Renovating Our 1940s Bathroom With ZERO Experience | Part Two

Welcome back to our 1940s bathroom renovation! We renovated our bathroom as first-time homeowners with zero experience! When we purchased our home, we noticed there was not a shower in the bathroom; there was only a bathtub. We thought "no big deal. We'll just add in a shower. How hard can it be?" Little did we know - we'd be renovating practically our ENTIRE bathroom to be our dream bathroom.

Be sure to check out Part One of this renovation if you haven't yet watched! In this video, we are working on custom-tiling our new shower. We had to replace our wood window in the shower with a new vinyl one so that we didn't have any issues with the window rotting.

Then it was time to demo the walls! I had my dad come over to help. He used a hammer and a prybar in order to get the drywall off. It was definitely a dusty job and a lot of physical work. Once the walls were open, we had to replace the old insulation on the exterior wall. After we took out the old nails and cleaned up a bit, it was time to start putting our shower back together!

We decided on custom built-in shower niches or shelves for this project. We ran into a snag with the built-ins because of the cement board that we had to later install. With a little problem solving, we ended up building the shelves outside of the shower, and then placing the finished shelves into the framing. Once we had the shelving in how we wanted it, we started to put cement backer board up. We were told by several people (and YouTube videos) that cement board was a more waterproof option compared to drywall. We really wanted to do everything right the first time with this project so that we didn't have issues a couple years later.

The cement board was able to be cut with a utility knife, so it was fairly easy to measure, cut, and install. We watched a Lowe's tutorial on YouTube about 10 times to get this part right. Once we had all the cement board up, it was time to go over the joints and the screw holes with thinset mortar. After the mortar, we painted on a waterproofing barrier. I actually ended up doing three layers of this. I used as much of the gallon bucket as a possibly could because it was recommended to roll it on thick. I personally found that brushing it on with a paintbrush worked better than rolling it on, as the roller got stuck quite often.

Then it was time to TILE! We went with a seafoam green tile from Menards. The exact tile is Mohawk Artisan Grove 3x12 ceramic wall tile in the color 'seafoam'. We've gotten lots of questions about what tile we used.

We installed the first row on all walls first. This was done to ensure that our lines would start level. Then, we tile the wall that our window was on. We went up to the edge of the window but waited to do the inner part of the window. Then, we did the shower niche wall. We did the same thing with that wall - we went up to the edge of the shelving but didn't do the inside of the shelves quite yet. Each wall took a while to tile. It wasn't "difficult" per se, but it was time-consuming and messy. We were able to tile the wall with the shower fixtures and plumbing once the plumbing was final and stubbed out. After tiling, we used a grout specifically meant for showers. That took a lot longer than we thought it would too. I found that using a regular Ziploc bag and cutting off a corner worked well for getting the grout into the cracks. We then went over with a grout float to really push the grout into the spaces.

After grouting was done, we could install our fixtures and caulk. We used white caulk for the sides and top of the shower and along where the tub met the shower tile. Our plumber recommended clear caulk around the shower fixtures, and we're really glad we followed his advice.

We also did a custom shelf/towel rack in our bathroom. For that, we used two pieces of trim. First, we zig zagged construction adhesive to the back of the trim, placed them on the wall, and used a nail gun to secure the pieces to the wall. Then, we went over the seams with paintable caulk, painted with a white enamel paint, and put our towel hooks on. We hung up some artwork and called it a day!

And that was a wrap on our first BIG project at the house! Thank you so much for tuning in to our bathroom renovation. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel to see more!

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Buying or selling in the Fox Valley? I'd love to help!

Marissa Miller®
Keller Williams Fox Cities
Instagram: @‌athomewithmarissa
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Email: [email protected]