Bathroom Decor

Here are some extra shots of decorating in the master bathroom...

This little grouping is on top of the antique dresser.  I use the teacup to place my rings in (nice & far from any drains!)  The canister holds cotton balls.  The little white jar is an antique cold cream jar- appropriate for the bathroom!


The white shelf was fun to decorate.  I like how there isn't a back on it, so the purple shows through and the white accessories really pop!

The peacock feathers were given to us by Mike's former co-worker- he raised them and sent over some feathers from his birds!







The Tiffany vase that's holding the feathers was a wedding gift from one of my former co-workers.

The other little jars I bought at various yard sales.  It's fun having little things like that to hunt for!

Finally, here's a close up of the hooks.  These match the TP holder & towel ring.  They're nice & sturdy to hold our robes, plus a towel.

There's still a lot of odds & ends we're wrapping up with the kitchen renovation- we have a list of minor things for the contractor to address (he hasn't been around much lately).  Now that we're both back to work after the holidays, it's a little slower going on the painting & decorating front... We're packing up all the holiday decorations and now trying to decide what to put where for the "usual" decor.  I'll post more pics soon!

Master Bath- Complete!

There are still a few minor things to do, but I'm calling it complete for blog purposes! :)

View from the master bedroom doorway

Reverse, taken from in front of the window

Taken from the corner, where the silver chair is.
Door to the left of the sink is the walk-in closet.
The little marble table came from my parents' house, as did the mirror over the sink.

The soaking tub!

The little shelf was from the house I grew up in.
The chair was in the master bedroom, I just re-covered the seat.

This dresser stores the extra towels, TP, toiletries, etc.
Mike bought it for me when we were just dating!

Still on the to do list...

-Paint the molding 

-Heat does not seem to be working in any of the new upstairs rooms.  It's working in the new downstairs areas though... so not sure what's going on with it.  Sounds like the dreaded plumbers will be back.

-The threshold between the master bedroom & the bathroom isn't finished.  The contractor needs to put in a door saddle or piece of marble.

Glass Shower Doors

The ordering & installation process for the glass shower doors has definitely been the easiest step of the whole construction process.  It all went so smoothly and without any unforeseen issues!

From the bedroom doorway

We had to put the door on the side near the toilet, since the bathtub will be on the side facing us in the top photo.  If you remember, the shower was originally framed to be flat where it is now a corner.  This would have been a better door position, but it made the inside of the shower feel really small.  So, we're happy we made the decision that we did in squaring it off.

Mirror, Mirror- on the wall!

A little progress in the master bathroom... The electrician asked us to hang the mirror so that he can be sure to get the sconces hung in the proper places.

Sink is still not in... definitely not happy with the plumber.
'

But, it makes me happy to see this starting to come together!

Heating

As mentioned in the closet post, the plumbers showed up and started installing the heating...

They started on the downstairs sections as well.

I'm not crazy about the baseboard (water) heat, since the rest of the house is steam radiators.  But this is what they recommended and does seem to make sense for tying it into the rest of the system.

Rub-a-dub-dub

They moved the tub!  It is 650 lbs, and took 6 men to bring it up the stairs!
It's now staged in our bedroom until the plumbers are ready for it in the master bathroom.

They had to take the door off the room to get it in.

Not much other progress in the master bathroom...  

Master Bath & Closet- a little progress

We've gotten a little bit of progress going on in the master bath & closet!

First, we painted the closet...

It is a shade lighter of the purple in the bathroom, although in photos it looks almost identical.  It does look lighter in the sunlight that comes in from the closet window (we still don't have lights hooked up in there, so we'll see how it looks when those have been connected!)

The plumbers spent half a second in the master bath... mostly complaining that we had selected a pedestal sink.  They "have never, ever installed anything but vanity cabinets in a master bath" and voiced his concerns about lack of storage.

Grrrr.... I understand that more modern houses usually have big vanities with double sinks, but these guys obviously don't do much old house plumbing. There are tons of master baths with pedestal sinks on pinterest or in Old House Journal & This Old House magazines/websites!  Not to mention we have a master closet less than a foot away for storage, plus we'll have an antique dresser in there about 4 feet from the sink!

I wish they'd stop commenting on the design choices and just get it installed! (sigh!)

Master Bathroom Tile & Paint

We left off in the master bathroom with the tiling slowly moving along...

He got the tile in the master closet started as well.

