The clients had recently painted the bathroom and loved the soft greens, but it couldn't disguise the outdated fixtures, vanities or stains in the carpet.
One of the first impressions we had of the room was that the existing window was out of scale with the tub area -- the tub area is a cantilevered bump-out with the window at the wrong height and tucked just under the exterior eaves. The clients have complete privacy in their backyard so why not take advantage of viewing the roses outside? We should point out that the view you see in the above photo is the double French door entry from the master bedroom.
So the first thought was to lower the window and perhaps design something different with the added height. Hence the new triple Anderson 400 window with the center arch and a pair of matching casements on either side.
And that's the only structural we performed. For your own notes, lowering a window is less expensive than raising a window (which wouldn't have worked in this case anyway) because it can be installed under the existing structural header.
The rest was the tile work we promised we'd mention as well as show you a couple reasons why some tile projects can be more challenging than others.
(One of the items we feel we should point out is as bathroom designers, we're very stringent about safety. This means we're not fans of installing the lovely, glossy, and very slippery tile on the floor because we don't think all our clients are capable of performing a triple Salchow. Hence, the flooring is all non-slip porcelain.)
Sometimes it's not the main tile (called the "field" tile) that's hard to design and install; it's all the smaller decorative pieces -- the 1x 8 trims, the 3x6 decorative liners, the bullnose pieces, the edge and finish pieces. And drawings, while pretty, don't often survive some of the final tweaking. In the case above, see the dark line running vertically halfway up the shower from the tub area?
It was a lovely idea until we calculated that wrapping the border around the tub backsplash and returning it up the shower wouldn't work because it would interfere with the shower glass. Plan C became this:
Here was the second challenge -- how to wrap the tile around the corners of the post and make it look good. There is a lot of mathematical calculations in design of this detail. Handmade tile can't be mitered easily; it'll crack, so we had to get creative. Take a closer look at the green decorative molding: see the trim piece we used at the corners to make it work?
(Those of you with eagle eyes might note that the upper part of the post changed as well when we discovered we couldn't find a 4x4 in this line, which would have worked on the 4x4 post -- the white tile only came in 6x6, we drew it that way and then went, "Wait a minute...")
In the end, we ordered the subway tile with one side bullnosed or polished, so we could achieve nice smooth corners.
Again, we can't (and won't!) take credit for all the ideas; we're very thankful for a wonderful collaboration with some VERY experienced tile setters. They're really masters at their jobs and make the difference between a "Wow!" project and an "Oh, wow!" project.
One of the last challenges was the v-cap or sink cap that provided such a lovely finish to the tub and vanity backsplashes here.
Sometimes when you order tile, you're not always sure of the exact molding details. In this case, the top of the cap was too large: installing the piece directly on the wall would have made it tilt forward and down. The solution was to built the decorative green piece slightly forward so that the cap would sit up and behave.
It looks so simple when it's finished, doesn't it?
