One Year Later: Primary Bathroom Renovation

It's been one year since we've finished up our primary bathroom renovation. Our 20-year-old home had a standard, builder-grade bathroom that needed love. We decided to do it all ourselves.

Here are some things we wish we would've known before we started, or some bathroom renovation tips we are giving you now.

1. It is a messy and time-consuming thing to tile and back-butter (putting grout mix on the back of each individual tile as well as the wall) and grout (adding a layer of grout over the entire wall once its set to fill in the cracks). It took us 8 months to finish this bathroom!

2. Invest in a wet saw and the right tools.

3. If you've never done a shower floor, hire someone to slope it for you. We sloped ours by ourselves and it works great, but sometimes water stays on the shower floor longer because ours isn't sloped down at a sharper angle.

4. Don't hit a pipe  Jonathan drilled into a pipe and water burst EVERYWHERE. Luckily he isn't arrogant so he called a plumber who helped us fix the 20-year-old bathroom pipes.

                  

5. If you have kids, put your shower niche up higher. We put our shower niche (the inset box in the shower where shampoos sit) down low, which is great to put your foot on for shaving your legs, but it's also great for a toddler to play with all your soaps. So think about your day-to-day life and who will be using the space! Which leads me to the last one...

6. Design it for YOU. When we started the renovation, I thought about the most striking tile designs or the "coolest" things I could buy to really WOW people on social media. Luckily we went with things we liked that were also affordable. Don't design it for the trends or what's going to be popular (I love checkered design but I wouldn't do checkered tile because for me it's too trendy). 

Bathroom Reveal Reel: https://www.instagram.com/p/CdybK3ApnXP/