House progress

Let's see the progress of our bathroom since purchase to now

This is how it looked when we bought the place. Pink walls. White and black tile with lead glaze that was so potent that it was off the charts when we had a lead test done on the house. The best part about the tile is that it wasn't finished. Sadly though, who ever was doing this project put up all the thin set to stick the tiles, but never got around to putting them up. The bottom left of the first pic shows this. Another great bonus to this room - handicap accessable. See the PVC pipe across the first picture? That was anchored into the wall with foot long bolts. The original owner was a man getting on in years. Apparently he needed a little help with balance while using the facilities. Gross! The second pic shows the vanity falling apart, the floral linolium, and the beautiful shell pattern on the toilet seat lid. Let's not forget the window in the shower with two shower curtains covering it. I still don't know why two were needed, or why one was pink. Interesting.



 So, here's the shower. Plastic laminated partical board, which apparently is like a dessert for termites. Nice view of all their holes and paths around the shower. Nothing like showering in this ugliness, and then worring about visitors.

Well, if it wasn't ugly before, it sure is now. M went to Florida for his brother's wedding. During that time I stayed home and invited my family over to help fix the termite mess. My father and brothers came down and we tore out the termite infested partical board. Thankfully the internal damage wasn't too bad and no structure damage to deal with. So, after a few hours at Home Depot and lots of $ later, we had the materials to put it all back together. This time, with tile, so no more buggies could eat their way into my showers. (notice the cheapo flooring we put down in the interim, horrid)

Happy Mother's Day to me! Instead of flowers and a home made card from AJ, I got to grout a tub. Oh, what joy. (Mother's Day the previous year had me painting stripes on AJ's bedroom walls, really hoping for a less labor intensive Mother's Day this year).

So, this is how the bathroom looked for months after that busy weekend. We put up the paneling and installed a new vanity. We also got a new toilet, thanks to M. He claims he accidentally dropped it while moving it, but I'm going with it was more accidentally on purpose.

So, here's where we are today:

New flooring that matches the hallway and kitchen. White doors and trim makes a huge difference.

Brown makes the space more comfortable as opposed to the blue that was a bit much. Plus, the radiator was sandblasted and repainted, to make it look much less like the 60 year old piece it is.



Ok, so the mirror is a medicine cabinet. Not the best choice for modern, but we lack space in the house, so it's needed. Plus, if we had a picture of how it looked before, this is a vast improvement. When we bought the house there was a mirrored medicine cabinet with etched flowers on the glass and flourescent lights on each side of the mirror. Horrible. M may or may not have electricuted himself trying to remove it.

So, that's the bathroom for now. I still need to reframe the window trim in the shower, change the light fixture in the ceiling, add a towel holder for the hand towels, get a new rug and towels to match the room, plus I painted all over the rug that's in there now. Oops. Not great, won't be in a magazine, but a vast improvement I must say.

Excuse me. I'm bathing here.

Ah, the joys of owning an older home. When we bought our house, we saw there was damage to the walls in the shower. It's an old house, and the shower walls are made of laminated particle board. We figured it was a little rot, a problem, but we still loved the house. The home inspector also didn't mention any issue with this, just that there was damage to the walls. Ok, no biggie. We patched it up for the time being and went about other projects.

About a month ago we were shown exactly how wrong our assumptions were. My mother was watching AJ that day, and gave her a bath. AJ was just splashing around, having a grand ol' time. After the bath was over, my mother took her out and brought her to her room to get dressed without draining the tub. She gets AJ situated and goes back to drain the tub. It's now full of bugs. Little winged black bugs. She gets the Raid, sprays the bejeezus out of the tub and washes away the mess.

I get home from work and she tells me of the new situation. I look in the shower at the bugs, because by now more have appeared after her initial bug massacre. I then go to my handy laptop, look up the bugs to find out what they are. We have termites. Fantastic. After doing the heeby jeeby dance I make an appointment with Terminix.

Terminix comes and lets me know that the damage "could be worse". Not exactly reassuring when there are little black winged creatures coming out of the walls in my shower. Apparently we have at least five years worth of damage and it will take close to 2 years to kill the colony. Blech! Ok, that's fine. The Terminix man does it's thing, puts out bait sticks, wet treats the basement wood and after giving me one heck of a bill, is on his way.

We still have bugs in the shower. Lots of them at times, usually right after Alex's bath. I call Terminix. They say just wait it out, there's nothing that can be done, and they're doing no harm. No harm! I'm getting whiplash from watching all corners of the shower to make sure no invasion happens during bathtime.

So, after a month, we're still getting occasional "swarmers" making appearances in the tub. I now have Raid on the counter next to the toothpaste. I can't wait until the stars allign allowing us to tear out the old and put in the new. I'm going with actual tile this time. Something the buggies can't eat through!