Master Bathroom Reveal

I've been so excited to reveal our new master bathroom to you. I have lots of photos, so here we go! 

(I'll be mentioning what's what, but this isn't a sponsored post.)

This is the little alcove leading to our master bathroom from our bedroom. We uncovered and refinished the original 104 year-old Douglas Fir floors in both rooms. All the walls were painted with Benjamin Moore's White Dove in eggshell, and the woodwork is the same color in semi-gloss.

 

  Our bathroom is tiny, measuring just 5-1/2' x 11', and we kept the same plumbing footprint as the old bathroom.

We added a new and much needed linen cabinet where there is an unusually thick wall. Here in front of this cabinet is our little dressing area.

 

We chose simple but heavy polished chrome knobs from Schaub.

 

A new electrical outlet inside the linen closet conveniently recharges small appliances out of sight.

 

We added another smaller cabinet over the toilet for toiletries.

The new Memoirs toilet by Kohler suits our old home well. We chose the taller version, and for anyone over munchkin size we highly recommend a taller toilet.

 

We told our contractor we wanted a new walk-in shower big enough to dance in, and we got it! We love the way the frameless glass enclosure seems to disappear, making our bathroom appear larger. The new casement window is fiberglass, and the tile installer wrapped and sealed it carefully so it won't leak.

 

Our shower controls are Weymouth by Moen, and the handheld shower head is the Adler, also by Moen. We were able to play with the shower heads at our plumbing supply showroom to make sure we got the water pressure we wanted. All our fixtures are polished chrome.

  

I love the white porcelain inserts. 

 

We meticulously designed every feature of our new shower. We chose shiny white subway tile with light gray grout for the walls, with an accent line of gray tile. The plumbing supplier recommended having a second hook for the handheld shower near the quartz-topped bench, and we've used it a lot.

The shower floor is hexagon-shaped marble tiles with darker gray grout. We had the marble sealed and upgraded all the grout to one that resists mold and fading.
 

 

The tile border around the shampoo niche matches the border around the window.

A pony wall separates the shower and vanity and was capped with the same quartz as the counter and shower bench. This little wall goes all the way through the floor and was anchored from the crawl space below to support the weight of the glass door that's hinged off it. The 32" mirror frame over the vanity was built on the wall and then the glass was cut to fit inside it.

 

We love how far the Moen Weymouth faucet reaches over the sink, making it easy to fit our hands under it. And we love our Kohler Ladena rectangular sink, too. When we wash our faces, the water stays in the sink now instead of splashing on the counter.

 

The faucet handles have the same porcelain inserts as the shower fixtures, and I thought these Pottery Barn accessories almost looked made to match. In this picture you can see a little more of the color variation and depth of the pietre gray quartz from India. I went back and forth between marble and quartz, and in the end I liked the spa-like look and warmth of the quartz in our all white bathroom. 

 

I've been looking for a tall bright pink orchid in a pretty white pot for this corner, but I haven't found one yet. So I tucked these flowers into our toothbrush holder to spare you from seeing our toothbrushes! 

 

We wanted our new vanity to last a long time, just like our old vanity did. This one is actually made up of three separate cabinets attached together and has dovetailed drawers with really sturdy slides and hinges. All the new cabinets in our bathroom have soft close doors and drawers, and I'm totally spoiled by them now! We were able to fit in a 48" long vanity with three drawers for each of us. Yay! And we love the taller 35" counter height, too.

   

 

Here's a close up of the original Douglas Fir floors we had refinished. We love the one hundred year old patina and imperfections. Wood floors aren't the most practical choice for a bathroom, but we're fairly careful and don't slop a lot of water around. We'd never do this with kids! We held our breath when we took our first few showers because we didn't want to caulk our shower glass. (We were told the clear caulk would turn cloudy after a few years.) Luckily, our shower is huge and the glass is tight enough without caulk and doesn't leak at all, so we're now confident the wood floor will work out fine for us here. If we do ever need to replace it, though, we'll match the hexagon marble tile from the shower floor. The washable rug adds just the right amount of happy color for us and is from Target.

Our polished chrome light fixture is from our local Builder's Lighting. One of the reasons we chose it is because it holds three 100 watt bulbs, and we like a light bright bathroom. We matched the new molding above the mirror and the new cabinets with the old molding above the door.

