bathroom updates

For those of you who are interested in design over renovation this post might be a little more enjoyable. I know the last few weeks have been about chainsaws- not always fun for all of us, but necessary in order to get things moving. Well throughout the last few weeks of hard labor and stress I have also taken some time to pick out a few design related elements for our home. While we really haven't budgeted for new furniture, we have set aside money to get what we want in terms of permanent fixtures.

Because the bathroom and kitchen need to be heavily updated, I've really been focusing on them. We'll be able to do wonders on the rest of the house with some new sheet rock, paint and moldings, but more thought, time and money need to be spent on the bathroom and kitchen. I'll get to the kitchen another time- it's more involved and hasn't been totally flushed out yet, but as of now this is the bathroom design.. step by step.

Tile
I'm not even kidding when I say before we closed on the house we had picked out the tile. And maybe even more impressive than that- it literally took us about 15 minutes in the showroom to finalize what we wanted on the walls and on the floor.

A little information about my tile "style": I love anything clean with white tile.. bathroom, kitchen, laundry room.. you name it. I prefer it all white. Maybe it's harder to clean, but I can't help it. I don't mind colorful accents- and in someone else's bathroom I would absolutely go that route, but for us, white was the way to go.

All things considered: Remember we are moving to a house but the upgrade in terms of size is not THAT great. It's still more of a cottage than a house which means we have one bathroom central to the house. Yes right now it's a powder room/guest bath/master bath, but I have dreams of it becoming just a powder room. The truth is I love the house for it's potential- we can build up and/or over which means hopefully one day we'll be able to afford at least one more bathroom. So at the moment I picked white thinking it would be good for all bathroom options including the possible future of a powder room and maybe even a laundry room.. a girl can dream.

Existing finishes: At the moment our lovely bathroom walls are covered in plastic tiles. Bet you didn't even know they existed!
They're a very classy faux marble that can literally be pulled off the wall with your hands. I'm also not kidding when I say that after we closed we realized the previous owner had generously left us a bottle of tile "adhesive" in the vanity for any necessary repairs. In my first demolition post I mentioned that I covered the floor with contact paper because I deemed it unsanitary and basically un-cleanable. But before I covered it in polka dots..
it was covered with vinyl tiles (shown on the top right) that were pealing up one by one, exposing the plywood floor underneath. Also keep in mind as I mentioned in my post about wallpaper removal- the walls and floor will have to be outfitted with new sheet rock before we install any tile so we basically have to gut the space (minus the tub) before we can get to work. Should be an interesting few days without a toilet. I've already asked Ben if we can rent a porta potty and his response was somewhere along the line of.. "are you serious? NO!".. so I'm guessing I'll be making the trip to Connecticut and staying with my mother during that part of the renovation. Can you blame me?

What 15 minutes at the tile showroom will buy you: Because what I wanted was so basic we opted to go with Daltile. It is less expensive than going to a place like Ann Sacks or Waterworks, but it's still high quality tile. And on top of that there's a wonderful showroom available to the trade in Chelsea so one night when Ben and I were in the neighborhood we stopped in and made our final decision.
On the walls surrounding the bath tub we opted to go with a basic white subway tile- to be installed to the ceiling but not on the ceiling.
Again, because we are also treating this space as a "powder room" we chose not to tile the walls and only protect the area around the tub.

And remember those lovely vinyl floors? I originally wanted to go very traditional with a hexagonal tiled floor (also white, of course), but when we walked into the showroom this caught my eye..
This petite tile feels a little more modern and unique. I apologize for the terrible picture- for those of you who are having a hard time "seeing" it, it's more of a tiny square tile with rounded corners.

I haven't decided on a grout color yet- originally I was thinking white, white, white.. all white. But just last week I was at my aunt and uncles- they are doing a much larger project that includes a new kitchen, a large three-story addition and they gutted two bathrooms. Coincidentally they used the same white subway tile that Ben and I will be installing, but their installer picked a grey-ish grout- a look I hadn't even considered, but really loved.

Bath Floorplan
I thought the easiest way to show the awkwardness of the existing bathroom layout would be to do a little floorplan for you.. keep in mind it isn't to scale.
While the tile could be considered an easy upgrade we knew re-tiling wasn't worth it unless we did something about the positioning of the sink and the radiator. I wanted the layout to flow- both for practical and aesthetic reasons. Obviously, as you can see above, the positioning of the radiator makes this a little challenging. Ben gave me a few options in terms of dealing with it:
- Install radiant floor heat under the new tile
- Install base board heating
- Move the radiator
While originally we had discussed installing radiant floor heat ourselves, it became a bigger project and we lost interest along the way. I decided early on I didn't want base board heating because the bathroom is so small as it is, I didn't want any additional floor space taken up- even if it is just around the perimeter of the walls. So I chose the third option and we looked into moving the radiator. So where could we move it?

