Finally, after almost 14 years in this house with the ugliest master bath in the whole world, we began our remodel.

I just spent 40 minutes trying to put some before pictures here but they kept showing up huge when I did a preview even though they weren't that big when I looked at them outside of this forum. If I can get that problem figured out later, I'll post some before pictures. Trust me - it was one very ugly bathroom.

Back in November I found and ordered two over sized night stands - actually more like bachelor chests - to use for vanities, and last week we ordered a Marvin window (there's no window now), but those were the only actions, besides just looking for items on the internet, until yesterday.

Yesterday we went to the tile store and found tile we wanted and ordered it. A lot more expensive than I thought I'd spend - $4100 (incl. tax) for 319 sq. ft. of tile plus 88 linear feet of molding pieces. My husband almost had a heart attack at the price. Especially for the cost of the 12"square floor tile. That was also the one that shocked me too. The tile is a tumbled travertine in a color called Philadelphia.

Philadelphia travertine:

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Between the room and the shower we're using the following sizes/shapes: 12" square, 2" square, 1" square, 3"x6" brick style, plus a 1"x12" pencil liner, a 2"x12" chair rail, and just a bit of 1"x12" chair rail.

After spending that money, we came home and I got on the internet and ordered my 5' white classic style claw foot tub, tub drain, wall mounted tub faucet, two wall mounted sink faucets, and toilet supply line (to match) from Vintage Tub. I got 10% off all of that by finding a coupon code - yay!

Then I ordered my Kerdi system, Ditra, and a small Better Bench (just for the propping of feet for shaving) from tileprotection.com.

Then I ordered a heating mat system from Costco. It's 30" by 9', which is the perfect size for where I need to use it.

Tomorrow I will try to order the sinks I found that I like, , the shower faucet and shower head, the pocket door hardware, the Panasonic Whisper Air fan, and two medicine cabinets.

Today we gutted the bathroom. It took quite a while, but not as bad as I feared. We sawed the blue fiberglass shower until into 4 pieces, pried the laminate countertop off the vanity, broke the vanity into several pieces, just by using our hands. We removed the wall at the end of the shower, it, along with the plumbing will have to be moved about 6" to give me room for the tub. I'll come back in the next few days and post some "gutted" pics.

I hope we can move along quickly with this. I don't want to be like my brother who, after gutting his bathroom 4 years or more ago, still hasn't finished, though he's very close now.

We're doing this totally DIY and the work involves moving and adding plumbing, moving and adding electrical, building a shower, installing a window, and tiling everything. I love doing this sort of thing, but I have arthritis in my lower back that gets worse every month. It's hard and painful to bend or stoop, but I refuse to give in to it, and just put on my back brace and take my time with the bending, and it's not too bad. I'm also working 12 hrs days three days a week, and 10 hr days the other two week days. Those days are shorter because I leave work early to pick up and watch my 2 year old grandson for the late afternoon and evening. So - not much time during weekdays to do any work - it'll have to be done mostly during the weekends. I'll post pictures as we make progress.