   

We love the old five panel doors and bronze doornobs in our home. We added the brass lock from Restoration Hardware when we first moved here twenty-five years ago. I can never figure out how people can have bathrooms without locks on the doors - they're braver than I am!

       

We ordered our heavy polished chrome towel hooks from our local Builder's Lighting. We like the informal look of these hooks, and they allow us to hang more towels in our limited space than towel bars would.

 

We copied the wainscoting on the bathroom walls from the original wainscoting in our dining room. I'm still thinking about what to hang above the towels, but for now we're enjoying the clean spare look of our newly painted white walls.

So there you have it, our new little bathroom in all its splendor. Our aim was to design a timeless master bathroom that will work for our old cottage for another one hundred years. We're really happy with how it turned out, and I wish I could convey the joy we feel each time we walk into our shiny new bathroom. 

I'm so glad you stopped by today for the big reveal. I hope you'll come again when I unveil the rest of our new master bedroom, too. 

Have a great week!

{Thank you to Jed Dilworth Construction for making our dreams come true!}
   

Please join me this week at these lovely parties!

French Country Cottage 
The Charm Of Home 
From My Front Porch To Yours 

Our Master Bathroom Remodel

It's time to start another remodel here at The North End Loft! 

This time around we're having our master bathroom and bedroom redone. It's the first time in twenty years these rooms have been touched. Today, I'm sharing the bathroom. Are you ready for a 1990's hunter green and shiny brass blast from the past? Here are some before photos.

  

Green is my favorite color, so when hunter green was all the rage in the nineties, I used it liberally throughout my home. Even after it wasn't so popular anymore, I loved my bathroom for a long time. 

When I finally grew tired of the color, I was also starting to get too old for tired of climbing in and out of our tall claw foot tub. Claw foot tubs are fabulous for baths, but the wrap-around shower curtains don't create the most ideal showering experience. We were ready for a real shower stall, and knowing we'd be doing a complete overhaul soon, we just lived with everything as it was until we saved up enough to go all out. Who knew it would take so long? 

  

  

Can you tell I also loved marble? Now days, one sees real marble everywhere, but we couldn't afford to import the real thing as young parents starting out with our first home twenty-five years ago. So I picked faux marble vinyl for the floor and faux marble Formica for the counter the first time around. I thought it was really posh!

And let's not forget the once popular wallpaper border.

How's that for a trip back in time? 

 

We packed up everything from our bedroom and bathroom and are storing it in the front rooms of our house. Meanwhile, we kept out just what we need during the five or six weeks of construction and have moved into the rooms at the back of the house.

 Happily, our contractor is turning out to be the queen of dust containment, and she built a tunnel out of ten foot tall poles and huge sheets of plastic all the way from our front door through the living and dining rooms to the door of the master suite. 

 

  The bedroom door is on the other side of this plastic and is only accessible through the tunnel from the front door.

  

And this is looking through the long tunnel from the front door towards the kitchen. The bedroom door is just around the corner out of sight. I think this is the coolest thing ever!

Okay, are you ready for some really scary demo pictures? 

  

We're keeping the window, but replacing it with a new fiberglass one and surrounding it with tile. 

 There will be a knee wall next to the new vanity with frameless glass shower doors. 

  

This will be a new 48" wide linen cabinet with a smaller cabinet built in over the toilet, prized storage for an old house.

  

Under the vinyl and sub-floor is a thick layer of some kind of underlayment that can hopefully be sanded off. 

  

Because we're aiming for refinishing these original wood floors. To us, it's like finding gold under there!

This is where a shampoo niche is going in the shower. The old framing inside this 100 year-old wall has us all scratching our heads - not a 2" x 4" in sight, just a bunch of scrap wood nailed here and there! 

All this demo was accomplished in just one day, and now it's on to the fun part: making everything pretty.

  

This is the new floor plan.

  

This is my design board, and almost everything on it has been ordered. 

Inspiration Photos from My Blessed Life

This charming cottage bathroom belongs to Myra, who blogs at My Blessed Life.  I fell in love with every detail of Myra's darling eclectic bathroom and could easily picture it in our own home. We've been inspired by it to use subway tile for our shower, to refinish our wood floors, and even to duplicate our dining room wainscoting in our own bathroom. Thanks so much, Myra, for being our inspiration! 

We've been waiting for this new master bathroom for years and working on all of our plans for months, and we're so excited to be starting! Of course, I'll be sharing every step of the entire remodel with you, too. 

(And I promise no more scary photos.)