Our scary downstairs bathroom

Our scary downstairs bathroom

I’ll be totally honest with you. Our downstairs bathroom was kinda scary. Like, Halloween scary.

Sure, it looked cute with its funny lavender paint, but when you looked in the corners, eww. Just, eww. There was a lot of water damage and the tiles had been installed very poorly. Every time we used the shower, water would run down the side and pool in the opposite corner behind the toilet, where there were gobs of old grout (ugh, why would you install tile and not clean up the grout?!).

We didn’t even know what gross things were lurking beneath the floor!

When our bathroom was being torn up yesterday, we were terrified of what they’d find. I totally imagined a team running into the house wearing hazmat suits and yelling at me to get out NOW!

Didn’t happen.

It actually wasn’t dramatic at all.

Our contractor said there was some damage and mildew, and some of the subfloor wood will need to be replaced. He said this is really common, especially in older homes like ours where the floors are often slanted, and he recommended we spray the whole thing with a bleach/water mix to kill whatever is left of the mildew. And that’s it.

I love no drama.

It doesn’t look like much now, but I’m so happy that we’re soon going to have a bathroom that we know is safe. Plus it’s going to look so much cuter than our old one. I don’t even like lavender!

*****

A quick update on the kitchen: after I just posted about how excited we were about being able to restore our original wood floors, we found out yesterday that the floorboards have actually been sanded too many times and can’t be sanded again. The wood is just too thin.

In this picture you can see how super thin the floors are. The light you see is actually from the basement! Yikes!

So after being sad for a minute, we moved to plan B. Our contractors ordered unfinished oak floorboards in the same width as the rest of the house, and they’re going to be stained to match. That’s pretty great. There will be a virtually seamless look from the front door to the back door, which is going to look awesome. So, it’s a little sad that we’re not going to use our original floors, but plan B is actually WAY better.