Guest Bathroom Drama – in progress
April 21, 2020

Sadly, things have slowed down a bit at Casa Louise due to Covid 19. And truthfully, even before the pandemic, the process of renovating this house in Mexico has been beyond challenging. I’ve found it extraordinarily difficult to be away from the job site. There have been a number of miscommunications and mistakes that forced me to make the decision to stop any areas of the renovation involving aesthetic decisions until I can get down there again. You’ll see what I mean in this post on our middle guest bathroom re-do.

Before
Before

BEFORE
This is where we started. The room was a tad whacky with the green and white tile and the toothpaste coloured walls but it had a certain charm. Simply removing most of the tile made a big improvement.

The Inspiration

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was inspired by the romance of this tub enclosure that I’d spotted in the book Casa San Miguel. I was beyond excited to be able to source the exact tile in the picture from a manufacturer in nearby Dolores Hidalgo.

The tile arrived and was installed but sadly no-one looked at the strike off to make sure it matched. It was not a good match. It lacked intensity and the blue was not dark enough. It looked totally wishy washy and we were really disappointed. After many attempts to get the tile right, we decided to switch gears entirely.

Since we were in Toronto when all of this was happening, my sister suggested using the same custom tile as the kitchen because it had turned out perfectly. I usually wouldn’t use the same tile from a kitchen in a guest bathroom but we really had no choice if we wanted to keep things moving. Plus i had exhausted all the tile options when i was down there in November. Luckily it turned out wonderfully.
We finished the tub in polished concrete and, in another unexpected move, the installer added a decorative ledge to the top of the tub. Again we had to ask for it to be removed and refinished in a straight edge like the original inspiration photo. This whole experience wasted months of time and was beyond frustrating. I’m taking lots of deep breaths and doing my best to stay calm in the chaos.

And this is where we are as of yesterday. Beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.