We had a plumber come over and we came up with this solution..
As I tried to show above, we would move the radiator to the long wall and install a pedestal sink that would just hover over it... kind of like this..
By swapping the radiator and sink locations we are able to push the pedestal into the nook, allowing for more walkable space in the bathroom- no more scooting around the sink to get to the toilet.

But why a pedestal?
The Sink
The original awkward "homemade" vanity was not only positioned to block the doorway, but the chunkiness of the piece also takes up a lot of unnecessary space visually..
While a pedestal sink is not the most practical to have in a heavily used bathroom due to lack of storage (my mother likes to remind me of that frequently), aesthetically it's what will work best in the space, both due to the radiator swap and visually- the bathroom will appear to feel more "open." Some may say that if it isn't practical they won't have it, but I must point out that Ben and I have lived very comfortably with a pedestal sink for four years now..
so there's no reason why we wouldn't be able to handle it now. Because I opted to go with expensive fittings for the shower and faucet, I wanted to go less expensive with the sink.. hence my Home Depot choice..
Kohler's Archer Pedestal Sink
Just a very simple, clean design.

Notice how I italicized the "I" above? I think it's important to point out that I gave Ben a very hard time about the faucet and bath fittings. I decided what I wanted and I had to have it- and of course it was more than he wanted to spend. But I stood my ground and offered to go cheaper on other things so that I could have this..

Kohler's Pinstripe Faucet
You can obviously order the Pinstripe set up on Kohler's website. You can also special order it at some Home Depots, but I was lucky enough to work with Ben's rep at Davis & Warshow in Manhattan- they have a great showroom for those of you who have no idea what you want.

Bathroom Storage
OK just because I've passed up the whole vanity storage thing doesn't mean I don't want any storage. Above the existing sink there is a very old and very broken medicine cabinet-remember when I lined it in contact paper here?

Well the obvious thing would be to install a medicine cabinet over the new pedestal sink in the nook, but that would mean we'd have to push the sink out into the bathroom..
something I don't want to do. Not to mention a medicine cabinet is very useful, but still doesn't provide THAT much storage. So I decided to take a hint from the existing medicine cabinet and carve out a storage area in the existing sink wall- floor to ceiling as shown below..
I asked Ben if he knows how to make an invisible door- something to look like this..
minus the door knobs of course (and on a much smaller scale). I'd love for the space to just go away. I'd fill the small space with shelves from top to bottom- I hope we'd be able to store everything from our toothbrushes to extra soap in there. I definitely want to make it as practical as possible.
I measured the area to be about 12" wide and the existing medicine cabinet is about 4" deep so we can break the wall open at least that much. I obviously would like to go as high and as low as I can, so unless we run into any issues I'm hoping to only lose a few inches both above the floor and below the ceiling.

If our storage space works out we'll have the perfect niche to hang a fabulous decorative mirror over the sink- which will be both practical and beautiful for the master bath/guest bath/powder room.

The Toilet
Our original plan was to replace, replace, replace.. and then we were told we need a 14" toilet instead of the typical 12".. figures. Ben grumbled something along the lines of "nothing is easy" a few days ago and we have quickly figured out that should be our official motto. So just like everything else.. the old toilet cannot be replaced with anything in stock or inexpensive. Toto makes some toilets that fit the 14" guidelines, but I obviously picked out one of their most expensive options..
Don't you just love the Lloyd?
but Ben put the kibosh on spending that kind of money on a toilet.. I can't blame him- and I opted not to argue.. remember I got my faucet!!

So for a while we thought we would keep the existing toilet (from 1934). I scrubbed it and Ben installed a new toilet seat, but because the bottom is a little rusty and I hate to reinstall it on the brand new tile floor that way we might actually purchase the Kohler Archer toilet to match the pedestal sink..
Now it obviously isn't the 14" needed, but when the plumber first came to give us a quote he said we could go for the standard 12" but then we'd have about an inch between the tank and the wall. Originally that bothered me which is why I started my quest for the 14" option, but in the last few weeks I've been noticing how many other toilets are installed that way. Amazing how I've never seen them before! Anyway, I might just give in and get the very simple option above.

The Tub
Finally something we can really keep! I actually like the tub and the deco feel of it.
Eventually we'll have it reglazed I'm sure, but for now it works.

But in keeping with our motto "nothing is easy," not only does the tub not have a shower head, the piping is also installed inside a wall that the bathroom shares with the garage- meaning a shower head was quite possibly never installed because the pipes can (and probably will) freeze. In the next few months we're going to start planning to convert the garage into a master bedroom- which will solve the freezing issue, but until we insulate those walls and install heat in the garage, the only thing we can do is install the pipes, check on them frequently and cross our fingers. With that said, we're using the Kohler Pinstripe set up in the shower to match the faucet and I couldn't be happier!!
But figuring this all out was only half the battle.. now we actually have to get working on it if I ever want a chance at buying new bath towels.