Violet Sky

My husband and I have owned our home for a little over five years at this point. When we bought it in 2019, it was essentially turn-key – there was nothing we hated about it. Some of the choices of the previous owner, a lovely lady who shared a first name with me and who spent several hours chatting to us about the house and her life on closing day, were not the choices we might have made, but they were all relatively neutral or at least attractive if not.

After five years, however, finally some of the house started to bug us. The kids’ bathroom was the biggest  offender, featuring a single piece acrylic tub/shower combo, laminate flooring, and the same style of faux-granite  laminate countertops featured in most of our kitchen. 

My stepdad is a retired painter/quasi general contractor who often chips in on handyman type stuff around the house here, so naturally we went to him first. He quoted us about $2000 for the labor, plus whatever the cost of materials might be. I think we asked about the expected cost of materials and were quoted another $2000, which all in all seemed reasonable for a standard guest bathroom. We had a spring break trip coming up where the whole family was going to be out of the house, so we decided to take a step back on our saving for a new roof and do our first ever major modification to this house.

I have limited before photos, which kind of vexes me, though I really hated how the single piece shower/tub combo looked and I’m not sure I would want to post it publicly if I had it. Our master bathroom shower is of the same type of material and it’s pretty difficult to keep clean, so the kids (who are old enough that their bathroom cleaning is entirely their responsibility) did a predictably poor job on theirs. In any case, this is what I have:

There was some natural negotiating that had to go on before we could renovate the bathroom. Frankly, the negotiation spiraled outward a little bit – initially, I had the thought that we would just do the shower/tub in tile and with a new tub, but leave the rest of the bathroom the same. But if you’re going to take out the tub, you might as well consider redoing the flooring. And if you’re redoing the flooring, you might as well consider switching out the vanity at that point. And if you’re all the way to replacing the vanity, you might as well put in a new medicine cabinet. If you’re familiar with If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, you know how this story tends to go.

So we ended up with a full renovation, minus the toilet. After browsing Pinterest, I narrowed down that I like subway tiles for the main shower surround. My initial hope was for a sage green tile, inspired by this pin, but my husband is red/green color blind and wanted something he could actually see, which was fair. This led me to my second place inspiration, which he ended up liking as well. We didn’t want the black fixtures, as those have been a bit overdone (in our opinion) by the millennial cohort, but we both liked the contrast of the subway tiles with the hexagon inset. 

Finding a vanity that was the same odd size as the existing vanity (45.5 inches wide) turned out to be pretty impossible, so we went with a standard size (42 inches wide) that would still leave enough room around the toilet. It’s also long been a gripe of mine that the kids leave the bathroom fan running 24/7, so we added installing a new fan with a timer to the pile. 

All in all, we ended up with a result we were very happy with!

Of course, I didn’t bring all of this up to brag, but as background for the accounting of the remodel itself.

The tub was about twice the price that I expected, as we had anticipated Lowe’s or Home Depot carrying our desired $200 bath tub in stores. That didn’t turn out to be true, so this was the next best option. My stepdad does not love doing plumbing, so when the plumbing left behind by our tract home build ended up needing some adjustments before the tub was put in, he called a plumber to do it. But other than those items, everything pencilled out roughly as expected.

All in all, it was money well spent. We’re thrilled with the change and I’m glad to never have to set eyes on that grimy plastic shower enclosure again.