We’re doing our master bathroom renovation!!!

This is a little story about how we fell into doing a master bathroom renovation… ourselves! 

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. MASTER BATHROOM RENOVATION? Obviously, not completely ourselves right? We’re not that crazy? Or are we? 

First off, here’s a little backstory. Our master bathroom has had water damage issues since last summer. LAST SUMMER! Basically, we haven’t utilized our shower for almost 9 months now. We’ve been using JJ’s down the hall. It’s worked out fine but we have been wanting to get that fixed forever and it was just looming over our heads. To make the long story short, we were too busy the last half of 2018 and we just couldn’t find a good contractor. On top of that, replacing a shower costs a lot of money. 

Once 2018 ended, we decided it was first on our list to find a contractor. We actually found a really good one and they addressed the whole shower situation. They gutted the whole shower and the local company even partnered with me so I’ll be sharing about them in another post soon along with my experience, cost, etc. 

After addressing our water damage situation, I was thinking of just doing a few cosmetic things like paint and maybe adding some wallpaper. Then out of the blue, Jeffrey Court invited me to participate in their Spring Renovation Challenge. Jeffrey Court sells the most amazing selection of tiles available at Home Depot and they let us choose 200 sq feet of tile in our choice. They asked 14 of us home design and DIY bloggers to participate in this fun challenge for a chance to win a dream vacation. 

That got me thinking. Do I accept this challenge and try to do a full master bathroom renovation? This meant a ton of work not to mention doing a full on demolition in our bathroom. Have we done something like this before? Um.. no. Are we experienced? Absolutely not. 

The thought equally filled me with fear but excitement. Because here’s the thing. I love doing hard things when it comes to design and DIY. But I’m equally terrified because it means doing something I’m not familiar with. There’s the thought of failure, ruining my house and maybe not even being able to get it done on time. Maybe, it’s going to turn out an epic disaster. Was I going to put a hole through the floor and have me and my bath tub end up in the garage? See, lots of thoughts, ya’ll. 

My friends already think I’m super crazy for doing stuff like this and not everyone understands. I’m not trying to over spiritualize it either but after I discovered blogging and design, God has pushed the limits on so many areas of my life. He has gently guided me to do things that are not in my natural character. If I hadn’t done a lot of these things that forced me outside my comfort lines, I would not have formed certain friendships, finished some amazing projects for myself or clients and most importantly, learned something new. The fact that I’ve created a career out of this still astounds me till this day. Instead of being timid of my giftings and talents, I feel called to share it with others to inspire and encourage. I want to grow them and not bury them into the ground because of fear. 

There are times it’s time to retreat and rest (which I did for a few weeks and it was great). In January, I told the Lord that I wasn’t going to be pursuing anything on my own and that I would rest. I read, meditated and I even had a chance to stop thinking about design so much which rarely happens. If something were to come my way, I was going to wait a few weeks so that I could just refocus and retreat for a bit. Having a creative mind is a blessing but sometimes it’s a challenge. My mind rarely sits still. It’s constantly moving, creating and imagining. It’s just how I’m wired. 

This isn’t all about me either. I could not do this without my supportive, super smart, detail oriented husband. I have a vision and Jimmy is the one who helps execute all of our more complicated projects. He has an engineer background but he’s just the smartest guy I know who is able to problem solve and figure out solutions for problems. This is important because with DIY, there are ALWAYS issues. 

So we’re diving in. We’re demo-ing our large master bathroom OURSELVES and we’re going to share about it all on the blog. The good, the bad, the ugly and at the end, I hope to share the beautiful. DIY is so exciting because I already see the end result in my mind. The progress leading up to all that is so so hard but man it’s so worth it. It’s satisfying to see what our own minds and hands can create. I want to show my kids that mom can do hard things like freaking demolish her bathroom, use crazy looking tools and make something look amazing at the end. 

I hope you’ll join along the crazy process? Starting next week, we’ll share our progress for 6 weeks. You can vote over at Jeffrey Court starting next week too.  I hate asking you guys to vote again especially after the La-Z-Boy competition but with this you only have to vote once a week instead of everyday. 

Thank you so much for your support. I’m really excited about this project and I can’t wait to post week by week updates because I’m going to share that if I can do something like this, so can you friends!

xoxo,

 

 

 

Let all that you do be done in Love. 1 Corinthians 16:14