Basement Bath Reveal!

So it's been like 7 months since I first posted about installing the shower in our basement bath, talk about a drawn out reno! Truth be told all the major work was done back in March, but between being preggers and the fact that we don't really use that bathroom ourselves (it's for the in-laws when they're here, or other guests) we didn't get around to painting and caulking or the other finishing touches until the end of July - as in the day before my MIL was coming to town :) In fact, I was quickly snapping these after shots just as she arrived, while she patiently waited to actually use the bathroom :)

Here's how the room looked before:

Perfectly fine as is, but with only one tub in the house we really wanted to put in a shower, which also meant gutting the floor and ripping apart the walls. The wall to the left was shared with a storage closet, so we cut into that to install the new (huge!) shower.

This is pretty much the most luxurious space in our whole house. I'm so wishing it was our upstairs shower!


























I originally picked out a gorgeous marble subway tile and chair rail for the walls, but after a lot of urging from our handyman we kept it simple with these larger travertine tiles and a marble mosaic on the floor - slightly less expensive and a lot less maintenance for a guest bath.

At first I wasn't really feeling just how much the colours varied in the stone, but now I actually really love it. The bench was a nice added feature too - just that small added detail makes the shower feel super-fancy.

We repeated the same travertine tiles in a diagonal on the bathroom floor, and also gave the room a fresh coat of 'chocolate froth' by Behr (which is reading so grey in these terribly lit photos but is actually a warm greige). The pretty new towel rods and paper holder are from Homesense - I love their selection of bath accessories and I find the prices so much more reasonable than big box stores. We did salvage the toilet and vanity because they were pretty much brand new, although I really want to give the vanity a little makeover at some point. Once the vanity's painted out the new mirror (which i love!) hopefully won't look so out of place. 

But it'll likely be a long while before that happens - for now we're calling it done!

Updates

Happy Friday everyone - Jummah Mubarak! 

It's been a slow week around here so no big reveal to share just yet, but the basement bathroom is almost finished! 

The shower is complete and the drywall is patched, all it needs is a fresh coat of paint and a little caulk around the trim. Then God-willing we'll be moving on to the kitchenette!

New potlights are going in today in the master closet - exciting stuff! So glad we had this done, it was uber dark in there before. 

Would have loved a pretty chandelier of course, but the potlights made more sense in a closet this size. Plus my parents had these fixtures leftover from their basement reno, so they were free!  

In other news, my beloved fiddle leaf fig tree is on it's last leaf, literally :(  

I had it in a spot with tons of light but it just hasn't adjusted well to the new house. I tried repotting it, talking to it, even reading Quran over it. I'm still hoping and praying it'll come back to life in the spring - any suggestions? 

Back next week with more deets on the bathroom  - enjoy your weekends :) 

Basement Bath Reno Part I - Installing the Shower

One of the things we knew we wanted to do when we moved in to the new place was a BIG reno in the basement. It was already somewhat finished but we had a few changes in mind – the first being adding a shower to the existing powder room.

Clearly there wasn't space in the bathroom to add a shower, but luckily there was a huge storage closet just behind the empty wall on the left side - plenty of space to add a big shower, with room to spare for a good sized storage closet. 

The only bump in the road was that the wall we needed to cut through was solid concrete - yikes! We considered other layouts but short of moving the whole bathroom, anything else would really cut into the living space. One of the contractors we brought in for an estimate was up for working with the concrete wall so we stuck to the original plan and got started on the work last week. 

The contractor was planning to put in a steel support beam but after opening up the drywall he realized it wasn't a load bearing wall, so they were able to skip that. The hubs had some time off and worked with the guys all week - in fact I may have picked up the jack hammer myself a couple times ;) They had a cement saw too which was a lot faster, but it generated WAY more dust, so they used the jack hammer for most of the demo. 

At this point the rubble definitely had me questioning whether this was worth it - that and all the DUST! We covered the entire basement in tarps and sealed it off from the upper floors with a plastic drop cloth (plus we don't have ducts) but the dust is still everywhere. I have no idea how it traveled up 3 floors,  but pretty much every surface in the entire house is covered in a thin layer of soot. So if any of you are local and want to come help me clean, I'll love you forever :) But I'm trying to ignore all the dirt and keep my mind on the finish line - pretty shiny tiles!

Other prep work included adding a fan that runs through the ceiling towards an exterior vent

 and running the plumbing around to the shower

as well as installing the drain, which I didn't take a picture of because I got pretty bored of all this stuff and went back upstairs :) 

I did have a little fun though when they put down some new cement 

It's already covered up but I love that it'll always be there under the house :) 

This week they've framed out the doorway

and they've almost finished tiling inside the shower. I was completely bummed out when we couldn't use the original tile I picked out - a gorgeous marble subway tile - but its still turning out okay. More on that soon, for now here's a little sneak peek

More details to come as we make progress! For now stay tuned tomorrow for a big giveaway contest!