Image source: Home in Furniture

The time has come, we need to renovate one of our bathrooms.  It’s either got to be the main or the ensuite, but either way one of them is getting done – soon!

The other day I made the mistake of looking down at the tiles that meet the shower screen door in our ensuite and I nearly passed out.  In a matter of days the grout had gone from grey to black. Black!!!

As soon as I finished my shower I hit the internet to find out about ways to safely (and environmentally friendly) clean the grout.  Turns out there are none when the grout is this bad.  I spent half a day in the bathroom alternating between scrubbing with a toothbrush (which I upgraded to a kitchen pot brush when I’d burnt through my third toothbrush) and soak with every vinegar, bi carb, citric acid, chemical solution I could find.  Nothing worked.

Sure I managed to get some of the grout back to that grey (which isn’t clean but it’s not black) but there’s still a whole big patch of black in there.

It was sometime during the chemical induced hallucination when I declared to HUBBY, Roger Rabbit and some guy named Beetlejuice that we were getting a bathroom renovation before the mold spores killed us all and took over our bodies in an attempt to overthrow the government.

With my royal decree made we just have to decide which bathroom to update first.

As I’m not working at the moment we have a limited and tight budget. (Really tight! Tighter than a frog’s backside as someone I know would say!) Because of this we need to do the room that’s going to get the most value done first.

Here’s my problem; I use the ensuite.  It’s convienant and it has all my stuff in it. Guests use our bathroom.  It’s the only bathroom in the house that people will see whether they’re just popping in for a chat or whether they’re staying with us overnight.

Do we renovate something that is easy for us, or do we renovate for the great public?

Our main bathroom is massive (it’s 294cm wide x 175cm deep), whereas our ensuite isn’t (it’s 224cm wide x 94cm deep).  The main bathroom also has a separate toilet.

The main bathroom will cost more than the ensuite to do, but it will give us the best return in the short term if it’s the only renovation we do before selling (touch wood it’s not, but I like to think about contingencies).  However the ensuite (or as I now call it “The Black Plague”) is the room that HUBBY and I will use more often. (I know, we could use the main bathroom until we have guests… but it’s just such a big walk!!!)

Currently we don’t use our ensuite’s toilet facilities unless there’s an emergency.  (Yes, we’ve outlined what constitutes an emergency!) This is because the towels hang right beside the toilet and I’m afraid they’ll be contaminated by flying poo particles!

However, if we renovate the ensuite this could give us the use of a second toilet back. (That’s reliant on the assumption that we’ll be able to come up with a better layout then the one we’ve got currently.)

On the other hand we could continue to use the Black Plague until the main bathroom gets redone and then move our stuff into this bathroom.  Then when we have the money do the ensuite and move back into it.

There’s so many decisions to make and we haven’t even gotten on to picking out the tile patterns yet!

All I know is this week the builder is coming around to talk about what we should do and to get a start date lined up so I can start hunting the internet for bargains.

 Have you renovated a bathroom before? Is there something I should be asking, thinking about or avoiding? Which do you think we should do first ensuite or main bathroom?