one from his supplier and the tub fit the criteria on my husband’s wish list, including price. Since we were the contractor’s first project of the new year, everything progressed on schedule, which was what we needed. We definitely could not handle another delay and maybe our contractor realized this because he worked hard to make sure everything moved along accordingly. Whenever I was not able to be home for inspections, electrical, or plumbing installation, the contractor stepped in. We also had a slight change of color scheme. We ended up selecting different, lighter color tiles than those we picked several years ago. Our tile installer recommended we go with the new tiles, and it totally made sense to go with new tile offerings and not be stuck with older products.
We were lucky there were no issues or problems when the bathroom was gutted. The only major problem we ran into was the countertop of the vanity we had bought and stored in our garage several years ago broke. We had to get a new counter for the vanity and ended up deciding to go with a different color countertop and vanity cabinet (painted the one we bought), so it would look better with our new tiles. At this point, our twin boys, who were at first annoyed they could not use their bathroom during the renovation, claimed the old bathroom was working just fine, and initially questioned why the renovation was even needed, decided to become involved in the project. They demanded they pick the countertop, the vanity cabinet. and wall color of their choice! (I agreed, but secretly I still had the veto power and the power to steer them to my choice).
After six weeks, the renovation project was complete! If the countertop of the vanity hadn’t broken, we would have completed it in five weeks. Overall, we are very happy with the result, despite the vanity ending up being three times the price we were planning on spending. Since the cost is already higher than what we had planned, we put a pause on (and will perhaps forgo entirely) getting a shower door. A pretty shower curtain will do for now. The overall cost of the renovation was more than what we would have from several years ago. Damn inflation! We still have two more bathrooms in our house to renovate and hope we can get to them soon. The joy and downfall of owning an old home…
