House Before & After Series: Bathroom

Our home was built in 1923 and still has a pretty original 1920s style bathroom. D and I knew the bathroom would need to be redone when we bought our home. For one, the tile is pink and black. Secondly, there was a huge crack in the tile floor.

See images here:

Some of the built in fixtures were missing or damaged like this towel bar:

Cracked tile:

Ugly pink and black tile:

We have some ideas of what we would like to do to the bathroom, starting with a new tile floor and removing the tile on the walls. We plan to keep the toilet since it's fairly new as well as the pedestal sink. It's a pretty small bathroom so the pedestal sink keeps it feeling open. I'd love to get a new whirlpool tub because since our home has only 1 tub I may as well right? I will likely refinish the existing original vanity cabinet and just replace the mirror. We will also be building a nice cover for the radiator.

Here's a good shot of the bathroom in it's current state:

Originally, D and I had discussed ripping out the tile, putting subway tile only in the shower, and patching up the wall then painting. I also wanted to install wood-look porcelain tile flooring. Well, after much thought we have decided we would like to keep the walls tiled and use a 1920s style flooring to retain the home's character. 

We have a couple options that I have mocked up in photoshop:

Subway tile in the shower and on the walls

Subway tile in the shower and breadboard on the walls:

What do you think? We are leaning towards all subway tile. What we are looking for is to keep the bathroom mostly white, but paint the upper half of the walls to bring in some color. We have new white towels from our wedding registry and I have some pretty shower curtains with a light aqua/teal paisley pattern I am saving for our new bathroom. We have picked out porcelain hex tile for the floors and traditional white subway tile for the shower and walls. That's how they did it in the 1920s! We are so excited to get started on this HUGE project and we know the bathroom will be stunning when finished!

UPDATE: So, I have found with my other projects that the best way to start off is with a plan. In this case that plan consists of a mood board and an excel document. What would I do without my vast toolbox of computer software? 

I updated my original bathroom mood board created back in April when we bought the house to reflect the changes we have made in our reno plans. I tried to include the exact items and finishes we would be selecting so we can see how they will all work together. I'm sure this document will be important motivation for us to keep going while we have no bathroom for a month. I centered around a mood image that best represented what the final result will (hopefully) look like. 

The second document I created is an excel document with a budget estimate and a step by step to do list with a timeline. We plan on running this by our architect brother in law to see if we missed anything and if he has any advice for us. I used the blog YoungHouseLove as a major source of information for estimating the budget and timeline. They did an entire post on their bathroom renovation that they did themselves. You can check out that post here. It was really helpful inspiration and motivation that we CAN do this! I am starting to contact plumbers now for estimates on removing and installing a new tub. We left a lot of room in the budget for unexpected expenses. I think it depends on how much we decide to do ourselves versus hire a professional. We estimated $10,000 to renovate the bathroom. If our actual total comes in close to $5,000, I will be one happy lady! Here's the timeline and budget breakdown (estimate):

 I'm estimating this to take a total of about 18 days, which I would spread out over about a month. So we will plan on not being able to use the bathroom for about a month. We have another toilet, but only 1 shower.  Good thing we have gym memberships :)