Building a Bath

When we first purchased our first house it was a three bedroom, one and a half bath house.  Early on we realized that should we ever want to sell we would probably fare far better with a 3/2.  At that point I began considering how we could eke out a full bath from a very small half bath.  I kind of thought we would eventually add on to the rear of the house which would enable us to bump out the third bedroom into a spacious master suite.  

We lived with the bathroom as is for several years since that bedroom was being used by my husband as his man cave and I didn't really use it much, so it didn't bother me.  When we found out we were expecting our first child my mother wanted to make sure we had a nice place to put our guests so she helped us replace the carpet in the man cave and make it into a nice guest room (we had converted the guest room into a nursery).  She also helped us do a mini makeover on the attached half bath.  We put in new vinyl flooring, painted the vanity and installed a new counter top and sink, along with new lighting and framing out the sheet glass mirror.  This made it feel much cleaner and brighter for everyone that came to stay with us to see the new baby!

Then, when we found we were expecting baby number 2 (notice a theme here?  we did a lot of work on the house during both pregnancies!)  we decided it was time to pull the trigger on making the space into a true master suite.  The previous half bath was located next to a closet so we decided to steal the space from that to convert to a walk in shower.  We walled up the closet door, opened the wall between half bath and the closet where the vanity above was, turned the vanity 90 degrees and utilized an antique dresser, and built a knee wall between the vanity and the shower.  We installed a frameless glass enclosure for the shower and vessel sink.  I wanted to try to stay true to the period and style of the home and so we installed subway tile on the shower walls, a bead board wainscoting through the rest of the bath, and a black and white basket weave tile on the floor.  We had a small bench installed in the corner of the shower and a niche for shampoo, etc.

When we were at the closing for the sale of the house the buyer's agent mentioned what a risk we had taken by not having a full bathtub/shower combo in there, and we thought about that but a full tub would not have fit so we used the space instead to make sure the shower would be a really nice size.  It ended up being about 3.5 x 4 feet which the buyer said is what sold her on it!

To make up for the lost closet we installed two smaller ones into the room on either side of the bed.  I took the inspiration from the units that John and Sherry had used in their first master bedroom.  Rather than being freestanding units though they were framed in.  My husband had his side and I had mine.  Our nightstands were shelves attached to the walls of the closet and we had sconces wired in to make up for the lack of space for bedside lamps.

As much as we love all the extra room our new home affords, that was a nice bedroom and bath.