Detour #1

If you are staying up to date with the blogs, then you are aware of our leaky toilet that caused ceiling drywall damage in the basement. If not, we had a leaky toilet valve that leaked a lot of water in Weekend #1 and now we have 6ft by 4ft hole in our basement ceiling and the half-bath is down to the subfloor. (The good news is that everything is drying out very well and we will not need to replace the subfloor!!)

Now that everyone is up to date, this presents our first detour. Originally we had planned to redo the downstairs half-bath later on in the renovation....but now, it has moved to the first project once all the wallpaper is stripped. The logic here is that a bathroom on the main floor is important and we cannot seat (like that technical term?!?) the toilet without having a floor put back in. Thus, the reasoning of moving this project to the top of the list. John has been a very busy bee removing the wallpaper in the half-bath. It was 2 layers thick! The top was a red, floral wallpaper and the second layer was a red, wood wallpaper.

That bottom layer was really stuck on too! I joined in on the fun Wednesday night after work. We discovered that both the steam and water/sponge method both worked but I still prefer the sponge/water method as it allows you to remove bigger strips/areas of wallpaper quicker and isn't as messy because the glue does not heat up. It just makes less of a mess!

The half-bath also connects to the laundry room, so that will be bundled in with this project too. Our overall concept that we are going with is a modern contemporary feel while making sure we hone in on the Colonial style of the house....ask me what that actually means and I have no idea! We are looking to beadboard the lower 4 feet of the wall with a mustard yellow (muted/dull) painted wall above for these two rooms. We think this will help brighten up the rooms as there are no windows and the lighting will be very limited (one fixture per room). For the floor, we will be tackling tile. We have it narrowed down to 2 tiles, we will just have to see which one matches the best. One is a porcelain grey tile and the other is a porcelain faux marble tile with minimal veining. We like the porcelain look as it gives off a sheen on the surface instead of being a matte finish and we do not need to worry about slipping as this is a half-bath/laundry room.

We also discovered that the half-bath already had a pedestal sink! Did you know they make pedestal sink cabinets that hide the base of the sink and make it look like a vanity with sink top? Finding a pedestal sink might not be exciting to all but it is to us because that saves us some money as we no longer need to buy one. Savings are savings so we will take these little wins!

Thanks for reading and feel free to join the conversation with thoughts or comments, we would love to hear what your suggestions!