Two days later we were able to get in to prime and paint it!  Since our bedroom is gray with purple accents, I decided to reverse the color scheme to have purple with gray accents in the connecting bath.

We're keeping the floor covered in here while they are still working on all the fixtures.  They put the toilet in place, but it's not completely hooked up yet. The heating will be going in soon too.

I don't know why, but I love purple walls in bathrooms.  We have them in the old master bath (which we'll be re-doing sometime down to road- far down the road!) and even had them in the first floor bathroom in the old house.

Master Bath- shower wall tiling

The shower walls have been started!

I'm combining three days of work in this post...

Second & third days... shower walls completed and more progress on the floor.

He also did the framing of the shower.  We'll be getting frameless glass shower doors installed in mid-November.

We asked the contractor to do a shelf for shampoo.  That came out really nice too.

He still has to finish the floor, and then grout everything.  

We were asked to go pick out a non-sanded grout in the color of our preference.  We selected a platinum color for the bathroom.  It's a very light gray that will go nicely with the marble.

We didn't want the grout lines to stand out much.

Master Bath Tile- Take 2

Back to the tiling in the master bathroom...

Our tile guy installed the shower tray tile with the new selection.  Thankfully that went very smoothly this time around!

The floor tile was also started on...

I love the way he's matching up the patterns in the marble so that it "flows"... 

There was also a little progress in the master closet- mudding has begun!

Powder Room Painting

We wanted to paint the powder room prior to the fixtures being installed, since it would be easier to get in the back corners.  We decided to do the same color as the family room, since it's right across from it...

The first coat had it looking quite bright (and almost pinkish in tone, but that calmed down once it started drying!)

The room still needs to be trimmed, but it's getting closer to done!  We don't have the door for this room yet, so that's keeping it from being fully functional.  The heat needs to be installed too.

Master Bathroom Tile- Post 2

If you remember our tile shopping trip, we fell in love with this basket weave tile for the floor of the shower tray...

So, it was very exciting when the tiler started first with the decorative tile.  It took a lot of time...  It didn't cut well- he tried with the wet saw, then tried cutting it dry, and even tried cutting it through the plastic.  Evidently it was a real plain, but at the end of the day, it was dry fit and looked beautiful!  

He was back the next day to get it down.  After a full day, he called me upstairs to look at this...

Apparently the super tight weave (there wasn't even 1/16 for grouting) wouldn't allow the tile to bend as was needed for drainage.  We pretty much lost 2 days as he tried to make it work- what a waste of time & money- so aggravating!

So, in order to keep the project moving... that night we ran out and picked out a new tile for the floor of the shower:

This one has larger grout lines, so can be sloped towards the shower drain as needed. 

Master Bathroom Tile (post 1 of ?)

After the MANY days of sheetrock/spackle posts, I'm scared to even label the tiling posts by days.  

I don't know if it's that we've been conditioned by all the half hour TV renovation shows to think that these things happen more quickly than they really do... or if these guys are, in fact, really slow.  Maybe a bit of both!

Anyway, I think I'll try to consolidate the posts a bit- since I'm over a week behind with posting the progress, I'll tell you it isn't going as quickly as I'd like.

The first day that the tiler was here, he got all of his gear set up in the master bedroom (still empty from tearing down the ceiling).

Then over the next two days he got started with the shower tray & mudding...

I should also add here that we asked our contractor to add a little shower shelf for shampoo bottles:

As the shower tray was setting, he moved on to "mudding" the rest of the floor:

On day 3 of tile prep, the plumber finally showed up.  After double checking the tub he decided that he needed to move the drain pipe out from the wall a bit... which, of course, is better to do now than after the tiling has been done. 

So, now that those are completed, we will be able to move forward with the tiling!

Kitchen- Primed

We are now all primed, and the kitchen feels so much better- less dusty and really like a room now!

View from the dining room doorway

The plasterer thought that that back nook was going to have full wall cabinetry, but there is going to be uppers & lowers (with a bit of wall showing in the back).  So when hes back for the ceilings in the dining room and bedroom, we'll have him do the finishing coat on that section.  I wish we caught that sooner!

View from the back door

Powder Room

Butler's Pantry

View from the corner between the stove & the sink

View from the corner where the table will be

I also went ahead and primed the windows.  The builder still needs to do all the trim work (after the floors go in) but since we'll likely be in a time crunch preparing for Thanksgiving, I figured I'd get done as much as I can now!

Back windows