I find it therapeutic to concentrate on the awesome things, like my bathroom! Seth thinks I am joking when I say this, but quite seriously: I AM NOT COMING BACK DOWN. I am locking that bathroom door (note to self: check with contractor to make sure the door locks), putting in some ear plugs (as soon as I find them--the house is seriously reaching Hoarder/Buried Alive levels of insanity right now. They keep making us empty out closets to run pipes and things through them! AND on the days that I am "home" with my children, ages 4 and 10 months, we have to vacate the house and wander around town aimlessly because of the construction. WAH INDEED.), and TAKING A NINETEEN HOUR BATH, FOLLOWED BY A NAP AND POSSIBLY ANOTHER BATH.
But! Eyes on the prize and all that. Here is my little mood board of what we're doing in the bathroom (heh heh).
1. Okay, so herringbone marble. How pretty is that? We can't afford to do much decorative tilework, but there is a handy tiny wall right behind the tub that is just right for a little accent tile. It will give us a big impact without having to tile all the wall in the bathroom. You'll see what I mean when it's a little further along. Right now it just looks like this:
Admittedly, it might not inspire much awe as it is, but picture that back wall covered in marble, with a clawfoot tub in front of it. Now picture a nasty basement, with a plastic-wrapped tub full of dirty laundry in it! You may need to call upon your memories of recent Hoarders episodes for this. Which one is better? This brings us to my third child, THE TUB.
2. I have wanted a clawfoot tub since I was a little girl. My grandmother had a huge old house with a deep clawfoot tub that must have been six feet long. After looking into refinishing an old tub, I ended up buying an acrylic one from Overstock. The cost was about the same, maybe less, than a vintage tub plus a good refinishing job, and the weight of a cast iron tub was of some concern, since we are retrofitting a space that wasn't originally designed to hold that much weight.
3. I want a little side table by the tub for things like
4. Maaaaahble, again. I can't say "marble" very many times without reverting to this. Seth and I priced about fourteen different kinds of marble, and we ended up going with 12x12 GrecianWhite from Home Depot, which we'll have cut in half for 6"x12" tiles, laid subway-style. It was half the cost of Carrara, my favorite, and a little more expensive than other colors we considered (a darker gray, a less-veiny white), but it was the one in our price range we were most enthusiastic about.
And now we move over to the vanity section of the bathroom, which is currently in this less-than-spa-like state:
An oasis, yes? However, it will be laid out (in terms of mirrors, lights, and the actual vanity) very similarly to this setup from Pottery Barn:
Um, minus the mahhhhble wall. I ain't made of money, y'all.
5. For our sconces, we chose the very basic, affordable (and hopefully not too draining to my already ghostly complexion) Good Earth chrome sconces from Lowe's. Ha, you can actually see the exact moment where we started to run out of money. But these are nice and basic, and they came with CFL bulbs.
6. The best gray paint I've found to go with all of my other finishes is Martha Stewart's Heavy Goose, which my four-year-old thinks is the funniest name in the whole world.
7. We haven't bought our medicine cabinets yet, but my husband wants something linear and simple, and we need one that is surface-mounted (not recessed, due to our stud placement, ha ha), so we're thinking something like these Zenith Early American cabinets from ye olde Home Depot.
8. All of that will sit above our vanity. Look closely at the Pottery Barn vanity above. Now check out this one on Amazon. I'm no vanity expert, but to me, this looks pretty much like the same exact vanity for about, oh, half the price. And you can get it even cheaper if you opt for polished white marble instead of the carrera countertop. Ours is scheduled to arrive tomorrow, and my fingers will pretty much remain crossed until then, but I've heard good things about this brand and this company, Kitchen Bath Collection.
I'll spare you a vision board on the water closet, which will be a white toilet in a gray room. That leaves us the shower. The shower is to Seth what the bathtub is to me. It's a big space, which is not really reflected in this sad picture:
9. If you're standing at the vanity, the shower is directly behind you. The little window to the side of the vanity is between it and the shower. The part facing the vanity will be all glass, pretty similar to this configuration--a door in the middle with a glass panel on either side. The interior will be gray subway tile. The color we chose is Daltile's Desert Gray in semi-gloss, with white grout. You can find it at your local Daltile showroom, or at Home Depot. We actually found it was cheaper to go through Home Depot in this case.
10. Finally, we wanted seating in the shower. We considered a built-in bench, but because we're putting shower heads at both ends, we couldn't figure out a good location for that. Seth mentioned a teak bench, but I was all, "Okay, Seth J. Rockefeller," because holy cow, those things can get pricey. Also, I wasn't aware that HE was even aware of such things as teak benches. La dee DAH. But I digress.
However, I remembered the Italmodern stools I had perused when looking for something for Graham's room a while back, and I ordered the Sally stool for just over $50, with free shipping. It might be too good for my preschooler, but I'm fancy enough to sit on it while I shave my legs. Also, it can be used as extra seating or a side table elsewhere in the house, but don't tell people it's been in your shower, where you get all nekkid and stuff. Just a bit of personal advice.
That's all I got for now. I am aware of how gray and white everything looks, which is soothing, but also--to a color freak like me--a little bleak. I plan to inject a little color through accessories and towels, which I can change out easily. I'm digging coral against all the silvery gray, so I'll probably treat myself to some coral towels when we dig out from under the piles of craziness and finally move upstairs.
If you need me, I'll just be rocking back and forth in a corner of my attic, pretending everything is done and pretty already. Pin It
No comments:
Post a Comment