Back at the end of July, when Caroline was recovering from oral surgery, we were just lounging comfortably and relaxing on the sofa on the covered patio, since Caroline wasn't yet up for doing much else.  Somehow, the conversation made its way around to how much we really want to remodel the kitchen, and sooner rather than later.  "But what a big, expensive job," we thought, "especially since we would need to do all the main area (non-bedroom) flooring at the same time because it's all one large space.  That's just too much right now."  And that's how our guest bathroom came to be reborn.  By comparison, it just seemed so manageable...

The guest bathroom, with its smoked glass shower door and scalloped sink molded from the counter was in reasonably good shape.  It was just rather bland, style-less and  just a little out-of-date.  But the clincher was the carpet.  When we bought our house back in 2007, both bathrooms were fully carpeted (at least it was new carpet) and we both agreed that was something we would definitely be changing.  Every time we would mention to anyone that our bathroom was carpeted, the immediate reaction we received was "eeeewww, gross!"  This only served to reinforce our hatred of that carpet and our intense desire to change it.  A large reason for our delay thus far was the expense and difficulty of replacing the shower.  However, during the kitchen remodel discussion that morphed into the bathroom remodel discussion, Scott finally managed to convince Caroline that replacing the shower would be a fine job, indeed, for the next owners of our house.  So we scrubbed and scraped and somewhat improved the vaguely unsightly, water-stained appearance of said shower stall and started shopping for tiles!

After much researching and shopping, anxiety and aggravation (including the purchase, rejection and return of three "unacceptable" white vessel sinks) - all largely Caroline's domain - just the right tiles, backsplash, sink, faucet and toilet were finally selected and purchased (all on a strict budget, of course).  Then the "real" fun began, with the next four or five waning weekends of the summer spent in the heat of the small bathroom on hands and knees laying tiles, making messes, cleaning up, again and again, and finally installing plumbing.  But now that it's all finished and we are so very pleased with the results (and we even came in just $25 over budget!), we can think to ourselves "that was a piece of cake, I'm glad we did it!"  And the old, smoked glass shower door doesn't even look that bad anymore.

   
AFTER - remodeled Guest bath...with no more carpet!

Scott replaced the original fluorescent lights covered with a pebbled plastic panel back in January

Scott, on the job!

AFTER - bright white porcelain vessel sink and modern/contemporary faucet

AFTER

New faucet!

AFTER

AFTER - 2-1/2 years later!