We Didn't Get a "Before"...

Let me tell you a little story...sit back and grab a cup of coffee, or a diet coke, or a plain coke if that's more your style, or a glass of milk...

Once upon a time, a handsome young man and his (younger, I just have to add) bride sold the first home they lived in together as a couple. They had no home to buy, just a grand vision of somewhere in the country in which to raise their kids.

He wanted acres and acres of land.

She wanted a nice, clean, new house.

Their two visions were non-existent in one property, so they settled. The both of them. He for 8 "measly" acres, she for a clean, older home with her "bare minimum requirements" (three main floor bedrooms and main floor laundry).

She always hated the bathrooms and what she dubbed as "campground showers" (I kid you not...plastic shower stalls, like what you find in campgrounds) and her goal was to tackle those first.

Well, *insert pregnancy* and *insert pregnancy* and *insert raising a houseful of small children* and time just got away. Then, one day, a few years into living in their new home, the shower head broke off the main floor bathroom. "Perfect!" thought the (younger) wife, "Now we can remodel the bathrooms!"

Fast forward 5 or so years and one extremely high bid from a plumber and that shower head was still broken. That shower unused. The bathtub now leaky because it "choked" on tub toys and needed resuscitation and was never quite the same after. That wife was out to lunch with some blogging/twitter friends and she came home to this:

"GAH!! I didn't take before pictures!!" she exclaimed, like any good blogger would.

Her handsome husband looked at her with a look that said, "Before pictures? We've been waiting 5 years to do this and you want BEFORE pictures? How 'bout FIVE YEARS AGO?!" and promptly swung around and ripped out more sheetrock.

Thankfully for them, they have a functional shower in their basement, or people wouldn't really want to be around them much, seeing as how they're doing this project on "spare time". (HA! "Spare time"...what's that?!)

Okay, done story telling...back to first person.

So, our home was built in the 70's and needs major updating. The bathroom is step one of that updating! Let me try to explain the layout of the "before bathroom"...when you walk into the bathroom, you enter what we call "the sink room", a carpeted (gross...kids, toothpaste, and carpet are not a good mix) entry to the "guts" of the bathroom.

Sink on the right with open (i.e. messy) shelving, dated cupboards and ugliness all around. Opposite the sink are floor to ceiling, wall to wall linen "cupboards". Huge. Awesome storage space, if a bit difficult to get to the back of. (They're really deep.) And ugly, 1970's stained, awful cupboard doors.

There is (was) a pocket door that separates the sink room from the "guts" of the bathroom (we are replacing the pocket door with a "real" door...with the ages and spacing of our kids, we thought a "privacy door" for when they get older and are all getting ready for school might be helpful)...what was a (campground) shower immediately to your left (that short wall of studs was one where the shower was), then the toilet, and a tub to the right.

I always hated that the tub was separate from the shower.

Well folks, it ain't no more!

Shower is ripped out, old porcelain tub replaced by fancy new (deep) whirlpool tub, plumbed for a shower and ready for Durarock to be installed for the tile to go in, extra insulation added for sound proofing (the bathroom is between two bedrooms)! Now we have to find someone to reface our nasty old cupboards/drawers and make a door to hide those eyesore shelves, pick out a slab of granite for the counter, a new sink, mirror, paint and stain.

Goodness. That sounds like a lot left to do when I write it all out.

Help.