The Story Before the Bathroom Reveal

Y'all, it has been a ride.

Why are all of our renos involving trades always held up?  Now I could understand the kitchen reno which began March 16, 2020 which is the week all hell broke loose.  The kitchen wasn't finished until July that year and it really had nothing to do with the pandemic.  There were quality control issues with two doors and if you think I was settling for lint sealed under clear coat and the same two holes caused by an industrial stapler on three remakes of a door, you're nuts. 

We actually redid our bathroom in 2022.  Do you remember?  Probably not because I hated it so much I never did a reveal!  The deep ocean blue was a pain in my ample ass and for almost three years because it never stopped running.  We had white chair railing and water from drying our hands or showers constantly dripped blue and would pool on top of the white railing sending me into fits on the daily.  Because we'd gone through three different blues to reach that one, the Mr said tough and we're not doing anything in there for at least two years but likely three at the earliest.  You must remember at that time, we had the second floor ceiling smoothed, laid hardwood, and remodeled the bedroom with life sized murals and board and batten.  He was tapping out on projects.  He did agree to new flooring in there because after redoing the floors, our gray New England inspired wood vinyl looked woefully out of place.  After getting the flooring is when Mom got sick so it sat for 18 months.

I bided my time making my business in the bathroom as short as possible.  When just after year two of my required wait in September 2024 revealed no less than 8 bubbling spots on the ceiling, I told him I couldn't take it anymore and if I was going to have to scrape and redo the ceiling, that blue was going too.  He agreed.  This wallpaper company kept popping up on my IG feed and this stunning pattern completely out of my wheel house kept calling to me.  It was dark and moody and wouldn't match the rest of the house and I didn't care.  Going bold and moody in a bathroom is the perfect place to take that risk.

The wallpaper was truly the most expensive component and I choked at the idea of paying $500 for such a small portion.  (We were only going to cover the top third.)  I would tell the Mr about what I wanted to do but he'd say he couldn't see it, just tell him what to do.  It was down to two patterns so I hopped on Canva and did four mockups using light paint on the panels and then dark paint.  I know which one made me smile a mile wide and hoped it was the same for him but didn't tell him which one.  

Wallpaper patterns are Painted Paper's Odette (top) and Rosalind (bottom)

When I showed him the four samples, he dismissed the one wallpaper pattern saying it was too busy and I agreed.  He looked thoughtfully and said "I'm surprising myself but that dark palette looks amazing!" (#4)  Yessssss!!!

We got everything ordered, ripped out the vanity for me to paint it (which was a nightmare with the worst paint ever) to save on the cost of replacing it .  The only thing we had to wait on would be the tub to shower conversion.  I was becoming more concerned because I scraped my foot on the track of the shower a few times to the point I put on one of those suction cup handles for stability.  We didn't want a flimsy acrylic but it just was not in the budget.  Cue me getting an email the day after we ripped out everything to finally do the floor from the place who did our kitchen saying they now do baths.  Not only baths but a heavy duty material called Onyx and they were offering $500 off.  I told the Mr and he said it wouldn't hurt to get an estimate and later that day the kid came out to measure.  We picked from samples and waited.  While waiting we kept trying to guess prices based off of "national averages" and they were running anywhere from $6000-$17000.  We said the price of this was only going to keep going up and I said due to it being a safety issue, I would be willing to use the money from Mom's estate settlement split which he was against.  I told him I didn't want to either but if came in close, she would be tickled she could do something like that for us even if it's not how any of us would want.  So we agreed no more than $11k.  The estimate came back at $12,500.  Well, I wasn't budging and neither was he on their pricing.   That $500 savings was bullshit but I did see they were charging us that amount for a dumpster.  Seriously??  I lied and said they don't allow us to have dumpsters here and the last people to tear out our tub didn't need one. (They didn't)   He said their runners could probably do it with their truck.  The next place to cut were the doors.  He assumed we wanted the barn door type where the hardware was on top and while it looks nice, I felt it would date quickly, if it hasn't already.  We always see collective groans on home shows when they see them.  Well that was a $900 difference.  Bingo.  We had our difference and the budget, while still nausea inducing, was met.  He said he'd send over a contract.  It was bittersweet given the way we were able to afford it but we knew that if we're unfortunately not going anywhere for a while, this needed to be done for our safety and prices would continue to rise.  This was the cheapest we were going to get.

We were given the start date of mid October and I asked the Mr if he thought it was crazy to shoot for Halloween being our finish date so we could enjoy the holidays.  He said it would be close but if we busted butt we could.  This was assuming all went well with the install and why wouldn't it, I mean they were trained on this new system.  Oh...you stupid fools.  Just like Celine Dion said, it all came back to us when they came in.  We were relieved to see the one guy we thought did the best job on our kitchen walk in and told him so.  I should've kept that to myself because he was about to spectacularly screw us and cost us $150.  We had added a new bathroom fan install to the list because we were positive it was not hooked up correctly in the attic.  We told them they needed to replace the whole thing.  Well, he cheaped out and used the old housing because the new fan fit the housing .  Of course he didn't tell us this and we found out a week later  AFTER he threw away the box with the new housing and we fired off a pissed off email to the project manager (dude that came out initially).  We said we told him specifically we wanted the housing replaced as it was part of the problem and now we need to buy a new fan.  (What I should've said was "and now YOU'RE buying us a new fan.")  I made sure I bought one that would not fit the measurements to force them into redoing it all.  When the shower wall install was "done" we saw tons of scratches top and bottom where they forced it in and the next day when I took my first shower, I saw the subway tile panels didn't match up 'grout' wise.  I lost my shit and I took a pic to send to the Mr.  He sent it to the project manager with an emoji like WTF dude!?!?!?  In the meantime, I called the manufacturer telling them the situation, how badly they screwed the pooch and he was shocked and said especially with the panels they are purposely designed to slide into place and line up so he had no idea how they could've screwed that up.  I asked about the scratches and he said the bottom ones could be fixed by their people but the one in the ceiling would need to be replaced because it can't be fixed upside down and we're looking at a 3 week repair time.  Bye bye Halloween.  

I wanted information so I could throw it back in their face if they tried to shuck and jive us.  Later they said they talked to the company and said it would be 3 weeks to repair (we know) and if it ended up not working out, they'd have to replace it so they were going to rip it all out and replace it.  It would be 6 weeks to reorder everything so we said no way are we doing this the week we leave for the holidays so we pushed it out until mid January.  It was actually a relief to not have to worry about them the rest of the year but that also meant major inconvenience.  We lived without a vanity/sink to wash our hands and brush our teeth up to that point.  We'd have to go downstairs and do everything over the kitchen sink.  So this was considered luxury for us from Thanksgiving to January 13th.

Mid January they came back, wrecked up the walls, doors and ceiling leaving us $300 in the hole between the fan and paint and stuff we needed to buy to fix what they effed up.  

Then it was all on us and it became apparent even if the original install would've gone right, there was so much that went wrong on the parts we needed to do that Halloween would've been laughable.  Heck even Thanksgiving would've been ambitious.  Every single thing we needed to do fought us at every turn.  From the medicine cabinet door, the fit of the cabinet, the vanity, the paneling, the trim, the wallpaper, paint and especially the door we needed to repair because of them that there seemed to be zero remorse on their part.  It was exhausting.  It was soul crushing and back breaking at times.  From conception to finish it was five months for something we initially thought would take two weeks.

Was it worth it?

Swing by for the reveal tomorrow to find out!

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