When we bought the house, there was only one bathroom indoors. We also have an outhouse in the courtyard but how practical is it to run outside in the middle of winter to do your business? Certainly better than nothing but still not a pleasant thought. The bathroom downstairs was added in the early 1980’s (hence the love avocado coloring it once had) but unfortunately didn’t include a standing shower. There is a shower adapter on the bathtub but it’s just not the same. Plus, when you have guests over or a party, just one toilet is not enough.

Thankfully, one of the bedrooms upstairs was quite small and we decided it would be perfect for a 2nd bathroom.

There was absolutely nothing in it when we first saw it and the only thing we need to consider was what to do about the timber-frame beams showing through the wall. In the end we decided to cover them up on this side to prevent any damage to them from the steam and water of the shower. But since there was only vinyl flooring down, at least we didn’t have to worry about losing any original hardwood floors.

Having a room covered in green water-safe drywall is not nice. When we started the process we were a bit freaked out by the green. It just feels like you’re in a hospital or something. And as you can see, our workers weren’t exactly the cleanest but they did work quite fast.

It wasn’t long before the tiles were up on the drywall, the flushing unit for the toilet was secure in the wall and things were just about ready for paint.

The floor was rather crooked (as are quite a few other things in and around this house) so they poured in some concrete to level things out. Ayla, being the great helper that she is, couldn’t resist going in the room to inspect everything and left pawprints through everything. Thankfully when we called rather panicked and asked our contractor if he was going to kill us or not, he just laughed and said, “Kids will be kids.”

Here’s where the shower will be placed shortly and you can see that most of the tile is done and just needs to be grouted. We were still rather scared at this point because without the grout, the room really looked quite terrible.

But as soon as the grout was in and they could begin painting the walls, the room took on the feeling it was supposed to have.

With the walls and floor being finished up, things really started to come together so only a few final touches remained before it became functional.

And today it looks like this. We changed out the overhead lights as well and added a few decorations. We are very pleased with the final outcome although we do wish that we’d had a bit more time to plan things out. It really is best to plan and plan again. If we’d already had the furniture and things like that, we would have tried things a little differently. But it still turned out quite well all things considered. It’s all a learning experience when you’ve never done any of this before.

You can see the old light fixture here, actually, along with the shower.