Like a lot of people staying home during the pandemic, we started looking around the house and finding areas that could use some improvement and redecorating. In our case, it was the master bathroom. It wasn't that the bathroom was broken or that far out of date, it was that it didn't match the 1920's bungalow look that we had created for the rest of the house. Also, we realized that we really would like heated floors in the bathroom on the cold winter nights (feet seem to get colder as you get older). When we built the house, we liked the warm brown colors so chose tile and paint as well as dark bronze bathroom fixtures for the bathroom. This is what the bathroom looked like before the renovation:
The claw foot tube in the corner of the bathroom and with no where else to put the bath mat, it hung on the tub. Note that the tub filler was a polished brass fixture.
The shower is an open shower with no door and was tiled part way up the walls and had a strip part way up the wall. All of the shower fixtures were bronze.
The shower and floor were tiled with the same tile. The curb going into the shower was over 4" high and required a step over. Also, from this view, you can see that the door to the toilet room was exposed to splash over from the shower.
The toilet room was very functional and unremarkable in appearance other than the walnut cabinet above the toilet I built in 1995. I know the year I built it because I made it for my parents 50th wedding anniversary.
At this point, we had several decisions to make. Would this be a DIY project?, an immediate no to that question, and what materials would we chose. In keeping with the decorating decisions we had made in the rest of the house, we researched online and in magazines bathrooms from the early 1900's and came up with several themes. We found that we really liked the marble look ( we had already replaced the bathroom counter with a marble like quartz counter top several years ago), white subway tile and chrome bathroom fixtures.
One of the best decisions we made was to hire Fred Wiedenmann to do the demolition and construction and his tile mason, Justin Van Zant, to do the tile work. They both had great ideas for the design of the room and Justin is a true artisan in laying the tile.
One of the big changes to the room was putting a wainscoting of white subway tile behind the clawfoot tub. It makes the tub fit in better and look appropriate for the design. We did change the tub faucet to chrome. From this view you can see that the marble design ceramic tile show off the white tub as well as lighten the whole room.
The shower was done in white subway tile with a soldier course of tile defined by two black strips and tiled to the ceiling. This created a light and bright shower. The shower bench was topped with the same marble like quartz material that we had earlier used on the countertops. The floor was covered with 2"squares of the same tile as the floor in the bathroom.
In this view of the shower, you can see that the threshold is much lower (1 1/2') which makes entry easier and that there is a tile covered drain instead of a metal one. We wanted a flat entry but were unable to because of the type of trusses in the floor below. In the photo above you can see the wood trim next to the shower. Even though it had held up well, I decided to remove it, sand it down, restain it and then coat it with thin epoxy to make it waterproof. I put a coat of polyurethane over the epoxy to give the same satin finish as the door and other trim.
Other than the floor, the main change in here was the addition of a small towel bar for the bath mat.
The only change to the vanity was to replace the bronze faucets with chrome ones to complete the look.
We are very pleased with the results and are enjoying the heated floors. We also put the marble like ceramic tile in the half bath on the main floor and I will post pictures of that bath when we have finished that room.
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