It's no secret that Wendy and I have been more or less swamped at work over the last few months. Sadly, the more time we need to spend at our day job, the less time we have to commit to our various renovation projects. This sad fact shows us that we have somehow, and quite disgustingly, turned into adults with actual responsibilities. Blurg!
At the same time, we didn't want our end goal in renovation to suffer too drastically while our focus is on our work, so we've done the unthinkable (for us) and hired a contractor to renovate our bathroom. Gasp, the horror!!
Well, the contractor and his guys have been working through our project for the last several weeks and are nearing completion. As much as it pains us to talk about someone else doing work in our house on our blog, we need to come clean and let you all see the progress. It's about time we share the work they've done and air our dirty little DIY secret. While we could have passed off their work as our own, acting like we've been on the renovation fast track, that just didn't seem right.
They started the whole job about four weeks ago with the massive stage of demo. Due to budget and time frame it was a complete gut and rebuild. Everything came down.
Starting from a clean slate, the crew put the whole bathroom together very quickly. From plumbing to electrical, the trades were in and out of our house so quick (about four days) that I didn't even have a chance to really even observe the progress. What's their deal? Don't these guys take photos of every little detail so they can blog about it? I just don't get it.
At one point I was working from and and was able to be a bit of a creeper and sneak a photos or two.
The next phase started the most difficult part. Wendy and I were both under serious deadlines at the office, but the renovation had to go on. We didn't have much time to make a lot of design decisions, but we showed the contractor our "Bathrooms We're Drooling Over" pin board on Pinterest and he felt this was enough to go on. We were really nervous about the process and handing so much control over, but we risked losing the contractor and then having to live with a partially destroyed bathroom for who knows how long. With our trust, the contractor then proceeded to make the majority of the bathroom design choices, from fixtures to flooring and everything between. Talk about a leap of faith.
We would come home each night and check on the progress. It was like unwrapping a present each and every day. Sometimes it was a present you didn't really want, but needed, like underwear.
The bathroom flew together and eventually got to where it is today, all the while we were trusting in the judgement of the contractor. He promised top notch tile work, modern fixtures, and an efficient use of space. For some reason he just kept telling me that "Wendy will like the bathroom, but you will LOVE it!" It made us feel a little weird, but now that we have the nearly finished project, I see where he was going. Behold!
It may not be 100% what we would have chosen for our house. I mean, it's not particularly Victorian, historic, or anything like anything else in our house, but it is a working bathroom. We told him we wanted a double vanity, and he gave us three sinks plus an ADA sink. We didn't specifically mention urinal-toilets, but now we have three. And our shower enclosure, well, he took it in a bit of a different direction giving us toilet stalls. I'm not sure where the shower control valves are, or how this will keep water in during the shower, but our contractor assures us it will all be perfect once he's finished.
I fear we've taken a wrong step in our renovation with our hiring of this contractor. What do you think? Were we wrong to put so much trust in him, or is he doing us a solid with a cutting edge bathroom? I mean, he did include that waste basket and one of the urinal-toilets free of charge.
