Kids' Bathroom Remodel

You've seen the vanity and shelf box we made. Now that the kids were out of school for the summer, it was time to perform the upgrade to their bathroom.

The first task, as always, was demolition. Out came the vinyl flooring, old toilet and sink, lighting and other fixtures.

Vinyl and underlayment out 

Light fixture and medicine cabinet removed

Out comes the old vanity

Going to need to mud and prime those walls

The toilet is gone - grocery bags help keep sewer gas out

Once the walls were patched, we painted the room and started to rebuild it from the floor up.

The floor is a porcelain tile, the same as what I put in our master bathroom. Daltile Continental - charcoal with Tuscan blue and rust accent colors. We used a charcoal grout.

DITRA underlayment installed w/ modified thinset

Tile installed w/ unmodified thinset

The tile is grouted

Once the floor was done, in went the new light fixture, toilet, vanity, and sink.

Light fixture installed

New Cadet 3 toilet installed and shimmed

There is the cherry vanity, screwed to the wall

Back on the wall is the cherry shelf box

Using a jig to drill the holes - quicker and less accident-prone than measuring

Refinished base trim, new air duct diffuser, new bathroom fixtures and items completed the project.

The whole think took about a week to accomplish but the results were worth it. Gone are the particle board cabinets and, in their place, are custom built cherry ones. The faucet and toilet both work better than what they replaced while using less water. The one-piece vanity top and sink is easier to clean, as is the tile floor. An elegant oval mirror replaces a cheap wall-mount medicine cabinet.

Kids' bathroom completed

I hope my daughter learned something working with her father. Something in addition to how insanely driven I can be when working on a task. At every step, I was asking what we should do next. When waiting (for paint to dry or thinset to cure) I was always thinking about what we could do in the meantime to advance the ball.

By the time we grouted the tile, there wasn't anything left to do in parallel. We had to do nothing. (Well, I mowed the lawn then I did nothing.)  Good thing, because by that point I was exhausted. Of course, at dawn the next day it was time to install all the things!

Right now, I'm basking in the afterglow.

The piano room can be cleaned up again. My shop is a disaster since we just threw things back down there. It'll take an hour or so to put everything away where it belongs. The side of the garage is littered with cardboard boxes that things came in. But the job is done, and so am I.