Nest Book Club
SusieBW
member
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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More NBR: home improvement advice please
I'm scared of the D&R board, so I won't post there.
DH is getting a few thousand dollars soon from a settlement of a case that he left behind at his old firm (or something like that, I don't know the details, just that he's going to get a couple of grand). We need to redo our bathroom, including new vanity, tub/shower, floor, and I'd like to replace the wall tiles with wainscoting. We also need to replace our OLD linoleum kitchen floor. I want to do the same tile in the kitchen, hallway (currently the only wall-to-wall in the house, would need to be ripped up) and bathroom with all the same thing, so it would be one continuous floor. We live in a ranch. The rest of the house has hardwoods.
I feel like we can only afford to do one of these projects with the money DH is about to get. Which do I do? Knowing that the whole bathroom needs to be done, do I do the floors first and then do the rest of the bathroom down the road, or do I do the bathroom "stuff" now and then the floor later? I fear that doing the rest of the bathroom, but not the floor will make me feel like it's not "done," kwim? But I have no idea which it makes more sense to do first, because I know very little about home improvement generally. Help me out?
DH is getting a few thousand dollars soon from a settlement of a case that he left behind at his old firm (or something like that, I don't know the details, just that he's going to get a couple of grand). We need to redo our bathroom, including new vanity, tub/shower, floor, and I'd like to replace the wall tiles with wainscoting. We also need to replace our OLD linoleum kitchen floor. I want to do the same tile in the kitchen, hallway (currently the only wall-to-wall in the house, would need to be ripped up) and bathroom with all the same thing, so it would be one continuous floor. We live in a ranch. The rest of the house has hardwoods.
I feel like we can only afford to do one of these projects with the money DH is about to get. Which do I do? Knowing that the whole bathroom needs to be done, do I do the floors first and then do the rest of the bathroom down the road, or do I do the bathroom "stuff" now and then the floor later? I fear that doing the rest of the bathroom, but not the floor will make me feel like it's not "done," kwim? But I have no idea which it makes more sense to do first, because I know very little about home improvement generally. Help me out?
Re: More NBR: home improvement advice please
my read shelf:
Wes: 10/8/2012
Sugar & Spice
Are you going to be doing it yourself or having someone come and do it?
my read shelf:
Wes: 10/8/2012
I haven't started pricing any of this, so I don't even know what kind of costs I'm looking at to try and do it all at once. I would rather have someone come in and do it all, because the way that DH and I operate, it would never get done. I do have some friends with contractors in the family, so hopefully we can hire them or get some good recommendations from them, anyway.
Sugar & Spice
You really need to get some estimates. MH has had jobs where they spent hundreds on a square foot of tile, and then there's our house, where we have nice tile that was less than $5/sf. There are tons of options in all different price ranges.
Don't forget to check out Ikea for the bathroom stuff - one of our bathrooms is completely Ikea stuff and it's my favorite one. It's a long skinny room, and we have 2 ikea vanities side by side, with a super long mirror hanging across above both vanities.
Ours looks kind of like this one http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/bathroom/roomset/20141_baro01a/
Sugar & Spice
I think that I would do the bathroom first and then the floor. But like others said if you do decide to go the flooring first route, buy extras in case you have to redo some in the bathroom.
Also you should look into signing up on Lowes, (or other home improvement sites) because they give you a 10% off coupon which is good for purchases up to $2,500. Also if you talk to the sales desk at Lowes, they can work with getting you a discount if you spend a certain amount of money, (I think its $2,500). DH and I did this when we bought our home in July. We ended up getting a 12% discount.
I'm not sure how the three spaces work with each other, but at least do one of them in a different tile, if not a different tile for each space. If your bathroom is small, use a larger tile (an 8x8 or 12x12 on a 45 degree angle to make the room seem larger). Use at least a 12x12 in the foyer.
Lowes and Home Depot have really nice tiles that are under $1/sq ft, available in lots of different sizes and colors.
Also, something that looks nice in bathrooms is breadboard that is about 5' tall (instead of the more typical 3'). Makes the room seem a little taller, plus you can put a wider cap on top and it becomes a small shelf. I'm actually doing this in our downstairs bathroom that we're remodeling.
And my last architect suggestion is to not buy plumbing fixtures (faucets and shower heads) at Lowes or Home Depot unless you plan to replace them in 5 years or so. They're cheaper than a plumbing supply store for a reason. They're made with plastic fittings instead of copper, so they don't last as long. I also highly recommend Kohler..IMO they're the best sinks and faucets.
Not the best picture, but here's an example (they're 3x6 tiles). The room isn't done yet so it's hard to see (no lights so the picture came out dark).
We live in a ranch and need to replace the kitchen and bathroom floors, and I want to rip out the wall-to-wall in the hallway, so I just figured it would be easier/more economical to just run the same tile throughout the three. But what you said about turning the bathroom tiles 45 degrees to open up the bathroom space makes a lot of sense. I will reevaluate my plans.
5' beadboard would be awesome. I don't like the halfway up the wall tiles that are in the bathroom, so I was wanting to replace it and make it feel a little more beachy with wainscoting or beadboard anyway. I will keep the height in mind.
And I learned the hard way about the quality of plumbing fixtures at different stores. The connector for the hose in our pull-down kitchen faucet gave out about 18 months after we put it in, and when I was shopping for a replacement hose, I saw that same faucet on the Kohler website for about 2x what we paid for it at HD. When we finally bought the replacement from the plumbing supply store up the street, they explained to us about how there are essentially three levels of quality for the same products - direct from manufacturer, plumbing suppliers, and mainstream retail, like HD or Lowes. Lesson learned.
Thanks again! And we missed you at the GTG yesterday!
Sugar & Spice