Build Bath & Shower

After Before The Original Floorplan Last June, Jeremy and I started the process of remodeling the second floor of our home. There were lots of things that bothered me about the original layout, and you can probably discern a lot of them from the “before” pictures, more of which you can see in West Elm’s post here. Originally, the second floor had a master bedroom , tiny master bathroom , and a weird tiny bedroom that could only fit a twin size bed and had a weird area where the eaves of the roof slanted down to the ground making it almost impossible to keep anything there. The master bathroom consisted of a small crappy plastic tube -shaped shower, a vanity, and the toilet. The shower was the bane of my existence, because the way it was built and assembled left all these little gaps in the plastic pieces  in it that were impossible to get to with cleaning brush, so mold would just grow between the cracks, and the rubber lining along the shower door where the plastic sheets touched k...

When designing a bathroom, the key is to look beyond this space. Does the style blend with the rest of your house? Now, keep in mind, you don’t have to be matchy-matchy and blending doesn’t have to be boring. But if your door knobs and hardware throughout the home are oil-rubbed bronze and you choose nickel for a hall bathroom, the change in finish could be distracting to the eye. Same goes for color scheme, except for the powder room, where drama reigns. If the master bedroom walls are painted a cheery yellow and you go for a burgundy wine colored bathroom , the jarring contrast will create a choppy feel, not the smooth transition you’re after. Unless you plan on renovating the bedroom and changing the colors there, you want an adjacent bathroom design to go with the flow. “If the bathroom is part of a master bedroom, it needs to tie in with color or texture—something,” says Eileen Kollias, designer/owner, Eileen Kollias Design , Boston, Mass. “If the bathroom is in the hallway a...

It’s the final stop on the tour of our 7th flip – the bathrooms! You’ve seen this pic of the master bathroom before, but now it’s time to check out the rest of the space – I hope you love it as much as we do. The master bathroom started out split into 3 different rooms (+ 2 closets) – a “his” side, a “hers” side, and a shared room that held the tub, shower and toilet.  We thought all the doors made the space feel claustrophobic and we wanted to switch things up a bit! So we took out the doorways between the “his and hers” areas and the shared space, creating one large room.  We also switched out the tub for a huge walk-in shower – the opposite side where the original shower and toilet were located have now become a private toilet closet . This is one of the more “wowzy” showers that we’ve done, with gorgeous glass and marble mosaic tile and body sprays.  Body sprays! Our tile guy took the 12×24 porcelain tiles that were used throughout the rest of the bathroom and cut them down into...