Bathroom Remodel – 1950’s GONE!

Our bathroom remodel! As Katie and I approached our 10 year anniversary, we thought about a little vacation and spending some cash at a casino or something.

Then I had the idea, why don’t we just spend the money on a new bathroom? I didn’t know if she would go for it, but she was on board from the get-go.

DIY Bathroom Remodel Project

We remodeled the bathroom from top to bottom. We did everything from new tile flooring to fresh drywall, Wonderboard, waterproofing on the walls, and even new drywall and paint on the ceiling.

Check out the transformation below.

How long did it take us? 7 days start to finish.

We started with a yellow nightmare and ended up with a tranquil oasis!

Remodeling a Bathroom

The tile continued all the way around, half way up the walls to the yellow toilet and sink. Don’t even mention the wall paper and the ugly medicine cabinet.

Bathroom Remodel, DIY

The photos above are from the day we purchased the house. We did freshen up the bathroom before we moved in. We cleaned it, removed the wallpaper, painted the walls, sanded and used tile paint to paint the tiles white “for the time being”, just to get rid of some of that gawd awful yellow.

The time came to remodel the bathroom!

The first order of business was removing the fixtures including the toilet, vanity, walls around the tub, and then the cast iron bathtub, aka the yellow beast.

It turned out that the bathtub was cast iron and weighed 325 pounds.

The tub had to be broken into two pieces for us to get it out without removing a wall or two. It was in there good and was stamped 325lbs on the bottom of it.

It was crazy and took a lot longer than we thought it would, but we did it. Actually, I think that was the hardest part of the renovation – no joke!

We removed the rest of the sheetrock where the tile was and the vinyl floor.

The tile continued halfway up the wall around the entire bathroom.

Around the toilet and sink areas, we tried to pluck off the tile and thought about ‘getting away’ with skim-coating the wall after scraping off the mastic, but there was way too much mastic – so it was easier to just remove the sheetrock and start fresh.

After removing the rest of the sheetrock and cleaning up, we installed the new Bootzcast bathtub. –> You can read more about our installation here.

Leveling the BootzCast bathtub

Once the installation of the bathtub was complete, we proceeded to install sheetrock on the ceiling, Wonderboard around the tub, and sheetrock on the walls in the rest of the bathroom – in that order.

Backer Board

Wonderboard is a cement backer board product that does not absorb water. It’s not waterproof but does not collect water as sheetrock does.

It’s designed to be used in wet areas where you will be tiling.

Wonderboard For Tiling

We installed Wonderboard on the walls surrounding the tub and the floor of the bathroom.

Tub surround…

Wonderboard

Floor…

Wonderboard on Floors

Drywall

Finishing the drywall was the next step. I used EasySand 45 minute set compound for the first two coats and a lightweight joint compound for the topcoat.

After getting the tape and two finish coats done, sanding and painting was next.

Tile Waterproofing

We used RedGard to waterproof the tub surround. RedGard is an easy to apply waterproof membrane made for shower and tub surrounds and floors. Read RedGard Reviews â–º

Finished Drywall

For the joints of the Wonderboard, we used FibaTape (mesh tape) and coated them with RedGard using a plastic joint knife (You’re going to throw it away!).

After letting that coat set up, we rolled RedGard on the rest of the Wonderboard.

After it all dried, we checked for any missed areas and touched up where there seemed to be any lighter spots and finally went over the joints once again for good measure.

RedGard Bathroom Waterproof

Onto paint! After finishing the drywall and getting the RedGard coating on (and dry!), it was time to sand the drywall and paint!

We did one coat of primer and two coats of satin finish paint on the walls.

One coat of primer and two coats of mildew resistant flat paint on the ceiling.

Note: I used a lightly dampened rag to remove any drywall dust from the RedGard, then let it dry before tiling.

Painting Bathroom

Bathroom Tiling DIY

Once the painting was done, it was time to get our tile on! — we’re rounding the final corner! We installed Briton Bone 12×12 floor and wall tile and a decorative accent tile that goes around the top at just above eye height.

After setting the tiles, we waited 24 hours for the mortar to dry before grouting. (Which means we got nearly a whole day off during our remodel!) Read my Grout Review here.

Briton Bone Tile with Accent Decorative Tiles

Here’s Turbo inspecting the tile job, I think he approves! 🙂

Floor Grout and Turbo the Munchkin Inspecting the Work

Toilet

After finishing the tile, we installed our fixtures.

First (oh wait!) we installed a new baseboard heater cover, then we installed the fixtures! First was the American Standard toilet, then the vanity and faucet.

Bathroom Vanity

Below are pictures of our finished DIY Bathroom Remodel.

All that’s left to do is hang towel bars and decorate! Enjoy and good luck on your own project!

We did nearly all of our shopping online and a lot of the stuff shipped directly to our house.

Bathroom Vanity and Toilet, bathroom remodel DIY

Finished Bootzcast tub installation with tile tub surround

DIY Bathroom RemodelBathroom DIY Remodel

The matching backsplash did arrive and I will take a picture someday, when Katie moves all her hair products 😉 lol

In case you forgot, scroll back to the top of the page to see what the bathroom looked like before we decided to remodel it!

I do wish it were easier to take pictures, but the room is only 8′ x 7′, so it’s hard to get good shots.

We think it came out awesome, it’s like day and night and only took 7 days!

Join the Conversation

  1. Hi Deb, I don’t know about acrylic, but we installed our BootzCast bathtub about two years ago and we’ve seen no signs of chipping or anything like that. Hope that helps! You can read more about our DIY BootzCast installation here.

  2. I am wondering about chipping? Still haven’t decided on acrylic or bootzcast? pros and cons anyone??

  3. Hi Kathy! We love it still. It will be a year in August since our remodel, and have had no problems with the BootzCast tub at all. I would suggest going with the “BootzCast” rather than the standard “Bootz” – it costs about $100 more for the ‘cast’ model. The BootzCast has a rubberized coating on the entire bottom of the tub, making for a quiet tub (I think the regular Bootz w/o the coating would be a noisy tub) and the coating of the BootzCast helps holds the heat of the water longer for bathing.

    Other than that, the leveling pad on the bottom of the tub makes installation an piece of cake. The leveling pad takes away the need for a mortar bed, and that was a big selling point for us!

    You can read my more indepth review of the tub here.

    Good luck with your project!

  4. I am considering getting the Bootz tub because it is going to replace a four and a half foot tub. I don’t have many options. How do you like it? Is it holding up well? I love your remodel. I am going to check out the border you have. Any info you can give me will be greatly appreciated.
    Thank you,
    Kathy

  5. Thank you Avry! I enjoy and welcome stalkers, of the good kind!! 🙂

  6. I love make over’s!!! I’ve enjoyed looking through your blog and seeing the transformations on your home and yard. Your blog is one I’ll be stalking! 😉

  7. 7 days w/o bathing wouldn’t be good, you’d have to make other arrangements! lol Luckily, we have a second bathroom 🙂

  8. sabina edwards says:

    beautiful ..not sure if I could go 7 days without bathing …. and prob take me a whole lot longer to do if I tried it myself lol

Comments are closed.

Close
© 2021 Scrappy Geek ScrappyGeek is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by
Send this to a friend