Houston, we have tile

We finally made a decision on tile! We spent a couple of days looking around at the local Home Depot and Lowes. We found a tile at Home Depot but we were not 100% on that tile and wanted to make sure we were making the right decision. We shopped around a bit more and made a few trips to the local companies around town. A place called Floor Scapes that we found an amazing tile that looked like linen. Loved the way it looked so I asked how much it was. Well at the time they had just gotten that specific tile in so they were going to have to call me back with a price which ended up being $9 a square foot.... Seriously. That price wasn't even with install can you believe that? The guy on the phone was like... "Ya it's $9 I'm seriously shocked myself. I even asked why it was so high and the vendor told me it was because it's made in Italy"..I don't care if it came from Italy, $9 a square foot is ridiculous. It would cost us  $400 just for the tile. Okay, I don't like it that much. After being disappointed at all the tile places we finally knew what we really wanted. The original tile that we had seen at Home Depot. It was an 18 x 18 inch travertine stone tile for $1.99 a square foot. We were so happy to find this, so we bought the amount we needed a brought it home. It's very pretty!

We decided it was a better idea to hire out the tile job instead of trying to tackle it as first timers. These babies are heavy at 54 lbs a box of 4 tiles! It was time to get a pro to do the job right and boy are we glad  we did. There was no way Geoff and I could have done a good job with how heavy and big those tiles were. I was afraid that we would be spending all that money just to be pissed we did a poor job of laying the tile.  He came to the house on Thursday and quickly got things moving.

He started off by first laying out the tile and pre-cutting each tile to fit perfectly.

Then he started laying the thin set down laying the tiles as he went starting in the back and working toward the door.

He was done in 2 hours.

The next day he returned to finish up with the grout. It's so pretty!

It's Demo Time!

We wanted to be smart about how we did the demolition in the bathroom. It's just so small in there with the storage pantry, vanity and toilet. I started with the easy stuff first. Removal of all the accessories (toilet paper holder, pictures, outlet plates, Etc.) as well as removed the door for easier access to the room. Geoff did his job next he started with removing the mirror and then on to the fun part of actually swinging a hammer. He removed all the shelves in the storage pantry. Like his helmet but no safety glasses or gloves?

We did all that initial "prep" work Wednesday night.  Thursday morning we woke up and started the best part of the whole demo, removing the actual walls. Yay! Geoff finally got some gloves.

Talk about committing ourselves to a project....

Here I am calling my father saying... "I think we need a saw of some kind".. so over came reinforcements with actual tools. My father did the tricky parts of routing around the water supply so we could finally remove the vanity.

As well as sawing off the last stud left from the storage pantry.

After we removed the vanity Geoff and a friend Bob began what we thought would be the most difficult part of the whole demo, cracking up the tile. To all of our surprise it came up very easy. In no time we had all the tile cracked up and removed. Except under the toilet. Geoff wanted the bathroom to be slightly functional for a little while longer. We still had not decided on tile yet so who knew at that point how long the project was really going to take.

We finally made a tile decision which means we could remove the toilet now. We placed it nicely in the bathtub for safe keeping until we could have the tile laid and the walls painted the new fresh color i.e. not dark green.

One last shot of the old storage pantry or at least where it used to be. We will have more pictures up when we start putting the room back together. Hopefully soon.

Just a little preview..

We have been working really hard on the demolition of our guest bathroom. Here is a little preview of what we have been up to.

I will have another post up soon of everything we have done. Until then enjoy our little preview picture.

Change of plans... as usual...

Not only have we changed the plan of the guest bedroom lay out we have also changed our plan on what projects were a priority. A funny thing about planning projects is that things change and not being in the house while doing planning for said house normally doesn't turn out to well. Like planning to add another window in the guest room only to find out when we got home that the pool equipment is in the exact spot we wanted the window. Lame right? Maybe one day we will add it by having a professional tackle that "little" job.

Our priority list changed when we discovered the window and pool equipment issue. Which led us to this lovely room.

 

Don't let this picture deceive you it needs some work. The issue with the guest bathroom is not that it looks bad, but that it feels crowded even though its a fairly large second bathroom. The main issue that we have with this room is that big built in storage cabinet, you almost walk right into it when you walk into the room. Next the light switch is on the other side of the built in so when you walk into the room in the dark you pretty much have to slide your hand along the built in and then around the corner to turn the light on. Its kind of annoying. 

 

Having the built in is nice for the storage aspect but honestly it is not necessary for this bathroom. Along with the built in the next things that have to go are the tile counter top and the outdated light fixture.  We decided it was just the right time to tackle these issues and it also helped that Home Depot was having a big sale on bathroom vanities 50% off to be exact. How could we pass that deal up.

The plan is to remove the built in storage pantry, vanity, light, mirror and tile floor. We went to Home Depot to find us a nice vanity and did indeed find us a beauty. Exactly what we have been looking for. Dark colored wood, counter top all one piece with an integrated sink and it looks like a piece of furniture bottom shelf included. Its pretty exciting. 

We also picked up a pretty sweet faucet when we picked up the vanity. That light fixture we have had for probably over a year now. It's just been sitting in the guest bathroom waiting for the right moment for it to be installed.

We have already kind of made a decision on new tile but it is not a 100% decision. See the picture with the vanity above, well we like the look of that tile. Which has a travertine look to it, now we just have to find it. We for sure want to do a bigger tile than the 6x6 tiles that we currently have in there, so we might just go with a 12 x 12 inch tile or even a 16 x 16 inch tile. We really love the look of more tile and less grout. We will keep you posted on that decision when we finally make it.  As for now that is the plan.