When we were looking at homes online, before seeing them in person, we came up with a nickname for each property.

The nickname for this house?

“The Toilet House.”

Any guess as to why?

Oh, geez. Where do I begin to highlight the weirdness of this room? The vacuous, sterile space? The 80’s-tastic bar lighting? The toilet with no privacy? The door with a window that gives the neighbors a bird’s eye view of said toilet?

The teeny-tiny shower opposite the HUGE, dated Jacuzzi tub? Peel and stick tile?

All along, we’ve felt that this room has the most potential, but it’s a challenging space to design for. There are two skylights, a door to the back deck, and a bay window.

Over the past 6 months, we’ve had six or seven contractors come in to evaluate the space. We just felt that this was a project too big for us to take on alone. To date, we’ve only heard back from one contractor. His price tag? A whopping $40,000.

Now. We’ve built three homes and I just couldn’t wrap my head around investing that much into this one space. So, we’ve waited and waited and called and called to find out what other estimates might be.

And… no. one. will. call. us. back.

Clearly, business is booming for contractors in our area.

Jesse’s patience finally ran out last week. He started demolition and I came up with a layout that I think will work!

And, here is the current state of affairs.

{Pardon the mess…}

The massive tub and marble surround is gone.

The shower and toilet are gone and the framing is up for the walk-in, tiled shower. It will have a frameless glass door and half-wall.

And that super-awkward door to the back deck? Walled up!

This is my color inspiration for the space. We’ve already purchased the paint and I can’t wait to crack it open!

The next step for us is plumbing – which we will NOT be doing ourselves. We hope to have someone in next week to work on that.

We’re just figuring it out as we go, folks. Thanks goodness for YouTube.com, HGTV.com, and the DIYNetwork.com!