Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Guest Bath

It's the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and this one really came down to the wire. We have family coming in from out of town today and we just wrapped up painting last night. This was another major one as far as DIY'ing goes. We had a plumber do the rough-in plumbing and install the fixtures, but other than that it was all us. I gutted it, replaced some water damaged 2x4's, fixed some more suspect wiring, hung cement board in the tub surround and greenboard elsewhere. The lady of the house insisted that the tile go all the way to the ceiling, so there was a lot of glass tile cutting to do (since the ceiling is at a pitch). It took four days to install the tile and one long day to grout it.

There wasn't much original in this bathroom when we bought the house, so we had somewhat of a blank slate. But, we did have the original bathtub and ended up really designing the whole look around that. When shopping for tile we came across this glass mosaic gradient. We thought it would look great around the original blue tub. It sort of feels like water splashing, which we thought was fun and felt right for the place.

Once again I neglected to take photos from the start. So we join this project having already done all demo, plumbing rough-in, electrical, and hanging of the substrate. Here's the tub surround.


A nook was mandatory. The plumber had to do a few extra turns to make this possible. You can see I had to level it a touch.


That's a lot of tile...


"I want the tile to go all the way to the top".


And done.


I like having the old distressed concrete in here. I don't want everything to be new.


Here are a few shots peeking in from other areas.


10 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey. im a fan of cliff may and stumbled across you and your wife's blog (and home) one day a couple of months ago; just wanted to say yer home looks great, cant wait to see what else you two have in store.

the guest bathroom looks great! i like how even tho there werent too many of the original design elements to work with, you chose to keep the one you did have and built the new design around it. the finished result looks amazing! great tile work!

thanks for sharing. happy holidays.

-ray

Matt said...

Thanks, Ray! I have a whole new respect for tile workers after this job. I was sore for days.

amy said...

stumbled across your blog looking for bathroom tile ideas - can you tell me where you got the fabulous tile?

Matt said...

I think we got them from http://www.hakatai.com ... if I remember right. (They happened to be on sale at the time).

Unknown said...

Matt,

Love the house, love the blog. My wife are totally inspired. Can you tell us where you found or who manufactures the guest bathroom sink. We are looking for such a stainless towel racky option like you have.

Cheers,

John

Matt said...

Thanks John. The sink is Duravit and the towel racks are Ikea.

Unknown said...

Matt, are the towel racks from Ikea something that you improvised? It looks like it's something that's made to hold a basin. We've been looking for this exact thing, at Ikea even, and haven't found it. Do you remember the name by any chance?

Thanks,

John

Matt said...

Sorry John. I thought you were talking about the towel racks on the wall... and now that I look at this post, they weren't even there yet at the time of the posting. Whoops! The sink and the stand (with towel rack) are both Duravit. http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=duravit+vero+console&cid=11040901250575262549&sa=title#p

Unknown said...

Thanks so much!!

Unknown said...

Hey there Matt,

I hope you're still monitoring the blog. I emailed you a while back regarding the sink and you got right back to me, so I've got another question for you.

I live in Seattle and our dear friend is remodeling her house and we've gone back and forth regarding tile. I had remembered your guest bathroom and showed her your blog and she said that was it exactly. Could you let me know a couple of things. Such as:
where you got your tiles.
if they had a name, what is it?
are these tiles available via mail?

Any help here would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

John