I estimated that this project would take little less that 2 weeks. It would've been a pretty good estimate had I not run into a major problem with the flooring. If you want to skip the gory details and see the final results, click here.

PREPARATION

Well,here is what we started from; a typical apartment/condo style bathroom.

The plan is to replace the sink, counter, mirror, medicine cabinet and lights. Also, the linoleum flooring will be replaced with ceramic tiles and the walls re-painted.

The removal of sink, counter and other items was a snap. Taking off the linoleum turned out to be a bit difficult. The top laminated portion came off easily but unfortunately left the paper backing glued to the subfloor.

After futile attempts at trying to scrape off the remaining floor by hand, I rented a floor scraper from HomeDepot. This is how the floor looked after going over it with the floor scraper.

 

Still unsatisfied with the floor, I resorted to using a paint scraping mesh attachment on a drill to finally get down to the bare concrete.

Next came the leveling compound to level the floor and chalk lines to guide the tile layout. Oh yeah, the walls were painted before the tiles went in.

Took about 3 days to get to this point.

 

MAJOR PROBLEM

Here is where I ran into a major problem. Floor tiles are laid on thinset mortars (vs. mastic which are used for walls). Typically, thinset mortar will be mixed with water (similar to how you would mix concrete) and applied to the floor and/or the tiles. Well, I saw a pre-mixed "thinset" mortar at HomeDepot and thought it would save me the time and hassle of mixing my own mortar.

It turns out that the pre-mixed "thinset" mortar is not really a thinset mortar. Instead, its some sort of a glue. Unfortunately, this glue takes forever to dry. Even after a week, the tiles are still not firmly attached to the floor.

Not knowing how long it would take for this adhesive to work (if ever), I decided to rip out the tiles and do it right using the standard thinset mortar. Ripping the tiles off was actually pretty easy which re-affirms that my decision to remove the tiles was the right one.

After about a week and a half delay, here are the newly finished floors. The grout was added 24 hours after the last tiles were set.

 

 

OTHER ITEMS

Installing fixtures and other items seemed like a piece of cake compared to the work I had to do for the tiles. Here are some items worth mentioning.
Unlike typical faucets manufactured in US, faucet from IKEA did not come with standard thread for hot and cold water connection. Instead you have to use a compression or flare connection. I opted to use a flare connection. The copper pipes that came with the faucet seem to be too soft to use normal compression fitting.
The medicine cabinet from IKEA is about an inch longer than a standard medicine cabinet. Since the new cabinet was to be installed in place of the original one, the opening was enlarged by cutting the nails along the 2X4 at top of the opening and repositioning it. Wood trim was added around the cabinet to hide any openings along the edges.

COMPLETED TRANSFORMATION

Here it is. The completed work with all the trimmings.

Lesson learned : As surely as there are no short-cuts in life, there are no such thing as pre-mixed thinset mortars. :)