Similar to our basement bathroom, there are many things involved in the finishing touches of a bathroom renovation.
Painting
After the drywall was in place, I was able to paint the ceiling and walls. This is always my favourite step, as it means the dust is gone! I used Benjamin Moore Aura Bath & Spa paint for both the ceiling and walls: Sleigh Bells for the walls and Horizon for the ceiling.

I don’t have great pictures of this step, as I was much more focused on my tiling work at the time, but you can start to see the room come together.



Wall-Hung Toilet
Once the main wall and floor were tiled, we were able to install the toilet on the wall. It took some time to figure out how the supports worked – especially since the carrier (the part in the wall) had different instructions than the toilet itself. But once we figured out which instructions to follow, we had a working wall-hung toilet that looked great against the dark tile. We had to install the toilet button that came with the toilet while we wait for our back-ordered white button to come.



Vanity
After ordering our vanity from Teodor Vanities in mid-May, it finally arrived the first week of July – 7 weeks after we first ordered it. While not custom, Teodor makes all of their vanities made-to-order and there are many options for cabinet configuration and finishes. It was a good compromise between something off-the-shelf at a bath store and a custom-made cabinet. I also had a tonne of questions about installation (so I could prep my framing) and the customer service folks were really helpful in answering all of them.

Before we could install the vanity, we needed to find a sink and countertop for it. The vanity could have come with both, but they only had options for countertop-mounted faucets, which doesn’t work for our wall-mounted faucet.
We spent a lot of time looking online for a good sink and finally landed on the Kohler Verticyl sink. It was a relatively popular and available sink, so we were able to pick it up at Rona.
The countertop was a bit more complicated, since we had to find a fabricator and physically go and look at what offcuts were available (which I couldn’t do until the majority of the bathroom work was done and had the time to go out and look). After going to a few unhelpful places, we found Stone Depot, a random family-run countertop fabricator beside the highway. I went in with my materials and they helped me pick a quartz piece from what they had in the yard. I gave them my dimensions and cutting instructions and within a few days the countertop was ready for pickup. I also got them to install the sink since it was only $100 extra and would save me a lot of grief in figuring out how to install it into the stone. Three days after I dropped my measurements and sink, it was ready for pickup.


Installing the vanity on the wall was slightly complicated because I had to figure out where all my blocking was in the wall (which I did by looking at the photos I took with measurements before I closed the wall). Once I confirmed the blocking locations, I used tape to mark where everything was so I could confirm my vanity location would work. I first had to drill through the tile so I could then screw the support bracket and vanity into the wall.





Once the vanity was on the wall, Alex and I carefully installed the countertop and sink with 100% silicone. Luckily all of my measurements were spot on and everything lined up!


Grout Sealer
Before installing the final trim and faucets, I sealed the grout using Mapei’s grout sealer. I first sealed the floor grout and then sealed all the shower and wall grout. Hopefully it prevents any mold or stains from showing up as we use it.


Faucets
I tend to pick black for all of my accent features, so choosing white for this project was a bit stressful. But when we placed the faucet pieces together with the materials we chose for the bathroom, it looked great!

Once all the grout was on the wall and the vanity was installed, we installed all the faucets. It was really coming together!


Our special-order toilet button seemed to take forever to get here, finally arriving in late September. However, when we brought it home we realized that we needed a separate pneumatic kit and had to wait another couple of months to sort it out. By late November we finally had everything we needed to install the new toilet button!

Light
I searched high and low for a white vanity light, but most were really ugly. When we were driving around trying to find our countertop piece, we found a few lighting stores and went in to look. There were many many options and at great price points. We found a nice white light, but had to wait 2 weeks until it arrived. In early August we were finally able to install the light!


The other light in our bathroom is our pot lights, which we installed early in the project – as soon as the ceiling was painted!


Shower Glass
For many months after the bathroom was finished, we just used a temporary shower curtain – mostly because we were struggling with the decision of whether to have a single fixed panel or a fixed panel/door combination. In December I finally called our glass place and had them come in to measure. By early January we got the glass installed!



They brought the wrong handle, but the correct one is on order and won’t be available until at least May.
Door
The very final addition to our bathroom renovation was a new door. Because I changed the opening and trim (finally making it plumb, level and square), I also had to get a custom door and new hardware.
Before I installed the door, I installed new trim (matching my baseboards) and patched the wall.


I ordered a custom door from Home Hardware, which took a few weeks to arrive. Once it arrived, I wasn’t in a big hurry to get it installed – plus, I had to wait for my handle to arrive from Casson – so I didn’t bother dealing with the door until early January.
I wanted to do something a little exciting with the door and decided to paint the inside side pink, instead of the trim colour, which was my original plan.



It was great to finally have a bathroom door, even if it was 9 months after starting the renovation!

