Bathroom Shower Tile

So months and months and many more months ago, when I was pregnant I knew that before the boys arrived I would want to retile the bathroom.  We had this plastic surround that would always get grimy and gross, so I wanted something fresh and clean.  This is what we started with:

and after some tile, a little grout and a new shower head:

We bought the subway tile from Menards, got the tile for the niche, along with two preformed niches from The Tile Shop and bought the shower head set from Home Depot.  I'm in LOVE!

We did our usual thing and wrote inside the wall to mark the occasion and memory.

Once the walls were up we started tiling.  Getting the niche done first, followed by the subway tile.

Followed by grout.

We ended up with a decent size gap between the top piece of tile and the ceiling. 

Like the three little bears it was too small for tile, to big for grout so....

We added a piece of quarter round to the top, caulked and painted it the same color as the ceiling.

Just perfect.

We love the showerhead, but it didn't come with a handheld attachment so we bough this one and it works great for giving the boys and the dogs baths and matches great with the showerhead kit we bought..

With all of our other bathroom projects, we always wanted to do a niche to have a place to store all of our things, but when it came down to it we never did, thinking it would be too much work or too expensive.  It did cost a little more, and take a little extra time, but it was SO worth it.

I found this little guy at Steins last fall.  It is called an "air plant" and literally you do NOTHING to it.  Set it and forget it.  No water, no dirt, nothing.  I found the little pot at Steins too, plopped the plant inside and put it in our bathroom.  The steam from showers helps it and I have not watered it at all!  Maybe I've found a plant that I can actually keep alive.

Bathroom Redo

Our bathroom vanity and flooring was dated, dirty and overdue for a redo.

So a redo it got.  

We went with a recycled glass counter because I love the materials used and the uniqueness of it.  I love the strength of the counter and the price is equal or closely comparable with quartz or granite.

We ordered it through Home Depot and McDermott Top Shop came out and installed it.  I am more of a diy-er, love finding reusable products that are easy, budget friendly and typically something the hubby and I can handle, but this purchase was definitely worth it!

We purchased this sink and this faucet.  Love both.

Realizing that counter would not match with the existing job that I did on the vanity, I opted to paint the vanity a mint, (the same color we painted the basement ceiling), transforming it...

From this:

To this:

Since the paint was a satin base, I applied polyurethane over the top of it, two coats, lightly sanding in between and am loving it!

So fresh and so clean.

I kept the hardware the same color because it matches everything else.

If you didn't notice from the pictures above, we also decided to rip out our outdated, dirty flooring and slap down some tile.  One would think that would be easy....five layers of flooring, and a few hours later we managed to get almost all of the flooring out.

Obviously at some point during the life of this bathroom there was some leaking issues.

Since the distance between the current flooring and floor we have in the hallway wasn't enough to install cement board on the floor, we opted to go with this stuff:

It was kind of expensive, we had to purchase an entire roll, but comes with a lifetime warranty on leaking, and install was SO much easier then concrete board, so we opted to try it out and are impressed with it.

The hubby laid it out to size and cut it.  Per the instructions he then mixed up some mortar and adhered it between the underlayment and yellow flooring started out with.  The directions say you can start laying tile immediately, so that's what he did!

I love this tile, and slowly but surely we managed to get it done.

On a normal project, with normal time management and scheduling we would have had this floor down a lot quicker, but between the process of planning my frozen embryo transfer (here, here, here and here), a family emergency we were working through over the past couple of months, along with another bathroom project we took on, things  have been slightly delayed in the Emily and Chad household!

 But since I love before's and after's:

Before:

After:

What a difference a little paint, some tile and a new counter can do...Now onto the 1,000 other projects we have to get done while these twin boys are percolating....

Tiling Over Vinyl Flooring

We finally figured out the flooring for our basement.  We had the hardest time trying to find decent flooring.  Finally, after deciding against sheets of vinyl flooring because we would be wasting SO much money with excess, our epic fail with peel and stick tile that didn't stick and thinking we found the right vinyl flooring and it was too dark, we did it, we found the perfect tile, got it installed, grouted and sealed and are now one step closer to being done with the basement.  Our fourth trip to Menards was a successful one.  We actually weren't even there to look at flooring, but I decided to pop on over to see what they had as a last desperate attempt to see if they would have anything that we could use.  The tile we fell in love with was a ceramic tile and purchased from Menards, it was awesomely priced at 50 CENTS a square foot (approximately) and was made through Innovatile.  It has definitely held up to the traffic constantly on it and we love the fact that it didn't break the bank!!

Originally we talked about ripping up the vinyl flooring that was already down, but opted against it once we realized that we would be trying to peel it up forever and found this stuff.  Apparently it is supposed to work wonders and we have no complaints so far.

The vinyl flooring also acts as a barrier between the tile and the concrete floors, so we figured it would do more good than harm to leave it.

We managed to turn this:

Into this:

This project was pretty quick.  The tile was laid in one night and we grouted the next.  Bam. Done!

So to get this project started, we pulled up some of the vinyl flooring that was having commitment issues with the floor.

From there we figured out the "middle" was and got prepped.

 We used TEC Sturdi Flex Thin Set Mortar and went to town laying the tiles.

Slowly but surely we were able to see the light at the end of the tiled tunnel...

 And after lots of measuring, double checking the measurements, marking the tiles, cutting the tiles and laying them in, we were done.

It was beautiful....

And it was EVEN MORE beautiful once we got everything grouted.  We used TEC AccuColor Premium Sanded Grout in 915 Light Smoke .

Actually tiling was cheaper than our original idea of vinyl floors....

Here's the breakdown:

$35-tile

$13-mortar

$11-grout

Grand Total: $59.00

Now I'd say that is definitely a win for us since the original vinyl flooring we wanted would have been over $100.00

House Tour

Current House:

First House: