Bathroom 2

My camera is broken so I've resorted to using my old mobile to take pictures. You can probably tell from the photo of my bathroom that my phone has no flash. Or maybe it does and I just don't know how to use it. 

You might remember that I showed you a picture of our upstairs bathroom. If you've forgotten the link is here.  One of our renovation casualties has been consistency between up and downstairs. However these things happen and I wouldn't trade my luxurious bath for another claw foot if you paid me.

It may look lovely and complete however the room is actually far from it. The tiles we used were from a cheap 'job lot' and hindsight has shown us the error of our ways. Never, ever, ever use floor tiles that have to be grouted in white, especially in the bathroom. They look great in the close up because I found the only area in the room where they look decent.

We tiled up to the half way line in the bathroom and promptly ran out of time, money and motivation. Thus, our walls are half-tiled, half gyprock. It needs something that I don't understand done to it before we can paint or wallpaper it. The mirror isn't even ours, it belongs to my sister and I found it at my parents' house when they were packing to move.

One day it will be glorious. For now it's just functional.

My bathroom (and what REALLY happens in a renovation)

I was browsing for a good photo to use here when I came across this one. This is our bathroom around the 2007 mark. Note the lovely old fashioned tile pattern on the floor. Unfortunately those tiles are long gone, a casualty of the great house raise project.

Sometime during the raise our poor bathroom broke its watertight seal. Consequently we had to pull up all those tiles and have the area re-sealed and tiled. Of course we couldn't match our existing tiles anywhere in Brisbane and because I was bathing Big Boy in a large plastic garbage bin (due to being unable to use the bathroom until the tiling was finished) we decided to go with plain cream tiles. The do look great, just not so rustic and intricate.

This bathroom is now our upstairs bathroom and it rarely gets used unless someone needs to wash their hands. The lovely claw-foot bath is filled with carpet off cuts and there are various miscellaneous items that need to be sorted currently residing in there.

So there it is, the REAL cost of renovating that no-one tells you about. All up this little diversion cost us $1000 with nothing pretty to show for it and a whole lot of stress added onto an already stressful project.

(And before anyone has a heart attack over the shower curtains - no they are not still there. I hated them with a passion and I certainly didn't buy them. You can imagine how impressed I was to return from work one day to discover my mother-in-law had purchased and installed them.)