Well after nearly two years at our Outer Inner West nest it’s the day before our bathroom reno commences!

Our mood board for the new bathroom is – inexpensive but tasteful – we are on a budget! Not unlike Patsy’s mood board for the next issue – ‘But Alex, Alex…with lovely shoes’.

We are trying to emulate something along these lines – ‘The Classic New Bathroom‘:

Classic new bathroom

The budget for that one above was apparently an eye-watering $40,000 – $50,000 bucks. Just for the bathroom! Also a 5 week turnaround…

Our budget is a way more modest $16,000 and timeline is 2 weeks – 3 weeks (max).

Given it’s our only bathroom and it’s starting to get nippy in Sydney a quick project turnaround was important to us.

The quote includes all trades, labour and fixtures, fittings and accessories.

We’re hoping there’s nothing nasty and expensive lurking beneath the current bathroom…

Out with the old pink bathroom

Now a reminder of what our current bathroom looks like in all it’s 1967 grimy glory:

The bathroom before we moved in

It doesn’t look so bad in that photo…just a lot of that Neapolitan pink like the kitchen.

Now for some cameos:

As you can see from the photos this isn’t a candidate for a quick tart up with some paint and new fixtures – we don’t even have tiles! It’s all laminate on masonite that does not like water and is falling apart.

Early on during our time in the house I made the decision we’d only clean the bathroom areas we’d be touching – there was just no way to get rid of 50 years of grime in most places and knowing we’d be tearing it all out back to the studs there seemed little point.

Ewwwwwwwwwwwww

So hopefully these images illustrate the poor layout and gut job we’re confronted with. We’ll be relocating the shower-bath to run along the window and tucking the the loo into the corner by the door. This means you won’t clap eyes on the toilet as soon as you walk in.

We have high hopes but feel some trepidation about whether this one will come in on time and on budget – there is some mystery around what lies beneath all that masonite and vinyl flooring.

The skip arrived this morning in readiness for D-for-demolition Day which is tomorrow!

The Boss and Top Cat inspect our latest project’s beginnings

Stay tuned to see if we pull it off in a fortnight…