I am currently in the middle of a major remodel of our master bathroom and closet area. This has been a few years in the making. I started out by drawing a whole new floor plan for the bathroom and designing all the elevations. The original floorplan was horrendous, with an underutilized and awkward corner closet, a tiny corner shower, the toilet in immediate view from the door, a moldy jetted bathtub taking up way too much space, and carpet throughout! The new plan includes separate closets, a dressing area, a vanity area, a water closet, and a wetroom with double shower and extra deep soaking tub sans overflow drain.
After I completed the design, I hired my amazing handyman to do all the rough work as well as the tile. I have never done tile before and I actually had COVID when we got started on the project. I decided that I didn't have time or energy to do the demo or frame it out. My handyman, Jeremy Snyder, did all the demo, framing, drywall, tile, and Denshield/Schluter installations. Ordering the tile was a huge saga that I won't bore you with but was super stressful and drawn out. We hired a plumber and an electrician for the plumbing and electrical. They are both clients of my husband and are excellent at their trades.
I am now working on all the finish work and have completed the following:
-assisted Jeremy where two people were needed, such as with installing the two big windows and with some of the framing.
-installed the new window on the 3-story-high side of the house--this was a nearly impossible task as I had to do it from inside the house. My husband was terrified I would fall out the window while hanging outside it so he clung tight to my thigh the whole time.
-painted everything
-stained and installed all the french pocket doors and their locking door pulls
-added the privacy film to the door leading to the water closet
-installed all the casing and baseboards including heat forming the arch jamb and relief kerf cutting the "corners" of the arch casing to make the tight curve
-skim coated the shower walls with a masonry mud
-painted and installed shower wallpaper in the shower
-finished out the wetroom with solid surface material and pvc, including a sealed off tv behind the cabinet doors
-built and installed the vanity
-built and installed the linen hutch
-installed the interior of His Closet
-Built the doors and drawer fronts for His Closet
I have never worked with solid surface material before and I was super intimidated about trying. But, the cabinet guys wouldn't take the job because they have never worked with solid surface before and the stone guys wouldn't take the job because they have never done cabinetry, so here we are. I was determined to see my vision become a reality (unconventional though it is). I am pleased to report that things have been going well. I have built shower niches with adjustable shelves, made v-groove paneling for the back of the bathtub nook, sealed out the tv, made and installed cabinet doors in front of the tv, made and installed the panel details on the tub apron, and installed the casing and baseboard in the shower. I've also built and installed the shelves, the bathtub nook surround, the window wall trim, the wet window trim, and the panel details on the towel wall. I Have built the vanity but still need to build the organizer that will go on top. I've built the linen hutch and am in the process of building the closet faces. I still need to order the frames to build the medicine cabinet doors. But, things are starting to have a finished look to them.
*An aside worth mentioning:
Every time someone sees my full length shower mirror, they react with a bit of horror saying, "I don't want to see myself naked every day!" as if they are unhappy with their bodies. However, what I have learned from trying this out for several months now is that it actually improves my body image. Something about the familiarity of seeing my body every day helps me learn to love it more, all of it. It eliminates the unexpected glances of my ever changing body that bring with them disappointment. Instead, it keeps me familiar with my body so that changes don't catch me off guard. So, I hope that is a helpful perspective for anyone else out there that might struggle with their body image. Remember the artistry of the body and its miraculousness. Art really can't be appreciated if it is only ever seen with a passing glance. Seeing what your spouse sees helps you learn to love what your spouse loves.
The pictures in this post are in reverse order because that's how they uploaded and it is too much work to rearrange that many pictures. Haha!
I'm finally getting the medicine cabinet doors installed. I found some artwork that I liked, purchased the downloads, had them printed on canvas, and purchased custom frames and mirrors to build the doors. They are artwork when closed and mirrors for getting ready when opened. I love them so much:
Beautiful vintage love birds for the artwork on both his and hers sides
Artwork when closed and mirrors when open
Finished building the doors and drawer fronts: Testing out the door and drawer front placement on Cam's closet, using my trusty playing card technique to get even spacing.
Planning out the knob and pull placement for Cam's closet.
Installed the jewelry knobs in the hidden niche behind my cloest mirror.
Door activated tape lights installed in His Closet
Tape lights installed (on a dimmer switch) above the picture rail
This is heaven. We are really enjoying our new bath nook. It is great for movie-watching at night,
or a good book in the relaxing sunshine of the day. It doesn't get any better than this!
Doors installed
Building the linen hutch: fitting the pieces, reassembling pieces as they are stained.
