HGTV LIES to you!

They would have you believe that a complete bathroom remodel can happen in a half hour. Ok, so... it could happen in a week or less.

I submit to you that it takes MUCH longer. Maybe not quite as long as some of our projects take, but there is definitely some hard core time involved here.

This is the long-awaited post on our basement (boys') bathroom remodel, which has taken us 17 months and two days to complete. That's SO NOT 30 minutes. It is, however, a new bathroom record for the Haven: the last remodel took about 4 years. Yes, really. Fortunately, we have enough bathrooms in the Haven to make life managable during the construction process.

Here's one of our "after" photos. Please note, that Todd had removed the bathroom door to paint it, which actually made it easier to take my room pictures. Now to really appreciate the VAST difference, let me bare our skeleton-in-the-bathroom, and show you some of the super-icky "before" photos:

That's real wood paneling, pine cabinets (both in a glossy varnish), a chocolate-brown sink, and you can see the water heater in the mirror, which was located in a hidden door, in the bathroom. The toilet & shower were in the little room beyond, which was also separated by a door.

So I'm embarrassed to show you what the awful, AWFUL shower looked like:

It had a glass door front on it, but, um, ..... yeah. The walls of the old shower were a floral patterned tile-wannabe paneling. This product should never have been used in a shower. The dark spots are where the surface of it had come off, letting the moisture right through to the back. Most of the other dark areas are....... um, GROSS. The Health Department would have had a heyday with this.

There was more paneling in the toilet nook, and the whole floor was some nasty linoleum that was broken, torn, and peeling up. You don't want to know why the walls are so dirty. Let's just say it together: EW!!

Demolition was more fun for me than for the men of the Haven. I merely took pictures. It was some serious work for them. The counter top was SECURELY attached. This baby wasn't going ANYWHERE very easily:

We can also date the remodel by noting that Brandon, our missionary son, (he's the one in the middle!) was still home and helped with the demolition phase:

So of course, we completely gutted the whole room. Things are already looking better now:

We ended up changing the water heater to an on-demand system, and it was mounted on the wall you're facing in the photo. The door on the right does not open into the new bathroom, but gives us access to the water heater from the rec room next door. This freed up some room in the main part of the bathroom. We did not move the shower drain, the toilet location, or the sink location, but we still made some huge changes. Starting with eliminating the interior "room."

Since the Mud Room Remodel, we have been TOTALLY sold on walk-in showers. No doors, no curtains ...... they're WONDERFUL! This shower has a wider area by the shower head, and a slightly narrower entry. The photo shows the little angled wall, and the new water heater. The shower is on the left, with the entry where the ladder is, and you can also see the framing for the built-in shampoo shelf:

I can't begin to tally up how many hours Todd put into this project (with the boys helping -- well, mostly Cameron, since Brandon left two months into it). Let's just say that the tile saw really got a workout. The entire shower is tiled, plus a tiled wainscoting around the toilet. In a boys' bathroom, I will ALWAYS choose to put tile behind the toilet. 'Nuff said. There is more tile across the backsplash, and of course, the floor is tiled too.

Here's the toilet corner, and the counter's backsplash. We had the kids put their handprints & date in paint on the wall. It is hidden behind the counter now, but if the room is remodeled again at some future date, there's a few hands that will wave "hi" to the workers!!

Todd worked very hard to get the slope of the shower floor at the right angles. There are more pictures somewhere of the tiling process, but I couldn't find them for this blog entry. Oh well, it's good to edit. Here he's working on the floor:

And through the magic of several months....... Voila!! We have a fully tiled shower!!

One theme that we tied together all through the room was sqares. So, the shower head is square, the shower drain is square, the sink, the faucet handles, the towel bars, the light fixture ..... all have square ends or shapes to them.

There is no window for this room, so it's all artificial lighting. And let me take a moment to tell you that the vanity mirror ------------------ is the EXACT SAME MIRROR as was in the bathroom before!!! Yep, seriously. It did have a chip on one side, so we took it to have a glass company trim it down, and there's actually still a flaw on the glass, but it works. There is so much storage in this room now that there's no need for behind-the-mirror storage, and it's a tri-view mirror mounted directly on the wall.

This is the view from the door. This may be the last time I see it with the toilet seat in the DOWN position.

And finally, the linen cupboard behind the door. It may be a challenge to find things to fill this room's storage! But that's a nice challenge to have!