Delayed Gratification – We Finally Remodeled Our Bathroom

I haven’t written in over two weeks. Rather than sitting in the house typing onto my keyboard I spent time lounging by the swimming pool, playing with my son in the sand and generally enjoying all of the moments that make up the start of summer vacation. I considered typing up a bunch of posts in advance, but to be honest I felt little motivation to do so. While I was away I took a much needed break from technology. I watched one television show in a two and a half week span of time and spent very little time on my laptop.

I spent almost no money while I was away. I bought groceries twice during that trip, a new bathing suit and two much needed shirts, but otherwise I kept myself out of stores and restaurants. It was easy to avoid spending money. The weather was too beautiful to waste inside.

Since we were gone for nearly two weeks my husband felt that it would be the perfect time to pay someone to remodel our bathroom. It’s actually a good thing that we weren’t home because the contractors ripped the walls out entirely and there was dust and debris everywhere.

Our house was built in the early 1950s and the tile in our bathroom had that ground in dirt that could not be removed. The tiles were tiny and the grout around them was unbelievably difficult to clean. To be honest it drove me a little bit crazy. We asked the contractor to install much larger tiles, which cuts down on the maintenance of cleaning the grout in and around them. I must admit that the bathroom looks amazing and as always as I look at the bathroom now I wonder why it took us so long to complete these changes.

Amazingly enough I’m not sure how much it cost us from start to finish. We kept the toilet, but replaced the sink, lights, medicine cabinet and tub. We also bought the tile, grout, fixtures and of course paid the contractors for all of their time and labor. I bet the final cost was somewhere close to $9,000. I may need to review the Home Depot credit card charges for a more definitive answer. This was one of those projects where we seemed to head back and forth to the store to pick up supplies we forgot on the first, second and third trips there.

Of course, now that I see the end results I really want to remodel the master bath and small powder room off of our kitchen. Our powder room is ridiculously small. We once thought about bumping the kitchen back into the bathroom and moving the bathroom into a small room we use as a study, but to be honest I don’t ever see that happening, so I think we should stop kidding ourselves and just remodel that room too. I asked the contractor for a quote, but unless he comes back with a ridiculously high price I have a feeling I’ll be forking over some more money.

I’ve been talking about remodeling these bathrooms since we moved in nearly twelve years ago. While I completely understand the value of delayed gratification I sometimes wonder if I wait too long to change things for the better. Now that I stay home with my son I look at our house a lot more closely. Since I spend so much more time here I really do want it to look beautiful. I’ve also found that if I’m unhappy with my surroundings I’m generally less happy.

Of course, we’ve been shelling out money lately like a bank. Between the new car and the remodeling work we’ve seen quite a dip in our savings. We waited a very long time before making these changes and I think the wait makes me appreciate much more than I ever would have expected.

2 thoughts on “Delayed Gratification – We Finally Remodeled Our Bathroom”

  1. Glad you were able to enjoy some relaxing time with your family and nature, away from technology. Reading about your bathroom remodel (would be nice to see before and after pics) makes me want to hurry up and redo ours as well. But that project will have to wait since we are having the exterior of our house painted at the end of this month, which is going to cost us quite a bit of moola.

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  2. I didn’t take pictures along the way, but I’ll email you what our other bathrooms look like (they aren’t remodeled) it’ll give you an idea of the before and after. The other bathrooms have the same old dirt and ugly tiles.

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