Bathroom ideas

They came out to the house today in order to mark the yard for the holes they’ll be digging in order to anchor our basement walls and finally fix them. Progress! That means we need to get working on that bathroom in earnest, so we’ll have a usable one available to the construction guys while they’re working and they won’t have to tromp around upstairs, letting the cats escape and causing generalized havoc. Might as well come up with a few plans for the space, amirite?

This is probably what we’ll end up doing in the room. Somewhat boring tile floors that are readily available at the hardware store here in town, with grey or black grout (we learned our lesson with bright white grout in the upstairs bath, that no matter how clean it is, it shows EVERY FLAW and EVERY SPECK OF EVERYTHING, cripes), shallow pedestal and toilet, corner shower stall, and white walls. We’re going simple on the lighting fixture, and there will be a little nook alongside the shower where I want to hang bare pine board shelving for towels and toilet paper. We’ll also need a hook for the hand towel (I love this octopus one), and I’d like to go with a wooden bathmat to carry over the shelving theme. Cute, but a little boring.

If I had my choice, I’d go with a nice punch of color on the floor, like these vivid Mexican cement tiles in a bold graphical pattern. Sigh. Kevin will veto, I’m sure of it.

Also, I’d like to do a large, interestingly-framed mirror that’ll run the length of the space behind the sink and toilet, so I’d better start junk shopping for one. Brand new will be outrageous.

Basement bathroom demo

So, do you guys remember the bathroom in our basement, the one that belonged in a horror movie? This one:

When we moved in, we were so overwhelmed by projects in areas of the house that we use everyday, as well as how stinking awful that room was, that we basically shut the door to this bathroom and never used the room (except in extreme poop emergencies, since there’s only one other bathroom in the house). It was really easy to forget that the room was even there. It was a sort of time capsule, illustrating the overall effect of the state of the house when we took it over.

Welllll, Kevin got a wild hair up his ass last night and decided to tear it down, as a way of busting into our giant “To Do” list that we’re going to be covering over the next year or so. The list has been looming largely since we received funding to do some major renovations around the holidays, and it’s been difficult to decide where to start. Not anymore!

I think it’s time for a pretty major hardware store run, don’t you?

Where do we start?

The problem with having such a long list of things that need to be done (or purchased) is that it’s difficult to know where to start. Well, we KNOW where to start: the basement walls. They’re cracked and bowing, and they need to be addressed first. We’re going to be installing wall anchors to pull the walls straight from the outside, and that’ll probably be done first thing after the ground thaws out and dries out this spring. It’ll be a pretty big, expensive project, although hopefully it’ll be taken care of within a few days’ time.

The problem, then, is figuring out what to tackle first after the walls are completed. Here are a few prospects:

• Tearing up every square millimeter of carpeting in the house and installing hardwood flooring ourselves
• Tearing out and rebuilding the basement bathroom
• Tearing out and replacing the stairs leading down to the basement, and walling-off the stairs and putting a door at the bottom of them so that it’s a separate space that isn’t open to the upstairs
• New couch
• The Kitchen of Doom

I’m going to follow this up with a series of posts filled with ideas that I have for these projects.
Where would you start?