Beautifying the Baths (round 1)

Today was a battle of the bathrooms. In this corner, wearing cargo shorts, is Jerry. He decided to take on the half bath. In the far corner, wearing a professional tool belt, is Randy, one of our contractor's guys. He'll be continuing work on the master bathroom.

Even if the pictures don't show it, this bath is in pretty poor shape. The vanity is warped from years of use, the formerly bronze fixtures are not even attached to the vanity and are all rusty and crusty and don't even get me started on the towel racks and toilet paper dispenser. (Can you say plastic pretending to be bronze?)


Since this is the only bathroom on the lower level, it will get lots of use and we wanted to pretty it up a bit. We are only replacing the vanity, faucet and light fixtures, so it's relatively inexpensive and will look like a million bucks in the end, theoretically speaking that is.
The floor is in pretty decent shape, a previous owner obviously replaced it. They also painted around all the fixtures in the room (after using epoxy and the most rediculously long screws to mount them) so they left horrible marks when they were removed. Here's hoping the painter is as good as he seemed in our interview!


Jerry made a lot of headway in his battle with this half bath today. Please note, the elephant border in the bathroom.

Can't quite see it from there? Here's a closer look. Jealous?

So, Jerry did all he could do until the job required...

POWER TOOLS! That's right folks, that's a saw that my husband plans to use in this project.

Here's the rest of the set. I wonder what those things do? Here's hoping Jerry knows. He had to abandon the project because these tools need to be charged up before they could be used. I think I heard him whisper "Until tomorrow, my friends," as we were leaving tonight...

Meanwhile, Randy was extremely productive today. He got all the backer board in for the shower.

And even began laying the tile. I LOVE this tile.

Here's a closeup:

It's amazing how all the icky things in the house look fantastic when I take their pictures and how this photo doesn't do this tile justice. Oh well, take my word for it, the tile is be-YOO-ti-ful!

I'm calling this round for Randy, but the matchup continues tomorrow.