See living room and kitchen before/afters here.

I’m a little sad because the most dramatic transformation in the Oregon house took place in the bathroom, which was hideous when we bought the place.  Mick did so much work in there, re-tiling the floor and adding heating to it, re-tiling the bath/shower area, replacing the toilet and vanity.  The only thing I did was cut tiles and paint.

Mick, of course, was proud of his handiwork and took loads of pictures of the finished product which for some reason we can’t find.  So I’ll have to do a more detailed before/after of the bathroom when we go back and get more photos.

In the mean time, here are a couple of photos of the transformation:

Before:

During:

A little progress:

After:

My initial thought when I saw the bathroom in this house was gut it. The yellow bathtub really didn’t seem to leave much of an alternative.  But there were practical considerations of course, the first of which being cost.   Then there was labor–removing a bathtub can be an arduous process, sometimes requiring the removal of walls.  My next thought was resurfacing or a liner.  There are companies that take molds of your bath/shower and then create a liner to fit over the existing tub and surround.  We did meet with someone and almost decided to do it, but Mick thought it was too expensive and it was going to take many weeks for the order to be fulfilled.  Plus, it was rather generic looking and for me didn’t have a lot of design appeal.

Awhile back I’d seen an HGTV program which involved a bathroom re-do.  In it, the bathroom had a lot of tile work that was outdated but still in good condition and not cost efficient to replace.  The designers decided to incorporate the tiling in the design as if they’d chosen it.  The overall result was not necessarily to my taste, but the idea stuck with me and I decided to use it in this bathroom design.  Pretend I’d chosen the horrible yellow tub and work the design around it to minimize it’s impact while allowing it to harmonize with the rest of the room. 

One of the best features of the bathroom is the natural slate floor with heating underneath.  Here is a look at the old, ugly, floor:

And here is a photo of the slate (which doesn’t give much of a look–sorry):

The master bedroom is probably my favorite room of all.  When we first moved in, I decided to paint it a kind of aqua blue color to coordinate with some pillow I bought, so some of the before photos show me painting it blue:

Unfortunately, Mick and I spent one night in the painted room and decided it wasn’t going to work.  So we repainted it a soft white color:

The biggest change in the room was the glass sliding door.  We replaced it with a single door with panels on each side that open.  It has a french-door look but isn’t as wide.

This, of course, is the bed with the new headboard, which we completed the last time we were there:
Another change in this room was the closet, which we had replaced with mirrored doors.  It really opened up the room:


Finally, here is the guest bedroom, which also functions as Mick’s office when we’re there:

This isn’t the greatest "after" picture, but it does give you an idea of the changes we made:
This is a photo of our neighbors.  Yes folks, a grave yard lies right behind our backyard fence.  I actually kind of dig it (tee hee, get it, dig it)?  It’s fun to explore.