Before & After: The “Oops, You Got Us in Trouble” Bathroom Makeover

Sometimes a little unexpected “trouble” can go a long way toward creating a beautiful room. You start out with the plan of simply changing up a few decorative elements and find yourself in the middle of a full-on makeover. It happened to Renato, and he not only lived to tell the tale, he’s got a great looking room to show for it. Take it away, Renato…

Tired of living with a bathroom falling apart, one day I woke up with design school ended, no jobs and nothing to do. I decided that I would renovate our master bathroom myself. In my naive idea of a plan, I was taking the paneling down, sanding the drywall and changing tiles. Nothing more than a week-long job and a 1000 dollars budget. When the paneling was down I saw what I mess I got myself into when I realized that the drywall couldn’t be saved and I would have to take it all down and start from scratch. Robert, my partner told me: “You got us in trouble…”

With little money and a lot of confidence we started the demolition which took almost a week, 35 black bags of debris and some hand/arms/legs cut.

We decided to do a timeless bathroom mixed modern and traditional to go along with the ranch house we own in Orlando. Monochromatic color scheme, several shades of gray and Robert chose an “animal theme”. “You are the designer, figure it out”, was his only request.

Little by little, the bathroom was taking form. For a lot of things we had to go on YouTube to watch tutorials such as “how to do a shower pan”. We also had to buy a lot of tools we had no idea we were going to need, such as a compressor, a nail gun, a manual tile cutter and a glass tile electric cutter. It was a lot of trips to Home Depot and two months of weekends working and living in the middle of dust, trash, tools, etc.

Because I am such a perfectionist,I wouldn’t accept crocked lines, and anything else that my eye could see.

We decided to put stone on the shower floor and we just love the feel when taking a shower on it.

In the end, we are very proud of our new bathroom and we plan to go on with the renovations throughout the house but, next time, we’re paying someone to do it!

See many more photos of the process on Renato’s blog : Um Brasileiro Na Terra do Tio Sam

Thanks, Renato!

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