This bathroom, in the back of the house on the first floor was one of the most awkward areas in the house. You can see that the shower came out of a wall built in the middle of the room leaving a little alcove between the entrance wall and the tub. But what can you do with a 5’8″ x7’2″ space?

Well you can take things out…

…and put them back very deliberately. There’s no denying that this will be an economy bathroom but we’re thinking we can do more with the space then what we started with.

The first thing we bought for this bathroom was a pedestal sink off craigslist. I had my Mom pick 2 of them up in one day ($70 for both of them– both less than a year old and included fixtures) and they’ve been hanging out in the living room for a couple months now. I’m pretty sure we did not actually own the house when I bought them. I think pedestal sinks look great in historic homes but they also make the room feel bigger. I was a little worried about giving up the under-sink storage that the original unit had, but most of that space is wasted on pipes and gets pretty gross.

The second thing we bought was a stand alone shower. Since we’ll be living exclusively on the first floor for a bit (renting out the upstairs units) we couldn’t get rid of the shower altogether, but we don’t think we’ll be missing the bath portion. We went for a rounded unit because we thought it would make the room feel bigger (Although Chris says we don’t want it to feel bigger, we want it to be bigger.)

We still have to buy a washer/dryer which will put us at a solid 3/4 bath with laundry room in this little space. It’s definitely not going to be a lounge-around-spend-the-day-in bathroom, but it will be functional and I think it will be perfect once we no longer have any bedrooms on the first floor and the shower only gets used by occasional out-of-town guests.

So tiling this bathroom was our first real DIY project and all the satisfaction that goes with that. We measured our tiles and then got them cut at Lowes (fo free!)

The yellow we picked out is one of the historic colors Valspar does, based on the Homestead Resort where we spent part of our honeymoon. I’m going to have to replace the light in here with something whiter, but I’m really quite pleased. We painted before the grout since we’ve heard it is easier to clean paint off the tile then the grout.

The contractors installed the baseboards, I’m not sure if they’re going to finish the left side to match the right? Hopefully.