DIY Project: The 70s’ Avocado Bathroom

23 November 2018 - No Comments

Have you ever seen/lived with an outdated avocado bathroom from the 70s? Well, I have for the past 6 years!

Hubby and I have been wanting to redo for so long and each year we put the thought aside because it won’t be a small project. Just about a year ago we (maybe I did?!) made the decision to finally update it so we can all enjoy amazing rain forest showers. What a dream! And it came true!

BUUUT before we can even start, we already had a dilemma. Do we:
  1. Just refresh the bathroom – i.e new tiles, floor and bathroom suite or
  2. Combine bathroom & lavatory, meaning to knock down the wall and make everything difficult
We were really torn because surely option 2 would’ve been ideal as we’d create much more space, but it meant we would have to:
  1. Move the attic hatch
  2. Get new windows
  3. Possibly new floorboards
  4. Build an additional lavatory on the ground floor
  5. How much more will it all cost? Too much!

Option 1 was the easier choice as we could do most things ourselves. Saying that, it took us a lot of weekends to complete this bathroom. So long that we often had to shower at our in-laws, who luckily only live 5 mins down the road!

Let’s get started!

The whole bathroom was tiled from top to bottom and it took the 4 of us the whole day! You can see below that we used hammers while standing on the bathtub. Short people problem!

What, not ceramic?!

When we managed to remove all the tiles and get the walls as smooth as possible, it was time to take out the bathtub! We thought “it’s made of ceramic, easy to smash”, but little did we know it was all cast iron! It was so heavy, the boys weren’t able even pull it out far. It probably weighted more than 300 lb (140kg) and in an awkward tiny bathroom. One of our friends used a sledge hammer to destroy it. The sound was horrible, so so loud, like the tower bell in our house. Dong! Dong! Dong!

Gimme some light!

The shower was on the side of the window, but it made more sense to move it back to the opposite side, closer to the boiler. The pipes needed to be rerouted, so our plumber friend stepped in to help. He did an amazing job without any major accident.

YouTube will teach you how

After watching some YouTube videos on how to plaster walls I thought “We can do this!” so after a few motivational words hubby agreed to do it :D. Considering it was his first time, he did a great job! Let me know if you wanna hire him! :P

Once the walls were plastered, they need to be tiled of course. I was really afraid of making a mistake so I measured every wall a million times just to make sure and even designed my layout in Photoshop.

AND *drumroll* here is the result…

I’m super-duper happy that we did this; hard work but so worth it. Do you agree?

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