bathroom reno

Let's take a trip down memory lane, shall we?
We are coming up on the 5 year anniversary of moving in to our first house. We feel very fortunate that our house was "move in ready" when we purchased it. It has charm, was (mostly) tastefully painted and gives us plenty of space. Slowly but surely we've made the house feel more like us. Since we are coming up on 5 years, I'm getting the itch to re-create most of the spaces in our house. You could say I'm a little bored with our rooms.
During furlough week, I did lots of painting, staining, sanding and cleaning. I'm excited to say that we are finally done with the bathroom reno/update that's been in the works for the past 2 years. Here we go...
Here's the bathroom on inspection day (end of March 2006) prior to closing on our house:
Besides a new shower curtain and rug, the room worked great for 3 years. Unfortunately, the old (but charming) faucet handle broke in 2008. We sawed out the old faucet, ordered a replacement, attempted to install it (with both dads) and ultimately had to give up! It became apparent that we needed to bring the bathroom up to more modern plumbing standards.

With the reality of needing a new sink & faucet, it became apparent that we were going to need a new vanity as well. Thus began the search for something that we loved, was affordable and fit the tiny space. After looking in multiple home stores and catalogs, I had a vision of what would work. Unfortunately, everything I liked was out of our price range. So to save costs, we made our own vanity with the help of my dad.

Remember these pics from Feb. 2009:



We put this together in one weekend at the school's shop:

I was able to fit it in the back of my car to haul it back to Duluth to begin the staining process:
Three coats of espresso stain & two coats of poly later, the vanity was ready for install (minus the doors):

With all new plumbing underneath the sink and a working faucet above, we were finally able to stop brushing our teeth in the bathtub!

The new vanity sits a couple inches shorter than the old one:

So, I did a little scraping to remove a bunch of layers of paint and create a smooth transition. The old plaster was much rougher than the rest of the wall so the guys at Home Depot recommended this stuff:


and it worked great! Though this seems like a small feat, it was the first time I had ever patched plaster and I was proud of how well it turned out:
Due to a very busy fall semester, our bathroom sat this way for months. I was finally able to sand the plaster and install the vanity doors around Thanksgiving.

That brings us to furlough week (week between Cmas & New Years). I painted the entire bathroom, caulked the door inserts in to the vanity, scrubbed the grout in the floor & touched up the trim. AND IT'S NOW DONE!!!

I am thrilled with how everything turned out. It's modern, clean and definitely more M&M: