Every house has its story. What's yours?

After a very long period of start/stop I can finally declare my small upstairs bathroom to be complete. We completely renovated the downstairs of our house last year so we decided to go ahead and replace the pipes to the upstairs bathroom as well (making it non-functional in the process).

Around November of last year I began the process of strengthening/leveling the floor as well as put drywall up on all the existing walls rather than tear them out.

From there I put down some flooring drywall, treated it and ran waterproofing film around all the floor/wall edges and then put down the floor tiles and grout.

Next came the annoying task of laying out the square design we had come up with in the non-squared room. I had to build out the wall is some portions in order to not only strengthen the area which would hold the built-in toilet cistern, but to square it with the tiles I had set (which I had lined according to the entrance hallway).

Once I had the toilet mounting where I wanted it I had to figure out how wide/high I wanted the wall to which the toilet would be mounted. I "guesstimated" the size of the mosaic tiles we would use (we hadn't chosen them yet) and worked what height/width would allow for the least amount of tile trimming and cut my boards.

I say boards, but they were actually waterproofed polystyrene (foam) boards covered with a mesh and sand spackled. It was the first time I'd used them, but they were wonderful to work with and easy to shape.

I then painted the ceiling and the wife and I put up the wallpaper. I gave up after couple hours so she finished the job with help of her mom the next day.

Next we put in a work order to the plumber (I don't even try to pretend I know anything at all about plumbing). While I waited for the plumber I found some old mouldings out in my shed that would work well for the ceiling and around the door. After a lot of sanding, painting, measuring, cutting fitting, re-measuring, re-cutting, re-fitting, attaching, spackling and painting, the room was starting to come together a bit.

Whilst still waiting for the plumber I set about building the mounting for the sink so that it would not only hide the pipes and be strong enough for the sink, but I wanted it to fit the profile of the sink and allow for the mosaic to be set precisely. After much fiddling and deliberation I came up with a plan that actually worked so I built and mounted the sink holder.

The day before the plumber was to arrive I needed cut out the holes where the pipes would fit for the toilet and its corresponding bolts. Once that was measured and cut lightly tacked the polystyrene board to the toilet mount and glued some of the mosaic up behind where the toilet would be, since I didn't want to mess around with cutting odd-shaped tiles later to fit around the toilet. I mounted it so that I could be certain that the mosaics were perfectly horizontal to the floor and inline with the wall as well as allowing for a 6mm overlap where tile would meet tile in the middle corner.

I'd never glued tile before and was a bit hesitant at first, but found it to be a much easier way to mount mosaic sheets on a wall than using the old "mud" method, since the glue stuck quickly, but still allowed for some adjustment down the line as needed.

The plumber came and hooked up all the water and I was left with deciding where I wanted the flushing mechanism and cutting the hole out for that. Finally I was gluing up

the rest of the mosaic as well as gluing up the tiles on the wall along the floor for the bottom mouldings. After all was set and dry I grouted everything and polished the tiled. A couple of days later, after dampening the grout every 12 hours, I taped off the remaining areas that were in need of silicon and applied it.

Finally I got some cardboard and made templates for the shelves to be placed on the back wall enclosing the half wall built for the toilet bracket/cistern. I cut the pieces out of wood and took my trusty router to the exposed edges for a simple 1/4 rounding on the top side. Painted those, put up the light and fixtures, and BADA BING! Here it is:

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the result (if not the wallpaper my wife chose...HA!)