Maine bathroom remodel

Confession, I might have a slight addiction to remodeling and fixing things :) Since my dad passed away, I've had the fortunate opportunity to remodel our family homes and it has given me so much pride and quite frankly confidence in other aspects of my life that I didn't know was possible. I have always loved craft projects and making things, thanks to all of the projects I did growing up with my mom, so it's only natural that I would love a good remodeling project.

About 6 weeks ago, I decided that it was time we needed to update our upstairs bathroom at our house in Maine as 1) the shower tiles were starting to buckle 2) I was worried about water damage and 3) we host so many people that having a more functional bathroom was needed. So, I found this amazing contractor who was able to come over on the Friday before MLK weekend, walk through the project, and begin a few weeks later. The whole project took under two weeks and came out spectacular. Tyler and I could hardly believe what a difference the new layout and fixtures make...it was so worth the investment! Here are the before, during, and after pictures:

This was a picture from when we had a young family renting our house (you can tell by the duck shower curtain!). Behind that blue curtain was a window. When my grandmother lived in the house, there was just a bath tub, that was what my great grandparents had and it was fine for a while. My dad had a friend who was renting our house and installed a shower about 15 years ago. Overall, it worked, but the challenge of having a window next to the shower and no storage was a challenge.

This is another before picture from when our friend Tim moved into the house. To the right of the doorway was the toilet.

To start, the contractor removed all of the old tile and fixed the rotting wood.

Here you can see the window up close. We moved the window to the right wall where we now get substantially more sunlight and don't have to worry about water damaging it :)

We ripped up the toilet (got a new one) and moved it so the back of the toilet was attached to the right wall (basically turning it 90 degrees). This allowed us to have a 48 inch vanity for storage and add a sliding door to make the bathroom more functional.

I thought this was kind of cool, but apparently, there was a little slot under the old medicine cabinet for used razor blades. I guess after use, you'd put them through the slot and then throw them out in batches...we were all surprised to discover them when removing the medicine cabinet.

Slightly blurry photo, but we brought the plumbing up-to-date and simplified it.

The contractor then installed my HUGE vanity on the left side. At first, I was really worried that it wouldn't look good; however, not that everything is in place, I really love how big it is. For as much as we use the house and host guests, it gives us so much more storage and places to put things. Next, the contractor removed the window, fixed the siding on the house and began the tiling work.

I picked out brushed nickel finishes for everything.

Here you can see the spot where the old medicine cabinet was and the old lighting.

The contractor then cut a whole in the right wall of the bathroom and installed the old window. We now get so much more light as a result. In the spring, he'll finish adding the cedar siding to the outside and patch everything.

Once the window was in place, the team moved to installing the subway tiles and fixtures.

Here's the tile all complete! I decided that I wanted the room to feel bigger and one way to do that is by adding beadboard to make the walls feel taller than they actually are. We found reasonably priced beadboard and molding at Home Depot and went with Benjamin Moore Solitude for the paint color. I just love the contrast and nautical feel.

After the shower area was complete, the new toilet was installed and we created a sliding door with the original door. I'm really glad we kept the original door as it creates uniform upstairs and works great as a sliding door.