A and I bought our first home, built in 1923, in December 2009. It isn’t located in our preferred location, but it was within our price range and is in a nice old pocket of downtown. Because we are just starting out though, we didn’t have a lot of extra money kicking around for renovations. Fortunately, our house is in pretty good shape and nothing really ‘needs’ to be done to it. Also fortunately, our parents were very generous at Christmas and we were able to buy appliances for our new home.
The first changes we made didn’t happen until the summer/fall of 2010, when we painted the living room, den, and master bedroom. The only room in our house that we would consider ‘done’ is our living room.
The time has come for us to actually renovate, though. The grout in our shower is cracking and allowing water to get in behind the wall. Since we will need to re-tile the shower, we are taking the opportunity to change the tile in the bathroom, get a new sink and vanity, and all new taps/faucets. Here is what the bathroom looks like currently.
The shower (behind the door) and the walls have the same light blue flower tile. This tile is also on the ceiling in the shower. Unfortunately, the wall tile does not even slightly match the floor tile, which is a blue gradient with flecks of brown. It is ugly. The vanity is also big and ugly. So, tomorrow our contractor is coming to switch out the shower and wall tile and replace it with white subway tiles and a black bullnose cap.
Our new shower fixture is from Home Depot:
We also got a new vanity, sink, cabinet, and faucet from Ikea:
We plan to remove the old medicine cabinet and replace it with a long horizontal mirror, to make the bathroom feel larger. The ugly floor tile will stay a little longer, until we build up some more savings. I also bought some fabric from Robert Kaufman’s Night and Day 3 Floating Zinnias in Ivory to make curtains.
I’ll let you know how our first reno turns out.
xo Saree