Kathy came to us with a cramped primary bathroom. Her biggest desire was to have as large of a shower as possible within the existing footprint of her bathroom. Her original shower entrance came right up to her closet door, so there was no way to expand it within that location without a major redesign of her home. Instead, we relocated the shower to the tub’s location, since she never used her tub. We played with a few different layouts regarding the shower entrance location and overall shape, and landed on this corner entrance. This provides the most seamless walking path through her bathroom to access her closet, while maximizing the square footage of the shower.

We were able to maintain her existing sink vanity cabinets. She liked the function of them, and rebuilding something custom didn’t gain her much value for what it would’ve cost. We replaced the drawer glides and refinished it to feel like new! We also built a new custom fit cabinet and counterspace, in the nook where the original shower once was, to mirror her sink vanity.

Kathy’s home has a neutral color palette, and she wanted to use the bathroom as an opportunity to try on some color. She has always been drawn to these colorful encaustic tiles, so we knew we wanted to use them somewhere. We landed with putting them on the floor, with a coordinating hand-made-look blue tile for the shower walls. Since she gets such great natural light through the window in the shower, we wanted to use the glossy tiles throughout the shower to reflect light. While still a bold color, since we see blue so much in nature, we don’t tend to get tired of it, and is a great color to use liberally in a space. We used the pink beige in the floor tiles to choose her wall color, BM Maritime White. The light blue from her floor tile inspired the cabinet paint color, BM Mount Saint Anne.

Kathy’s project is a great example of keeping what’s working in a space: in this case, the cabinetry, closet, and toilet area, and changing what isn’t. It’s an example of using her budget where it got her the most value. And, it’s a great example of taking a leap of faith with color and seeing the beautiful payoff!