Bathroom Renovation

I know this is a food blog and all, but I have a non-food related post to share today. As I’ve said before, Kevin and I recently bought a house in a little suburb of Kansas City called Prairie Village. It’s quite the charming little city where there are masses of kids playing, dogs being walked, great restaurants and generally nice people. Our particular area in PV consists mostly of cape cod and ranch style homes; some have been renovated and some are exactly as they were in the 60’s.

I had my heart set on a cape cod and while I didn’t want a total fixer upper, I did want something that we could make our own. I was hoping for a house that had bathrooms and a kitchen that needed to be renovated, but pretty much had everything else updated. After four months, two offers that fell through, and countless stressful nights, we finally found “the one” in late August and we couldn’t love it more.

The previous owners took immaculate care of the house so it’s in great shape for being so old. It’s funny; the things that I care about most (kitchen and bathrooms) weren’t renovated at all which was exactly what I wanted. The things that I would never think of or would want to spend a lot of money were done. Things like a gorgeous concrete driveway with an old brick edging, an enormous stained concrete patio, and brand new windows among many other things.

Sorry the picture is so small! I’ll try to find a bigger one, but isn’t she cute?!

Our first order of business was to renovate the bathroom downstairs that needed some serious work. As you can see the walls were a hospital green tile (yuck!) and everything was really dated. We decided to keep the floors as is, since that type of tile is soaring in popularity, plus if it goes out of style again we can always tear it out.

We basically tore out the whole bathroom, leaving only the floor, toilet, and bathtub. Kevin’s friend JC is a master at laying/cutting tile , so he helped Kev do the demolition and all of the tile work. We also got some help from my Dad who has also done plenty of renovations in my parents’ house (ummm he BUILT their screened-in porch among a million other things in their house) so he helped Kev with the all of the trim and wainscoting. It’s pretty much guaranteed that we couldn’t have finished it without their help.

I’m so in love with the results. It’s exactly how I imagined it in my head when we first starting researching tile, sinks, bathroom faucets and everything else bathroom related. I still need to add some decorative items to the walls and shelving, but other than that, we’re done!

Note: I’m going to add to the post later today with links and information on where we purchased everything. I just wanted to get this out since it’s been sitting in my drafts ready to go!