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Remember this post? How I said that I intended to replace the bathroom floor with hot pink carpet? Well…

I told you that I wasn’t kidding.

We still have plenty of work to do in the bathroom, but we have a new floor and have restored toilet and shower function to the room, so I wanted to share how far we’ve come.

We started here. With cracked tiles.

Then my lack of impulse control catapulted us here.

Which meant we had to go here. And remove the toilet and sink that were impeding the tile removal.

Upon removing the toilet, we realized that we needed to install a new flange. That’s our WE’RE HAVING FUN face. Swear.

Ah the poop hole. The Trojan Horse of wasp invasion.

It seemed totally reasonable to store the toilet in the shower, the only shower in the entire house. That was of course until we became permanent residents of said house. Then suddenly we were as stinky as the wasp inhabited poop hole.

It was at this stage in the process, upon unveiling a moldy wall and piece of floor, that James called me and declared that we needed to hire a contractor. Fortunately, the contractor that we liked best from our inspection process came right over and talked James through next steps so as to avoid having to completely gut the room. Whew!

So James cut out the moldy piece of wall and floor and patched in new pieces.

Then, to help protect and seal the wood from water damage, we coated the floor in some hot pink goo (a perfect preview for the hot pink carpet). You might want to navigate to this web-site to learn more on how to deal with it and more professionally advices.

For those DIY readers out there, we used Red Guard, a water proof sealant most often used to seal concrete basement, my friend suggested me about this method, you might want to hear her explanation.

It dries red. Thus, the name.

As you can see, after sealing the floor, Kimmy and I took over and painted the deep purple walls white. If I was going to be using such a bold, loud color on the floor, I needed everything else to be clean and crisp and white. Also, I thought the white would expand the space and brighten it up. We went a bit slap happy painting. It took far far more coats than we’d anticipated. Ah the joys of painting white on a deeply saturated wall color.

Here is where I take a moment to justify my decision to use carpet. In a bathroom. Everyone has told me that I am totally and completely off my rocker. Which, hey, I already knew. But I promise, this decision is a very well researched and deliberate one. Thus, in this instance, off my rocker I am not.

You see, our house is horribly horribly HORRIBLY uneven. Which we knew when purchasing. If you were to check out our basement, or just put a marble to any floor surface, you’d see that our little farm house is aiming for its place as Vermont’s Leaning Tower of Pisa. A noble aspiration, but one that makes the use of materials such as slate and tile difficult. The reason that the floor was so cracked to begin with is because of all this sloping and slanting and uneveness. James and I intend to remedy the problem. But it will be quite the undertaking, so in the interim, there was no way I was going to take the time to lay down new tile, only to have it crack and crumble.

My options seemed to be linoleum, which, ugh. Or carpet. Having recently visited James’ grandparents who have an incredibly lush carpet in their guest bathroom, I noted how delightful and cozy it was to make a midnight run to the loo. I attribute this to the carpet. Absolutely.

James’ immediate reaction to my carpet proposal was absolute horror. Did I know how gross and moldy and gnarly that carpet was going to get? Not to mention, how much damage we’d do to the floor?

Yes, but…

It wouldn’t be as bad if we used a carpet made of synthetic material like nylon. Also, this was a temporary fix for the next couple years until we had leveled the foundation and had the money to truly gut the bathroom and start over (the dream!). Also, in reading about carpets in the bathroom, FLOR was a name that continually surfaced and came highly recommended. Why? Because they sell tiles. CARPET tiles.

If a part of the carpet was completely saturated with water or totally destroyed, we didn’t have to remove the entire floor. Just the offending tile(s).

Genius!

Our friends had opted to use FLOR throughout their house, so we’d seen the carpet before and knew that they were a high quality product.

James was sold. Per FLOR’s recommendation, we opted for the RAKE ME OVER style. Slightly shaggy but made of recycled nylon so as to minimize the impact of water saturation. I went with my gut and initial vision and ordered the tiles in pink.

I could not have been more pleased when the box arrived. It was precisely what I had in mind.

Even better? The install was a breeze!

I mean, seriously. This was the fastest part of the process. It cut easily. James and I had to take some time fitting smaller pieces into the corners, given our less than square floor, but altogether, the FLOR was down and installed in under an hour.

The tiles are attached to one another, but not the actual floor of the room. It is truly a floating floor. And looks, feels, and IS exactly what I had envisioned for the room.

Courtland approves. Wholeheartedly!

Thank you, FLOR!

The next step was to get the toilet reinstalled. James put in a new flange. And then we YouTubed wax ring installs, and this happened.

Hey whatever works, because BOOM!

We put in a new shower head, and one of those curved shower curtain rods so that we don’t feel as though we are being smothered by the shower curtain every time we bathe. We’ve got a DIY sink cabinet and sink install in the works. And have some shelving and medicine cabinet decisions to make. We’re getting their folks.

The good news is that this was my view last night as I took my inaugural soak in the tub. Not too shabby.

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FULL DISCLOSURE: The product(s) mentioned in the above post were provided to me by the stated brand or company for review and/or sponsorship purposes only. I was not paid to promote or endorse this product and all thoughts and ideas are truthful and reflect my opinion alone.