Attack of the Ugly Shower

We’ve determined what our new home improvement project will be:

Yes, you can feel free to be horrified. As I have mentioned before, our house has needed a lot of work. Our shower has finally squeaky-wheeled itself into the next position for improvement. Not only is it ugly (don’t you love the marbled green and gold?), but water has been leaking behind the panel under the glass block since before we moved in. Jason pried the panel off this weekend to find disintegrated Sheetrock and a full inch of silicone that some previous owner had put in place in an attempt to stave off the inevitable mold.

Our plan is to totally gut this bathroom. We would like to do an all tile shower stall. We also plan to tile the floor of the bathroom outside of the shower (instead of the current linoleum) and of course replace all of the gold towel bars and light fixtures. I’m torn between having this done by a professional and attempting to do it ourselves. We have some experience with tile (we did the extra bathroom’s floor and walls) and a decent wet saw, but I’m intimidated by the idea of the all tile shower. We have a do-it-yourself manual that explains the process step-by-step, but the idea of water running constantly over an area we could have not properly sealed fills me with the fear of mold. And then again, the idea of turning control over to someone else, doesn’t make me sleep easy either. At least half the fun of our home projects for me has been the meticulous attention to detail we’ve paid. Shopping for fixtures and picking out the perfect shade of paint is a perfect Saturday for our family. So it’s all still up in the air. But don’t you worry, there will be many pictures to follow of the entire process.