Master Bathroom Reno

When we bought our house it had been empty for 5 years, so we knew there were going to be problems. That’s the charm of a fixer upper. So we tackled this bathroom reno head on. We did the demo (minus the floor and tub) and a friend of ours finished out the demo and did the construction. Here’s a picture of what our bathroom looked like when we bought our house.

So it wasn’t the worst. Builders grade everything from 30 years ago when the house was built. It was totally white, mostly clean, but completely unusable. The shower had a really bad patch job. Basically a huge portion of the wall had such bad water damage that we could push the wall tiles and the entire wall would bow. They waterproof sealed the tiles. A bandaid on a bullet wound. The tub faucet was completely corroded and the plumbing leaked as long as the water was on in the house. Another huge water problem. So for the first 6 months that we lived here we shut the water off to the master bath and opted to use the hall bathroom while we were saving to execute our dream bathroom.

Here’s some reno fun:

It took us some time to agree on a style. Brian prefers a more modern look, where as I am more french provincial/shabby chic blend. However, since this is a shared space it’s important that we incorporated both our styles.

So here’s the final product:

We opted to not replace the tub and have an oversized walk-in shower and linen closet (something our bathroom was missing). My favorite part of this entire bathroom is the pony wall next to the toilet -don’t judge me. I insisted on having that since there is not a separate room for the toilet. We chose White Metal by Behr as the paint color to play off the grays in the tiles. During the day it looks gorgeous, at night it presents as a little blueish. Naturally, Brian loves that. I’ll live with it!

Here are the details:

We chose to run the two accents of tile mosaic in the shower vertically, against the larger horizontal tiles to add texture to the space. The 4 x 8 NY Soho brick tile is so timeless. The imperfections look genuine without looking dilapidated. We chose 24 x 24 floor tiles to add simplicity by balancing the room since the walls are so busy. We chose black to hide dirt, but mostly to hide my hair because I shed worse than both dogs. The vanity and the mirrors add a ton of character to the bathroom. Brian got this from Home Depot on serious discount (over 50% off) because they were discontinuing the style. If you know you’re going to be doing a project and need big ticket items, start shopping early. You never know what will go on sale and you won’t feel so pressured to buy because you’re not running out of time!