A fully functioning guest bathroom...finally!

Two and half months ago, I purchased a new shower fixture for the guest bathroom. I mentioned it here but didn't really get into details. Basically, I wanted to swap out the shower fixture for something detachable: both for the dogs and for the baby. Detachable shower fixtures are not cheap, especially when you factor in the Oil Rubbed Bronze. Back in June, Save-A- Lot had a promotion of Home Depot gift cards where you got a $25 gift card for $15. When the promotion ran, they didn't have a limit so Tim and I bought a bunch of them with the intent of purchasing a new shower fixture.

 I came across this Glacier Bay fixture on the Home Depot website. While Glacier Bay isn't the best brand, it was virtually the only one that matched our current set up and would cover the pre-drilled holes in our tile. We went to one of the local Home Depot's and they had NO detachable Oil Rubbed Bronze Shower Fixtures. We walked the store as we had a few other items to get. I randomly stopped at the clearance section near the shop vacs and found one of the Glacier Bay fixtures, box still sealed marked down to $84. SOLD!

The next day we took everything apart. Turns out we had to replace the ENTIRE shower valve to make the unit work. Since that is beyond the scope of our knowledge, we had to call my dad. He of course knows how to do this with his eyes closed but we have both seen so busy that my shower has looked like this for the past 2.5 months.

In my own defense, we don't use the shower in there much. Mainly for washing the dogs but I also have a slop sink in the garage so we weren't in any huge rush. But with my due date in approximately 24 days, we decided it would be best to get it done now. Saturday, my dad come over and we went to remove the access panel inside my linen closet. Turns out what we thought was a wooden " panel" was really two layers of drywall.

All we did Saturday was to open up the wall, check the connectors and make sure we had everything we needed to switch out the valve on Sunday. Since I am HUGE and not very helpful at this point, Tim and my dad worked on this project. First we had to cut the boards to have access to the valve. We later reattached them. The whole process went fairly well. We did end up have to cut out a small piece of tile which made me extremely nervous! This is how things were looking about half way through...

Aside from the whole drywall incident, we only had one small glitch. After we were all installed, we had no hot water. First we checked that we flipped the breaker back on and we did. The new shower valve has a anti- scald feature that comes enabled. It was an easy fix once we realized the cause.After that we switched out the drain (the one item we had to purchase separately). And here is the new fixture all installed.

While we are on bathroom upgrades, we made one more minor addition to this bathroom as well. If you remember I painted the bathroom ceiling a few months back. I still love the color but always felt like something was missing. After completing our Kitchen Tray Ceiling, I realized what it was... moulding! So we picked up a couple of pieces of mini crown moulding and installed it where the gray paint met the ceiling in the guest bath.

So much better! It really is amazing to me what a difference it can make! I think that officially wraps up the list of " To Do" items for this room! :)

Oh this morning, I tested out the new fixture by giving the dogs a bath after their walk. It was so much faster than rinsing them with a cup ( the way I used to). Lola however was not amused!

" What is this thing"?