Castle on King: We Changed Our Minds

When I worked with Tastefully Simple I heard tons and tons of inspirational quotes - and I loved them. One of the many that has stuck with me came from the CEO of Tastefully Simple, Jill Strayhan:

I reserve the right to get smarter.

It's a good one, right? We don't always make the right or best decisions but we can always learn from our mistakes and do better the next time.

So when Cory and I started this house renovation we decided to leave a couple areas of the house untouched for now and update them in the future. The basement, large "master" bath and closet, and upstairs kids' bathroom were on that list.

However, as we got further into demolition and tweaked our plans we realized that it would be far less of a headache and FAR less messy to just do the bathrooms now instead of later. Plus, doing the girls' bathroom now would allow us to reconfigure another weird space.

Remember this?

That is the lovely toilet that was IN the master bedroom. Yes, IN the bedroom, not in the master bathroom.

Yuck.

But on the other side of that wall is the girls' bathroom. So if we took that toilet out, removed the walls of that little nook, and then closed the wall of the bedroom we could add that nook space to the girls' bathroom and make it a bit more spacious.

Here is the girls' bathroom before:

You can just see the current toilet on the bottom left. Behind it is the toilet in the bedroom.

And beside the current toilet is the other vanity.

This bathroom really isn't terrible. It is a bit outdated, but it's functional, has two vanities, and the shower is fairly new and clean. But by taking that bedroom toilet nook space we will be able to push the bathroom toilet back and gain some open floor space. Plus, the toilet will no longer be the first thing you see when you climb the front stairs.

My super hard-working stud of a husband spent a few days with a sledgehammer and a crowbar in here and this is what happened.

First, the vanities and toilet came out.

The toilet nook walls were removed as well as the bedroom toilet. And once the walls were removed we found that a huge cast iron vent ran right up the space between the toilets. Oh joy. This meant a hit to the budget as all that cast iron would have to be redirected somewhere else.

I took the above photo while standing in what is now Dixon's bedroom. The bedroom toilet was where the front hole in the floor is, then there is the cast iron vent, and then there is the bathroom toilet hole. The new bathroom toilet will move back to where the bedroom toilet once was, but of course it will face INTO the bathroom. *smile*

And this is a view from the doorway of the bathroom looking towards the bedroom. The vent has been rerouted in the floor and new plumbing has been placed for both of the vanities.