Bathroom Emergency

Lucky for you this post is not about #1 or #2, as a rule there are some things we won't over share here on the Blog.  Although Ryder hasn't gotten that memo yet, considering he recently told the entire dinning hall at the Pancake House how giant his poopy was.  Thank God he's cute so they didn't kick us out.  True story.

Nope, this one is about our emergency bathroom remodel which had to be completed in less than 2 weeks.  But Iet's start at the beginning.  When we moved into our first home, one of the very first changes we made was turning the bathtub in our Main Bath into a shower.  

Main bath the day we moved in- no shower

Since we were young and poor, and brand new to DIY, we did it the easy way, with external shower plumbing and a 360 degree shower curtain.  It wasn't perfect, but it did the trick.  It sort of felt like showering in a plastic baggie...

That is at least until it was time to sell the house, and a tour of some of the comps in our neighborhood showed that we'd really need to step up the game of this main bath if we wanted to swim with the big fish. 

So while we waited for the refinance on our house to close (see that story here) we got to work on a bathroom remodel.  We enthusiastically tore down plaster, ripped out the tub and scraped up the floors.  After the dust had settled from the hammer and crow bar swinging, we realized that we had pulled a "Crazy Astronaut Lady that Drove to Florida in a Diaper to Attack Her Boyfriend's Girlfriend," which is to say we made the biggest mistake of our lives. 

In order to refinance our house we first needed to get an appraisal.  And not just any appraisal, but one that would say our house had increased in value by more than $40,000! With the new garage, kitchen and countless other projects we had done we weren't previously worried about getting the increase, but now that our main potty was hanging out in the hallway, things weren't looking too hot.

With just 3 weeks until the refinance closing, we spoke with our mortgage broker who told us that he would need a final appraisal no later than 1 week prior to the closing to get the paper work finished on time.  That gave us 2 weeks to get our bathroom from scrap heap to gorgeous.  Since Hubby and I both worked full time those weeks, in addition to being full time parents of a full time party animal, the next two weeks were absolute chaos.  We stayed up until 4AM one night trying to get the 800 lb cast iron tub out of the bathroom.  I was up until 2AM trying to install a glass block window, (because I didn't realize until it was too late that once I took out the old window I couldn't safely go to bed with a huge hole in the side of our house.)  We slept 3 hours a night.  We ate take-out for 2 weeks straight. We smelled bad all the time. The process looked a little like this:

And then finally like this:

In the end we were thrilled with the final product, and were actually glad that it was over so quickly.  Although we definitely plan to spend a little more time on our 3 future bathroom remodels.  You know, so we have time to do the basics like shower before work and apply deodorant.  (Sorry co-workers.)

Anybody else have an embarrassing home improvement story to share?  Come on, anybody? Nobody else destroyed their home and then remembered the needed to get a home inspection?  Really?  Lie to a girl then, will ya?