Our Awesome New Bathroom

When we bought our house in July, we knew the bathroom needed some work. Specifically, the shower leaked and needed to be redone. It was at this point we began to live out the book "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" in real life (...it'll probably want a glass of milk. And if you give it a glass of milk it probably want...). For example:

• If you're redo the shower, you'll want to remove one of the walls.
• If you remove one of the walls you'll need a new cabinet and sink.
• To get a new cabinet, you'll also need to take off some drywall.
• If you take one wall of drywall off, you'll probably have to take drywall off all the walls.
• If all the studs are exposed, you'll probably want to update the electrical and plumbing.
• Also, if all the studs are exposed, you might as well install a pocket door.
• You might as well also install a sun tunnel...

You get the idea. We ended up redoing everything. Here's a video of me walking through the bathroom before the project started describing everything I wanted to do.

The final result actually stay pretty close to the original vision. You'll notice I didn't mention the sun tunnel or pocket door in the video. Those were definitely "If you give a mouse a cookie" additions you'll see in the final video below.

During the project I was surprised by the lack of "smart" options. I thought it would be cool to have a shower that somehow recycle water and/or pre-heated the water and/or other magical things, but there weren't any good options. I also ended up putting in standard lights and a standard exhaust fan. There was one fan that played music via bluetooth, and had a nightlight, but the actual fan wasn't very powerful. I also strayed away from floor heating systems, mostly because my floor height didn't allow for it.

But I did install a smart faucet (this one). It's a hands free one with the ability to also control temperature. I also got a hands free soap dispenser. They're actually pretty cool. Not only does it save water, but also helps keep germs away. It takes a little getting used to, but overall we love it. Both are battery powered, so we can still use them if the electricity goes out.

It took many weeknights and weekends, but it's done! Here's the final video:



I also want to thank my friend Steve Gress for helping me. He wanted to learn how to tile and I managed to talk him into also helping with the demo and a bunch of other projects (like hammering nails into an impossible to reach place). Thanks Steve!

And some final pictures.

Now onto the next project: organizing the garage