While we were battling the city to get a permit…for months…literal months. We were working on our “master” bathroom remodel. This, you could say, wet our whistle to the remodeling process – in all of the wrong ways.
Naiveté was the name of our game. On a Thursday night one of us said “let’s demo the bathroom” and the other one was like “you’ve never had a better idea.”
We assumed the bathroom would be done in one week…two weeks max because we weren’t. doing. anything. major.!
Fueled by anxiety and the need to prove ourselves, we jumped in.
After removing a square foot of tile, it was clear we would have to remove the drywall behind the tile and then all of the sudden we were also removing the wire grate, insulation, and much of the old wiring. Next thing we knew, our bathroom was stripped bare from the belly button down. Exposed, vulnerable – just like we were beginning to feel as we realized we didn’t have a way to bathe in our home and this was going to take longer than a week.
That Thursday, we cleaned up the demo debris in the bathroom and pretended that dust hadn’t already coated our entire house, lungs, and soul.
At this point, we attempted to learn remodeling skills as fast as possible while always hunting for a place to shower. This mostly meant showering at the home of our very new friend and neighbor, Neighbor Jon. Whenever we lacked the gumption to beg for another charity bath, we would frequent the kitchen sink to sponge bathe/wash hair or resorted to dumping a bucket of water over ourselves while hovering over the basement drain.
During this month – we finished the bathroom! We added a fan, canned lights, updated vanity (hello poured concrete counters), two sinks (no more arm wrestling for sink usage), and new tile (white subway?! who would’ve guessed?!). Our sketchy dry wall work turned out almost as wavy as our textured ceilings. A great foretaste to all that was to come!
Despite many mishaps, we were thrilled about having everything come together and we painted the room white!! BRIGHT WHITE. Upon painting completion, we walked into the room and were immediately blinded and lost all depth perception. To our horror, the paint did not match our “white” tile, our “white” sink, or our “white” bathtub. There are 900 shades of white and when you want your house to be whiter than the trendiest art gallery in NYC then you gotta make sure your whites work!!!
In a panic, we fell back on ole, already-out-of-date grey. That night we repainted the bathroom. We only regret about half of the bathroom so we’ll chalk it up as a success!
REMODELING IS THE WORST 