A little bit of tile

Back in November, right before Thanksgiving, we had our tub replaced. The original from our house (when it was flipped, pre-us) had a broken support in it, which resulted in a not-fixable crack and an expensive repair. The replacement  was supposed to be the same size, but went in a little smaller, leaving a crack about two inches wide between the new tub and our existing ceramic tile. We went off to Menard's and found a stone backsplash that had similar colors to the tile and I filled them in, for about $25.That was supposed to be the end of the repair. 

But it wasn't. The shower was also shorter, so when I washed my hair, soap kept on splashing up on the wall. Yuck. I'd suggested a tile accent long ago, so finally due to utility, Andrew jumped on board with this plan, too.

We measured and laid out the tile pieces.

Andrew cut a bunch of tiles in half for the corners and end, again borrowing our neighbor's tile cutter. Here's a blurry photo of that.

Before we put the tile set, etc, up - Andrew watched a YouTube video and learned that we should sand off the paint from the wall and seal it so that moisture won't get in to the wall. He rocked at this.

Then I set and grouted the tile. Here you can see the edge where I tiled a little accent to fill the gap between our ceramic tile and the tub.

And here it is all finished. Andrew also made new pieces of baseboard and attached them, and we caulked and sealed everything (sometimes twice). We also switched out the shower head for my "twister" shower head that was a wedding shower gift.

When we were house-hunting, I was never too picky about bathrooms unless they were really crazy in layout or function, so it blows my mind to think about how much work (and money) we've spent on this tiny room in our house. But when I think about what it looked like before - with a $30 medicine cabinet and drop ceiling tiles, the room feels like a virtual spa now. It does feel just a little bit luxurious getting ready in the morning now, especially when I look at those tall ceilings, custom tile, and pretty touches like the mirror over the pedestal sink.