Primary Bath Reno – The Evolution

The renovation of the shower in our Primary Bath has inched along slowly, and as time has passed, the plan has continued to evolve. If you missed why we are renovating the bath, be sure to check out this post here.

Version 1

At first, I thought (stupidly hoped/ was in denial) that we could fix the issue with just redoing the tile floor. The first couple of people that looked at it said they would need to pull the floor up first to really see where we are with respect to both damage and the cause of the leak before we could to commit to a plan.

Version 2

Once we confirmed the whole shower needed to be redone, we began thinking about other little changes. The second plan included:

• Lowering the floor level as much as possible, which would reduce the step size and help the shower feel bigger.
• Remove the short wall – we felt this would open up the shower area and improve water drainage.
• Convert our glass pocket door to a hinged door to allow a fixed frosted glass window panel to be placed between the door and the wall.
• Modified linen closet – To give a more finished feel, I wanted to give the linen closet more of a built-in cabinet look with some pretty painted doors and hardware
• Updated plumbing – With the ability to now change our showerheads and plumbing, we decided to add in a rain shower-style head, along with hand showers on shower bars that could mimic jets but provide versatility.

Along with these changes, we now had the chance to also make some other aesthetic changes.

• Removing the Accent tile – In my mind, I was happy to say good bye to the glass accent tile around the shower.
• Floor tile – I was also pretty pumped about being able to select a new floor tile, because although I still love the look of classic hexagons, they are ridiculously hard to clean! The grout line changes every 2 inches.
• Modified linen closet – To give a more finished feel, I wanted to give the linen closet more of a built-in cabinet look with some pretty painted doors and hardware.
• Lighting – Update the lighting in the shower to something more sleek.

At this point in the process, I already knew that I was going to paint the vanity area, so the whole bath would be getting refreshed. I had also made selections for both the shower wall tile and the shower fixtures.

Version 3

As we realized half the bathroom was being demolished, we couldn’t help but question whether we should change anything else. This led to lots of brainstorming and back and forth on the location of our toilet, which was currently just inside the pocket door from the bedroom. When we built the house, I had scoffed at the “necessity” of a separate toilet closet, but now I wished we had one. And so we explored moving the toilet to where the linen closet was and putting a linen closet where the toilet is. After pricing it out, we decided to go for it! So the third plan looked like this:

• Everything from the second plan, but swapping the toilet and linen closet. This involved taking out drywall downstairs in our living room to access the shower pipe. The shower pipe would need to be enlarged from 2″ to 3″ and the toilet would tie into the new line.
• Installing 2 new vanities. I didn’t want to get into moving the lighting or plumbing, so the current dimensions would restrict what we could place there.

Details, details, details…

As we worked from big picture to details, it was hard visualizing and deciding on little things like how the doorways and window would be trimmed out.

Would we have a door going into the shower area, then another into the toilet closet? If we did not have a door, would we be able to keep the shower area warm enough and reduce draftiness? How would we trim out the doorways and window area on the side of the vanity.

I began questioning if we should just bite the bullet and install an actual shower door. I also began considering a clear glass door, because gosh darn it they just look so nice. I looked into coatings you can get on them to help the water bead up and reduce spotting. But in the end, I knew there was no way we would be squeegeeing that thing every time we got out of the shower.

Other questions loomed: should we have a bench and if so, what size? where? Should it float?

How many niches should we have? Where to place them? What size? Should we even have a niche? Perhaps a ledge would look better.

Should we do an accent tile in the niches? I didn’t want to do anything too different than the field tile, but I was considering a soft patterned marble.

What color, shape and design of floor tile?

As all of these questions needed answers, we continued to move forward in planning, selection, and demo. I started opening up the old pocket door frame, and the more we opened it up, the more we liked what we saw.

As we walked around in the space and tried to lay out the toilet closet entrance and the shower entrance, we realized it was just going to be too tight. We walked through different scenarios and how each one would affect something else, like which way doors would swing, where trim would be and where electrical components would be. We finally settled on this…

Version 4

The entrance to the toilet room would come all the way out to the old gray tile. The entrance to the shower would be right next to it, but it would be open to the ceiling, and a small pony wall would separate the vanity from the shower. I had long ago given up on trying to keep the warm air in the shower. This plan involved moving the light switches on the left wall above so that they wouldn’t be enclosed in the toilet room. We also got a new exhaust/ heat combo.

But this plan finally allowed us to really open up the bathroom, and enjoy the skylight from the vanity area. Here is where we were after framing.

Version 5

After sending pics to our tile installer, he came out and gave us the bad news. This was less than 2 weeks before he was scheduled to begin. With this layout, we wouldn’t be able to go curbless into the shower. So either we have a small curb, or we would need to remove all of the bathroom tile. At this point, I was nervous to commit to finding a floor tile at such a late point in the game, so I took a night to sleep on it.

Looking at how far we had come, and how much the change of tile in the middle of the floor would keep the room from feeling like the big open space we were going for, we decided to go ahead and pull out the tile. With the old plan I was limited to finding something that would coordinate with the dark gray tile, but now the sky was the limit (a blessing and a curse at this point in the game!) . On the bright side, the new tile I picked out was half the cost of the old, so the material cost of the floor tile itself was roughly the same.

Demo

Next I’ll give you some of the fun, gritty details on the demo itself. It was a beast.

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