"It has begun..."

Hello and welcome!  Though this may seem a bit overdue seeing that we've been in our house for over a year now (whaat?!), Matt and I recently decided to start renovating our upstairs bathroom.  And we would like to invite you along for the ride!  Since my stories tend to be a tad (tad?) long winded, I figured by writing our progess on various house adventures on here, we could keep our friends and families up to date.  It's sure to be educational (for us) and entertaining (for you) since we rarely agree on pizza toppings, much less redoing an entire room of our house from the ground up.

Some background...
When we first saw our house back in September 2009, it was love at first sight...at least for me.  Matt being the much more practical one of the two of us, realized though our hardwood floors were gorgeous, the yard, bathroom, kitchen, and many other rooms needed some work.  After a painless closing and move from our apartment on the west side of Madison (a mere 25 miles from driveway to driveway) to De Forest (population 7997) we very quickly realized that I had been wearing some rose colored glasses when first seeing the house.  The upstairs bathroom had a tub that was so narrow and short, I could barely lay down in it.  As many of you know, Matt loves a good shower-bath after a long day on the road, so the tiny tub was just not going to cut it.

Jump ahead 12 months...Matt decides enough is enough and so we started planning for the bathroom...and then Matt found his dream tub!  A Kohler soaking tub from Home Depot which offered free delivery if purchased online.  After buying the tub, we spent a few weekend days checking out tile at various stores around Madison and finally fell in love with a glass tile from The Tile Shop and a marble tile at Home Depot that we'll use on the floors and on the tub walls to make a swanky design with the glass tiles.

Demo Day One:
I come home from work to loud banging and both dogs hiding in the couch cushions.  Enter Matt slamming away at our bathroom, a couple weeks ahead of time.  Day one entailed removing all the bathroom baseboards and almost all of the floor tile.  There was a scary moment where the bathroom smelled like an old, wet garage sale for a bit (a poorly set tub) but thankfully no major water damage.  (The last owner had some interesting ideas on home improvement...more to come on that another time) 

Here are some "before" pictures of the bathroom:

View of the vanity/toilet from the tub...the entry door is to the right of the vanity

The tub, from the entry door.  The vanity and toilet are across from it.

The vanity from the entry door.  The toilet is on the other side of the half wall 




This is the linen closet, to the left of the shower

You can see the shell of the tub a little better here...across from the vanity.

And here are some demo pics from DAY ONE:

That's all we did on day one, just worked on ripping up the tile from the floor.  Though I liked the bathroom how it was (minus the awful tub), we cannot wait to get the new tub, tile, vanity, etc etc etc in!  Stay tuned for more updates.  And thanks for joining us on this journey...it's sure to be an interesting one. :) 

PS...Check out where our blogging inspiration cam from at Young House Love
Be warned...this site is verry addicting.  I love these two crazy kids and cannot wait to see what they come up with next :)

Feel free to leave comments or questions below.  We'd love to hear from you :)

~S~