I am in love with all things DIY. Since moving into our new old house about a year and a half ago, I have loved making this house my home. We’ve done a minor kitchen reno, painted almost all of the rooms, hung lots of art, renovated our back yard and one of the side yards, and this January I decided to rip out the kids bathroom. (insert groan here).

This bathroom is tiny. It’s so tiny that Russell couldn’t even really fit in there to help me as I ripped out tile, tried to scrape the old plywood underlayment, decided that was futile and ended up ripping out said plywood underlayment with my bare hands. (For sanity and less splinters and bruises, I wouldn’t recommend that particular detail). My vision was vintage and I’ve spent a lot of time looking around the internet and on my favorite go-to home site Houzz. I knew I wanted small hex tile, clean and STRAIGHT subway tile (more on this later), and lots of vintage charm. This is an old house after all, and I wanted it to be classic and everlasting.

I took a TON of photos of my process, mostly on my iPhone. I was in project mode and merely wanted to document the steps, not become a DIY blogger. There are so many out there that I admire ( Young House Love, Bower Power, Centsational Girl, Honey & Fitz, and Chris loves Julia ).  All of these sources, plus a smattering of Pinterest pins and random ripped-out pics from old issues of Domino, helped me come up with this, my 95% completed bathroom.

I’ve so enjoyed the process EVEN IF this project became much more involved than I originally intended. I learned a ton, got super sore muscles, cried real tears (although only once), watched way too much Youtube, and overall felt so proud and happy that I did this completely by myself (almost). I’ll be blogging the process from start to finish even though I don’t have many “Before” pics. I was so anxious to get to work, I barely took any that showed the real wear and tear of the bathroom before the work began.

Stay tuned!

 

Note:  I failed to mention my main, numero uno inspiration!  Nicole Curtis aka The Rehab Addict on HGTV!  She is my main inspiration and I love her style, her personality, and her love for all things old.  While this bathroom had nothing in it “original” to save, I wanted to give it the feel of an original early bathroom.  If you haven’t watched her show, set your DVR!!