Over the long weekend Mr Nerd and I finally started gutting our horrible 70s ensuite. We had been talking about renovating the ensuite for ages, and we were sitting on the bed staring at it and finally decided to start knocking it out. Within ten minutes the ensuite was a mess of porcelain. I was over the moon. I hate this ensuite and everything about it – its size (or lack thereof), its brown granny bathroom tiles with pink roses, the weird musky smell that’s been there since we moved in, no matter how much we’ve scrubbed, as if an old lady had died in the bathroom, turned into a ghost and announced she refuses to leave the room.
Would you like to see pics? I'm sorry it was so hard to photograph this room - it is seriously TINY, just 1.8m by 1.8m. We debated for ages whether to knock out the wall that the mirror is mounted onto - on the other side of that wall is our walk-in robe - and using space from the robe to enlarge the bathroom. But we decided not to because a) this is not going to be our 'forever' house and so we don't want to spend too much on it and b) our master bedroom is already quite small, so eating into the walk-in robe space would have meant putting built-in robes in the bedroom and chewing up valuable bedroom floor area.
I have ALWAYS wanted to gut a bathroom. I think because it just seemed like fun to go mental with a hammer and smash stuff up like Hulk.
The reality? I thought I could whack a hammer on the tile and it would drop off the wall, easy-peasy. Yeah, not the case. Some of the tiles came away really easily with a chisel, others were almost impossible to remove with brute force and it was really hard work – we had to visit Bunnings to pick up a power tool. By the way, if you are ever thinking of gutting a bathroom, we used a chisel, a hammer and then bought an Ozito Rotary Hammer Drill ($99) drill to get the tiles off.
And here I am starting to gut the bathroom.
Ok I fibbed I didn't really gut it like this, I just gave the wall a half-hearted drill before I went to look at a house for work. This is me really gutting the bathroom:
I’m not sure why I seem to enjoy sharing so many incredibly unattractive photos of myself with you guys lately. I look like an idiot here. I really don’t look like this all the time. At least I hope I don’t. I think this photo makes it look like I gutted the bathroom all by myself, but really Mr Nerd did most of it. I however, did sweep up and put tiles in the bin.
I'll share pics of our progress as we go - and I know I'm always asking people to share, but seriously if you do have tips for remodelling a bathroom that's tight on space, please comment! Maya x
