Our New Bathroom!

Bathroom Vanity

I know it's been a while since the past post. But we were getting some traction with the City, so I figured it was best to just keep a (relatively) low profile and close out the open permits on the house. And that's exactly what happened. Last year, we completed our new bathroom and a month or two after that, we finally got the City to approve our alley. So, as of this moment, the City isn't harassing us and nobody has their hand in our checking account. It's a good feeling.

As you can see from past posts, we had a lot of issues with permitting left over from problems that we inherited from the previous owners that the City of Tampa magically (or conveniently) ignored until the month we moved in. The biggest issue was that the previous owner installed all new windows and had the property inspected by the City with the new windows installed (that were not included in their permit) and the City of Tampa closed out their "renovation" permit. Meanwhile, my wife and I could not get our bathroom permit closed unless we attached the windows to that permit. See the previous posts for all the shady/underhanded stuff that culminated in that outcome. But to make a long story short, we brought the windows up, finished the bathroom and closed out the permit. Whew!

We got very fortunate during the bathroom build by getting an inspector who was both reasonable and helpful. Since it was my first owner/contractor permit, he was really good about explaining everything and giving me helpful feedback. All-in-all, he had a few comments on the rough-in inspection (which we remediated right away) and he even gave me a few tips to help me during the remainder of the build. So, for the most part, the inspection process was smooth sailing. And I must admit, it's really nice to have our new bathroom.

And... the City of Tampa Code Enforcement is no longer camping out in our backyard. Part of that might be the 6ft high privacy fence we also put up in the back ;)

Anyway, back to the bathroom. We adjusted the size of the adjacent hallway to make more room for the bathroom and we squeezed everything we could into our new bathroom. It has a 6ft+ walk in shower with a custom window to the let the light in. It's got a nice vanity with a little storage and a very modern meets 1920's vibe. Adding to that vibe is the 12" marble patterned tile on the floor, the oil rubbed bronze finishes, the Edison bulbs over the vanity and the 1920's pin-ups we framed and hung in the bathroom (not shown because they display some nudity).

By creating the bathroom, we lost our laundry room. So, tucked away in the bathroom is a laundry closet that contains a full-size stacked washer dryer, our descaling water filter and our tankless water heater. We packed a ton into that bathroom. But you know what? It all works and it looks great!

If there is any downside, it's that we did go over budget. We were budgeting $25,000 for the bathroom all in and we ended up in the low $30s. However, we decided to push the bathroom into the hall a bit, we changed out the window for a custom built (slightly larger) window, we forgot about the de-scaler (I ended up adding it at the end), there was a TON more framing repair that we found once we tore down the drywall and the previous owners had some very questionable plumbing work that had to be repaired as part of the build.

But now it's done! And it turned out better than we could have expected!

Our New Shower

De-scaler & Water Heater

Full Size Washer & Dryer Closet