Ah, the dirty, dusty, demo week is always a sight to behold! The whole concept of getting worse before it gets better is so accurate here. But, thank goodness for demo because that gives us a clean (ok, dusty) slate to start fresh! For those of you who are new to my blog and my Instagram, my husband and I have been restoring a 1918 house for more than 2 years. We are finally in the design stages, and so I am sharing the design process that we are finally tackling. I am retroactively sharing the original state of the house when we bought it and this demolition phase. You can see the way the bathroom looked when we bought the house here. And, below…here is how it looked after we removed the tiles, the shower wall, the wallpaper, the ceiling, the sink, commode, etc.

You can see that we took down the floating wall where the bathtub ended. We have wanted to move the plumbing to the other wall so that the shower head and faucet will be at the other end. Our plan for this room has been to replace the bathtub with a shower only and use glass to open up the space rather than having an entire wall that blocks the light from the window.

Also, the bathtub is SO HEAVY! Cast iron is no joke and that sucker is hard to move! These photos bring back so many memories and make me realize how far we have come! I can’t wait to tell you more about the saga of the bathtub in my next update. Whew- sometimes things get scary when you undertake a huge restoration!

Just for reference, here is how the bathroom looked before demo…

You have probably seen all you want of the demo process, and so I will show you what my inspiration board has looked like all along. My “inspiration board” is also known as “texts I send my husband so he understands what I’m going for”. LOL And his texts back to me usually look like :-/ I told you in my last post that I am obsessed with black and white tile floors. I really love typography mosaics in tile- there is something so beautiful and meaningful about them. Little works of art on the floor- the fine details are always my favorite ones! Here is the feel I was going for…

What I would love to have on our guest bathroom floor is the year 1918 in black tiles on a white floor. I would like for the year to be outlined with a decorative pattern. I love to give a nod to the year the house was built. Other ideas on my list that I want to add to the guest bathroom…

~I want to go with white subway tile to keep it simple and because I really like the clean lines. It is trendy right now but I also hope it will be relevant in decades down the road as it has been around forever. If it isn’t, well…it was just subway tile and we can change it without feeling too terrible about it!

~I also mentioned in the last post that I want to paint the walls white and have white cabinetry. I think it will make the accessories in the room stand out. For knobs and pulls and other hardware, I really love brass and/or gold. The hardware is so good looking in the inspo photo below…

And, I really want to hang an Ashley Longshore painting in the guest bathroom. I am always drawn to her vibrant use of colors and the beauty of her Audrey Hepburn paintings. She posted one on Instagram that jumped out at me and I was able to get it for this room. I saved it in its box for over a year. The photo below is when I visited with Ashley at her show in Atlanta…it gives you a sense of her bold and bright artwork.

That is what I have had planned for this room for quite a while now and it is fun to see it all coming together. I am happy to share the remodeling process at the One Room Challenge each week as we actually completely finish this room. All of our rooms feel like they need to be a part of this challenge! It motivates me to get it done! Please be sure to check out all of the other rooms that are being transformed over at One Room Challenge, hosted by Linda Weinstein.

See you all next week for more photos of the remodel and redesign process!

Cheers xo,

Lydia