Master Bathroom Reveal

What we Chose & Why and the Lessons Learned Along the Way

We completed this Master Bathroom but I haven’t shared in detail besides on Instagram an Instagram stories. I wanted to show the before and after, what we chose and why, and a little bit about the process.

First, here are the before pictures. The house was a builder constructed in a tract neighborhood 2003 so pretty much your standard 2003 selections. After we moved in we added the towel rings because it didn’t have any, the curtains hung as high as we could since the ceilings were so high, and the towel bar that I already had. Eventually I replaced the light fixtures which were vines and leaves with something a little more streamlined until we could get to the full renovation.

We knew that we pretty much wanted to replace everything in the bathroom.

Here was our wish list:

• We definitely wanted a tub but one without jets and was comfortable to lay back in and read
• A tile shower
• Heated floors
• We wanted to find some antique dressers to use as vanities
• New lighting
• New mirrors
• New hardware
• Change the paint color
• Plantation shutters

So pretty much everything had to go and we were starting from scratch, which was pretty fun to get to design the layout and choose everything new for the bathroom.

We played around with the layout but because there were quite a few doors: entry door, linen closet, water closet, and entry door to the closet, we actually ended up keeping the layout pretty much the same. We knew that we really wanted to keep the toilet in a separate area and the bathroom was big enough for everything we wanted so we didn’t need to and couldn’t really justify taking part of the closet for a larger shower.

I saved and pinned images for a long time before we started this bathroom renovation. We moved in the house in October 2013 and didn’t start this renovation until August of 2017. I had almost 4 years to think about what we really wanted in our master bathroom.

Here are just a few inspiration pictures. They are all from Pinterest with their sources linked. I also included a brief description about what I was inspired by in each pictures. When working with clients and their inspiration boards, I always asked them what they like about each of the pictures so I thought that would be helpful here.

Here the pictures with the bathroom gutted in the same order as the Before pictures:

Construction was slated for about 6 weeks including the demo. All together it took about 8 weeks for the job to be completed. We ordered everything and had it delivered before the construction began to make sure there were not delays waiting on parts and pieces. Sometimes this happens since you can’t open and inspect everything and make sure it works but in this case everything was good. We also went ahead and replaced the toilet in the WC while we were at it since we were replacing the tile floors throughout the space. Our contractor advised that it is never worth the cost of putting back in an old toilet that may end up having a problem when a new one is just a couple of hundred bucks and it has to be removed and replaced anyway for the floors to go in.

Although we had looked at a lot of tile at several of the big stores, our contractor recommended that we try a local place, Traditions in Tile. He said that once he got his discount that we would come out the same or better for a higher quality, more consistent product. I’m glad we did because we ended up finding the perfect handcrafted in Portugal gray tile for the shower walls that we had not seen anywhere else. We did end up getting the wood look floor tile at Lowe’s though because it was the only place we could find the width, color, and length of board that we wanted. We purchased extra boxes to make sure that the quality was consistent and just returned what we did not use when the ones we opened ended up working just fine.

On another note, our contractor also recommended that we get all our plumbing fixtures from a local plumbing supply. We had a local one that had an excellent showroom and if they didn’t have what we wanted on the show floor to look at, they could order it. He said that they would also know all the “behind the scenes” parts needed to make everything work together that you wouldn’t get just ordering it from one of the big stores or getting it off the shelf. For example, we had 2 shower heads, and a handheld sprayer so we needed all the behind the scenes pieces to swap from one to the other with one valve while it kept the temperature of the water consistent all the time. With his contractor discount, we ended out coming out better, didn’t have delays due to missing parts, and when one piece came that was a different finish than the rest, they were quickly able to remedy the problem.

We did not end up including the heated tile floors. Our contractor of course said he would do it if we wanted it but told us a lot of the cons to having them and in the end, the benefit didn’t seem worth the cost to us.

We also ended up having the plumbers install a Rinnai tankless hot water heater. LIFE CHANGING! We were so happy we spent the money there instead. It is a decision that I would highly recommend!

Well, without further delay, here it is….THE BIG REVEAL…

Source list:

Shower Tile: Traditions In Tile- gray subway in 3” x 8”

Floor Tile: Lowes

Sink: Victoria + Albert

Faucets: Kohler and Delta

Mirror and Vanity lights: Pottery Barn both in Chrome

Overhead light: City Plumbing & Electric (the same place we ordered the faucets from)

Frames: Michaels

Turkish towels: Wayfair

Hand Towels: Target

Canister: Ikea

Stool: Serena and Lily

Art (bottom right in picture): @clareelsaesser on Instagram and http://clareelsaesser.com

Paint: Sherwin Williams Repose Gray

Dressers were found at a local antique store and our contractor retrofitted them with the sinks and modified the drawers so they would function and could still be used for storage without interfering with the water pipes.

Marble on the ledges and on the shower surround were sourced from a local stone yard.

I hope this gives you some great ideas for remodeling a bathroom. Here are our key takeaways:

1. Take your time to think about the things you really want and are most important to you.
2. Use Pinterest to pin images and then go back and select the ones you are drawn to the most. Write out what it is that you really like about your favorite ones. This will be especially helpful when working with a designer or your contractor.
3. Use those items when selecting finishes and lighting and make a mood board in PowerPoint or PicMonkey to make sure the selections work well together. See this post to learn more about creating mood boards.
4. Interview and get quotes from several contractors to decide who you will work with the best. Get referrals from people who have had work done by those contractors. Our contractor had some great ideas that we hadn’t thought about or didn’t know.
5. Stick to your guns about the things that are really important to you and that you really want in the finished product. After all, it is your space and you will be the one living there so don’t be talked into something that you don’t really want. (On another project, the tile installer kept asking me was I sure that we wanted subway tile and not a 12×12. He said that subway tile is dated (NOT!) and that “everyone” is doing 12×12. In the end, he didn’t want to install all the subway tile pieces and didn’t make it to the end of the job and was fired by the contractor so again, don’t be talked out of what you know you really want after you’ve weighed the pros and cons).