Bathroom P.S.

Our new bathroom floor was officially "broke in" today during a potty training session with Kensi. She missed her little potty and wet all over it! (sigh....thank goodness it is water-proof!) :)

Redoing a bathroom with Murphy's Law... a.k.a... the tale of the toilet

There are a lot of things that can help you when you are doing home improvement projects...Murphy's Law is NOT one of them! Let me give you a recap...

Our upstairs bathroom was tolerable when we moved in. The walls were turquoise and purple and there was turquoise peel-and-stick tile on the floor. Not my favorite choice of colors, but I could live with it. Well, here we are 3 years later. I hate the turquoise walls. The peel-and-stick tile is no longer sticking. Several tiles were almost completely off and the floor has never been water proof. As anyone with kids can tell you...when little girls take a bath, the water does not stay in the tub. The downstairs bathroom is right below the upstairs one and has major water damage on the ceiling thanks to this non-water proof floor. Needless to say, we had to paint & replace the floor. And as any good d0-it-yourselfer can tell you...if you are going to paint, do it first and then lay new floor.

(turquoise walls...yikes)

Hmmm....what would we like our new bathroom to look like? Well, we have this great bear picture that we have had for years and loved, but just never had a place to hang. This would be perfect for the new decor in the bathroom. We would use the picture as our guide and match everything to it. We painted the wall a tan color, bought oak light switch & outlet covers & found the perfect color of green for the trim. That is when Murphy and his wonderful Law entered the picture. We could not find a shower curtain to match our lovely bear theme. Not anywhere. As we are checking the very last store in town for a matching curtain it occurs to us that maybe we should have picked the shower curtain out first and matched everything to that instead. (Duhhh...?)

(Tan walls. Toilet in the middle of the floor. Peel-and-stick tiles gone. Gross floor)

Back to square one...the bear picture and oak switch plates are out...now what? You start with the shower curtain. We found a light, airy butterfly curtain that we love. We bought the paint for the trim (a different color of green than previously bought...of course) and were ready to go until we realized that they tan walls clashed with the new curtain. Of course they had to be repainted. Now they are a beautiful shade of "rice paper" and all is good in the color department.(White walls. Toilet not even in the bathroom.)

Now onto the floor. How hard can buying linoleum and laying it be, right? We walked into Home Depot expecting to quickly pick out the piece of pre-cut linoleum that we liked the best and be on our way. (This is our "5-10 year house", so linoleum would have to do.) There was no linoleum at Home Depot that we liked and once we started researching how to lay linoleum we found that it was actually quite complicated. One Saturday down...

Maybe the Lowe's would have a better selection. Hmmm...Lowe's doesn't even have pre-cut linoleum. They have this new stuff called "no-glue" linoleum. Sounds pretty easy to us! The salesman reassured us that yes, it is quite simple to lay, just cut out the right shape and tape it down. Easy as that! Famous last words...

By now it is about 8PM Saturday night...two Saturday's down. Marshyl decides that we can't have another wasted Saturday and we have to do something about the floor. We enlisted the kids help in pulling up all of the old peel-and-stick tile. It was bad underneath. Marshyl pulled out the toilet and the work began. Or should have began. The sub-floor was quite a bit more water damaged than we thought, so it had to be repaired. Two Saturdays completely down.

The next day is Sunday and the toilet is still in the middle of the bathroom, not hooked up and not functioning. Thank goodness for 2 bathrooms! We can get this done Monday night, no problem. Monday came and we realized that we had another commitment. Tuesday morning came and Marshyl thought he could get the floor in in an hour. We lay out the linoleum and measure and cut it to size. Oh oh...time to go to work. Another day with the toilet still in the middle of the room. Tuesday night we had a work party. Weds. rolls around and we realize that the tape the salesman at Lowe's gave us to lay the floor with was the wrong tape. Nothing is open this late at night. Another day with the toilet still in the middle of the room. Actually, by this time we had moved it out into the middle of the hallway. (much better there... :S ) Thursday...we got the right tape, we had the time and Hallelujah, the floor is in place. Now, to caulk the seams so that the floor is truly waterproof. The plumbers make caulking look sooooo easy. It is NOT sooooo easy. And waterproof caulk does not wash off...lesson learned the hard way. But finally, we get it done. After midnight, but we finally have a floor! woohooo! And Friday morning the toilet finally got put back where it belonged and hooked up.

Wow, it's finally done. Was it worth it? Yes, it looks beautiful. Do I want to go and do this again any time soon? Heck NO!
(Beautiful new bathroom! Toilet back in place & functioning. Woohoooo.)