my home

Kids Bathroom Makeover – The Design Plan

Our Kids Bathroom (also the Guest bathroom) is under renovation (you can read the background story here), and today I am excited to share the design plan with you!  I want to tell you how and why I chose the tile I did, and how I tied in other elements of the space. Choosing a tile scheme for a bathroom can be difficult because there are so many choices - I mean, so so many.  It is easy to get overwhelmed, and it can be a lot of pressure.  Tile is not easily changed like a rug or a lampshade, so you know you need to love it for at least the next ten years.  As a designer, I am well aware of all of the amazing options I could choose, but I happen to love looking at tile and imagining all sorts of scenarios.  Truth be told though, it is still always a hard choice. I think the best advice I can give regarding tile choice is this...

Kids Bathroom Makeover – The Story

Our Kids Bath is under construction, and I am so excited to share all of the details and the design plan with you!  What I truly love about design is taking something not so great and making it beautiful, unique, and functional.  My desire in sharing spaces with you is to put you inside of my brain and take you along as I formulate a space. But where to even begin?  This is such a contorted story...I guess I will start from the very, very beginning. Here is what the Kids Bathroom looked like when we moved in (MLS photo).  Yes, in its original 1921 state.  Now we knew it needed some attention when we bought this house (ALL of the bathrooms did), but we were hoping to save some of it because it is neat and old.  I mean, check out all of those showerheads!  Were they ahead of their time or what?! We figured this project would be waaaaaaay down the line.  But boy, were we wrong!  Since our kids were so young when we moved into this house, we never used the shower.  Our kids only took baths.  But about two months into living here, a friend of ours came to stay with us for a few days, and he used the shower.  (the kids bathroom = the guest bathroom)  A couple of weeks later, we discovered the shower coming through the living room downstairs and found out we had a major issue. Thus began the first, major, thought-we-had-more-time makeover in this house. I tried to keep as much original as I could - layout, tile height (halfway up wall), cast iron tub, tub faucet, etc., but as you can imagine, it was a mess, and most of it had to go. We replaced the pink and blue tiles with gray subway tile but kept the shower a fresh beveled white subway brick.  It still had the feel of the original with a modern touch.  Keep in mind this bathroom was pretty small, around 40 sf.  I could touch the walls with my arms outstretched, and while we knew it was fine for then having four really little kids, we realized it would be a tight squeeze for four bigger kids.  (this is also the bathroom we shared while we were saving our money to redo our shut-down Master Bath - six people in here was...full)   So the plan was to expand it someday in the far future using a funny little hallway and a couple of odd closets nearby, while keeping the work we had already done.  On we went about three years when we began to we notice something a bit disconcerting...