Two posts in one week. Who the heck am I? Anyway, if we can find the motivation to work on the bathroom after work this week, hopefully we’ll be done by the weekend and I can share the finished project on Monday. I’m not making any promises though because we all know I’ll most likely break them.
I mentioned in the last post that we had to come up with a Plan B for our mini-makeover of the guest bathroom. We had two boxes of subway tile just hanging out in the garage and leftover grout from the tile floor in the half bath so we decided to use them in here. Originally, the subway tile was going to go in the kitchen but hopefully we’ll be doing a full on kitchen reno in a couple of years and it no longer made sense in my mind to put in a backsplash that would get ripped out in such a short time period. Of course with the pace that we move, the kitchen won’t actually be done until the year 2043. Here’s a reminder of what we were trying to cover up:
I just realized it looks like the cabinet is gone but it’s just painted a dark color. One giant cookie to the first person to guess what color I used – I’m sure it’ll be a big surprise. I spent a few nights removing the wallpaper and getting the wall as smooth as I could to prep for tile. I also primed the wall for good measure. That wiring might look a little scary but it was all housed in a metal casing behind the previous light fixture.
Wine helps to dull the pain of scraping painted over wallpaper.
All we had to pick up to get this done was a bucket of mastic and one more box of subway tile. I spent about 3 or 4 nights after work putting up all of the tiles. I shared this photo a while back that gives you a glimpse of the tile before grout and the new counter.
If I could go back and do it again, I would make all of the cuts I needed as I went instead of placing all of my full tiles first. Some of the tiles jut out a little bit because by the time I went back to put in cut pieces, the tile above it had slid down just a bit and dried in position which didn’t leave enough room for the cut tile. Not a big deal, I still think it turned out pretty fantastic for my first time tiling a vertical space. Thankfully, there were no Toddlers in Tiaras style meltdowns like when I attempted to tile the bathroom floor downstairs. I would also buy a better grout float because we went cheap and ours sucked so badly that I gave up and used my hands to grout 90% of the wall. Hand grouting – the next big thing in home DIY.
Anyway, we just have a couple of projects left for this room and then I can show her off. We’re hoping that next year we can tackle the shower but for now it’s staying as is minus one itty bitty change.
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