Details, details, details

The basement came with the bathroom roughed in. This was great and saved us a lot of money but in hindsight, we should have paid a lot more attention to the placement of the rough ins. When we did our home inspection prior to closing, our inspector pointed out that the location of the toilet flange was way off from the tub and sink so the builder moved the toilet flange on his dime which included breaking up the concrete floor.

Fast forward seven years later when we actually start doing the detailed measurements to finish the bathroom...Turns out that the bathroom is a little on the small side and while not preferable, is certainly livable since we have room for a full tub. Uncle Steve frames out the bathroom nicely.

Another nice thing about having Uncle Steve do the framing is that he lives with us during the work. So every night when we ate dinner together, we could talk about how the project was going and things we needed to be aware of. For example, because the bathroom is on the smallish size, the max vanity size would be 30" wide. We didn't want to have everything feel tight and cramped so we decide on a pedestal sink and also the matching toilet from the Kohler Memoirs collection. I will update this post with our sources shortly since I've seen a few other blogs do that too and it's a great idea!

We decided on a porcelain coated bathtub because it's more white in color than the fiberglass models and it also seems more sturdy. DH and I debate about the type of fixtures for the shower and sink. He wants brushed nickel and I want polished chrome. I realize that we should probably never build our own home from scratch because it takes us forever to agree on details like this. I eventually come around to the brushed nickel and we pick the fixtures.

With the fixtures purchased, all we need now is a good plumber!