Used the dremel tool to sand down the one discolored marble tile that was right in the middle of the floor and bothering both my husband and me daily. I bet you can't tell which one it was. :)
Installing the screw fixings (called Keep-Nuts). This was terrifying because I didn't want to accidentally ruin the doors and have to rebuild them. You can't screww directly into solid surface so if you need to attach anything (like hinges!), you have to use special fixings. They came with a drill bit and stop to use in the drill press but in my practice runs I determined there was too much chatter with the drill press and the holes were too big. I found instead that drilling a tiny pilot hole the full depth of the finish hole and then drilling by hand, slowly, with firm steady pressure (from resting my shoulder on the back of the drill) yielded the best results and a nice tight fit.
Adding the hinges
Doors are finally siliconed into place and I can add the knobs and then do the final caulk in the nook.
Building the vanity!
Disassembled and reassembled into place. No more brushing teeth over the bathtub!
Staining the vanity
Precutting all the pieces
Assembling the base
Testing the fit
Assembling the dividers
Installing the dividers
Assembling the top
Building the doors and drawer fronts
All assembled except the countertop which I will build and install in place
Bracket details installed
Everything just sitting in place--still need to build the drawer boxes and add all the hardware after staining. Will need to disassemble and reassemble in place to get past the door trim on either side.
Ignore the plants (haven't figured out an arrangement I like yet), but we got the eschutcheons milled down and installed so now the tub filler looks finished. Yay!
Still waiting on the welder to mill down the escutcheons for the bath filler but the bath filler and hand shower are finally installed!
Installed the window trim with a deeper plant shelf/window sill
Hung the towel hooks
I got the doors made. I am waiting on special fixings to install them. They are just dry fitted into place in this picture with the hinges taped on to see what they will look like.
Hung the shower curtain
Installed the locking door pulls on the pocket doors. This was a highly tedious process.
Need to actually attach picture cord to the mirror to hang it for real from the rail
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| Crown trim finished |
Crown trim going in
Bathtub nook surround wedged and clamped into place
Book shelf and towel wall face frames go in
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| Bookshelf interior going in after drilling shelf pin holes into the sides |
Preparing to laminate the tub surround and the bookshelf surround
Too large to clamp, so had to just put free weights and plates on them to "clamp" them together
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| Shower wet casing installed |
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| Solid surface Tub Apron built and panel detail added |
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| Shower wet baseboards installed |
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| Installing shower door wet casing |
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| Shower fixtures going in Look at that rain head! |
Arch trim installed and primed
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| Installing arch casing (NOT FUN) Had to relief kerf cut the arch trim after the first trim broke when I tried to bend it into place |
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| Shower niches complete |
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| Keeping things water tight by siliconing all niche trim into place |
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| Shower wallpaper complete and getting ready to install niche casing |
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| Installing v-groove panels |
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| Routing v-grooves into solid surface for window wall of bathtub nook |
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| Installing backs and jambs of shower niches |
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| Wallpaper installed and starting to trim out shower niches |
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| Adding panel detail to bathtub nook ceiling |
Dry baseboards in
Dry window casing, sills, and aprons complete
Trimming out windows
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| Toilet installed! |
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| Shower walls primed and painted (before wallpapering) |
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| Skim coating the shower walls (before painting) |
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| Preparing to trim out the dry windows |
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| Flextrim casing arrived but did not hold its form. They resent it multiple times but it never worked. |
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| Door casing going in |
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| Jeremy did a gorgeous job on the tile but accidentally left too much space in this corner as you can see in this "before" picture. I increased the jamb width to push the casing out over this gap. I guess I don't have an after picture. |
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| A utility knife is not sharp enough to cut the wallpaper. Borrowed a scalpel from my husband to do the trick. |
Pocket doors all hung and installed
Installing privacy film that turned out beautiful
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| Hung closet mirror after light fixtures were installed |
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| Choosing which doors to use for the doubles |
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| Doors stained and ready for install |
TV sealed off and attached to ceiling speakers
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| Staining french doors |
Heat forming arch jamb
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| Trimming out and sealing off tv niche |
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| Prime and paint shower walls (after skim coating) |
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| Tile done! |
Floor heating installed and marble tile going in
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| Tub set and uncoupling membrane installed for floor heating |
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| Denshield going up |
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| Showers plumbed |
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| Paint done |
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| Drywall done |
Installing high window from inside
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| Framing complete |
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| Walls demolished, window moved, new window installed |
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| Linen Hutch Design |
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| Vanity Design |
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| Wetroom Elevations |
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| Floor Plan |
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| Electrical, Plumbing, and Flooring Plan |
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| North Elevation |
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| West Elevation |
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| South Elevation |
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| East Elevation |
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| Bathtub before (jetted tub that was way too wide and spit out mold any time you tried to use the jets) |
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| Vanity before (nothing special) |
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| Shower and toilet before (tiny shower that only one person could fit in at a time and a toilet being the first thing you see when you walk into the bathroom. Note the carpeted floors! Only one window, not aligned with the doorway or bedroom widow, so providing too little light) |
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| Closet before (seems big enough when empty, but this closet had a diagonal wall that made it so that the space couldn't be used efficiently.) |
