bathroom, finito

Last week, the bathroom remodel job came to completion with the addition of our frameless shower glass doors and walls. 

You can find all the other photos of the bathroom remodel from start to finish and day by day here, and here.

Disgusting deteriorating, crumbling old shower full of mildew and old tile:

Beautiful new spa-worthy shower. 

 

 
My only complaint about the new shower?  Its so nice in there you don't want to get out.  I dread seeing our upcoming water bills.
 
Again, a huge thank you to our contractor Craig who understood what we wanted and made it happen with all of his skills, talent and expertise!

decorating a bathroom

As I type this, the shower glass guy is driving here to install our frameless shower glass walls and door.  Its been 42 days since we were last able to shower in our bathroom.

Craig, our contractor, finished his part of the job thoroughly and within the timeframe we had discussed.  The glass company couldn't take measurements until Craig's part was complete, and its been going on three weeks its taken them to cut the glass, temper it (making it safe), and now the install tonight should take around 3 hours.  I wasn't impressed with the amount of time it took them to get this part finished but you're talking to a person who spent a hell of a lot of money to have a beautiful bathroom and hasn't been able to shower in it yet!   I'm sure they will do a great job, and it will be even more beautiful.  Tomorrow I'll report in with the final photos, glass installed, and just how great that first shower really was.

Meanwhile, we've been busy adding decor and touches that make it a little retreat from our everyday life with busy kids.  We wanted some plants, and we wanted to keep the decor very natural and simplistic.

Andrew found a rubbed bronze cosmetic wall mount mirror and installed it for me, love it!

The print is a George Dombek. I think it goes perfectly with our room. 

Here is the shower before glass, the last time it will look like this ...

Can't wait for tomorrow's shower. Watch, they'll tell us tonight we have to let it set for three days before we can try it out!

Pretty amazing to see the transformation.  Here is when it all started on Day One.

My amazing husband turns 40 this Saturday.  I'm so glad this is going to be wrapped up before that monumental day!

Wow, have I really not blogged since Sunday?

This has been one of those weeks when the days just blurred into a hot mess of pick ups, games, practices, drop offs, work, more work, and school year end wrap up stuff.

In a nutshell, here is the week in review:

• First, the shower glass was delayed and will not be installed until next week.  We are LOVING the new bathroom but have yet to be able to take a freaking shower in there.  The glass company is a totally separate vendor and they operate in their own timezone, apparently.  We've been having fun, still, getting decor onto the walls and such.   I will post photos when the glass is installed and its finally finished!

• Second, Logan ended his t-ball season with his last game Tuesday night.  He's loved it so much, we're signing him up again for the fall season.  His end of the season party with the whole team is this Sunday night, and the boys will get their trophies. Go Blue Claws!

• Logan also enjoyed his first week of summer camp this week.  I found a preschool summer camp he could go to every morning for outside play, crafts and fun with kids his age.  They even got to make sno-cones today.  He loved it, and I hope to get him enrolled a few more times this summer.  It gave me the chance to have some kid-free hours now that preschool is over, so I could work.

Getting them to all sit on the bench to wait their turn to bat has proven to be quite challenging these past two months!   When they're in the field, its all about stomping to make dirt clouds.

• This week was Dylan's second week of swim team practice.  He joined a neighborhood swim team this year for the first team called the Lightning, and so far he LOVES it.  He's always been a water boy, and it will be fun to watch him compete this summer and become an even stronger swimmer. Great exercise, tons of kids  he goes to school with, and fun parents to hang out with. 

No, he is not peeing in the pool!

• I am one hour away from kicking off a total girls weekend.  Andrew won tickets at work for the Go-Go's concert tonight at Wolftrap (my favorite outdoor music venue), and I'm going with a huge group of friends. My picnic basket is packed and I'm ready to re-live the 80's.  Well, maybe not quite. But its sure to be a good time.

• Tomorrow morning, early, Dylan has his first swim meet.  Its only a practice meet, but it will give the kids a feel for how a real meet will run.  His first real meet is next Saturday. 

• Right after that, I'm heading to this luxurious resort nearby with four of my besties for a much anticipated girls night away.  No kids for 24 hours.  Poolside, drinks, girl talk, need I say more?  On Sunday morning, the Dads will bring all the kids for some family pool time at the awesome resort pools and then we'll eventually head out for Logan's t-ball party.

A great weekend ahead, starts in 50 minutes!  Next week, Dylan has only four days of school and then its officially summer vacation!

the home stretch

The end is near, the end is near!   Here are the latest photos of the bathroom, taken this morning after vacuuming up about 10 tons of drywall dust.

The frameless shower door guys are coming to measure this Wednesday, and hopefully within a week or so after that they'll install the shower door and glass walls, enclosing the shower.  I can't wait to take my first shower in that puppy.  We could take one now but without any glass it might be pretty wet and slippery in there.

Andrew worked his butt off all weekend painting, installing the light fixtures, hanging mirrors, etc.  Craig is coming back tomorrow to finish installing the pipes to make the sinks operable.   He'll also install the wall controller for the heated floor, put in the shower overhead light. 

Once he's done, I think he'll bel moving onto his next job.  We're beyond thrilled with the job he's done and the care he's taken to make this bathroom so beautiful for us.  We enjoyed getting to know him and his family, and we'll miss him.  But never fear, we have three more bathrooms and a kitchen that will all need updated at some point!

We haven't ordered the wall artwork yet, so that will probably happen this week too. That will really finish it off.  I also want to add a wall mounted bronze cosmetic mirror.  We've been thinking a bonsai tree somewhere might be a nice touch, too.  Once we have towels hanging and such, it will be lived in again.

Our bedroom, bathroom is to the left just past the tall dresser.

Looking into the bathroom from our bedroom. The double doors will be put back on tomorrow too.

close up of floor

We can't put the drawers back in the vanities until the sink plumbling is installed tomorrow. The  middle cabinet will give us some storage and we liked it added a different height in between the two vanities.  You can see the new commode, too.

I just love the river rock.. and when it gets wet it changes to darker shades. The wide part to the right will be the shower bench,with a glass wall facing the tub.

new bathtub fixtures to match

I don't think I've posted a photo of our granite yet.  It was installed Thursday evening, and then Craig was able to get the new faucets in.

We went with rectangular undermount sinks, which I think work nicely with the clean lines in the bathroom.

The shower, no glass yet.

shower floor and threshold

half wall looking into shower, new towel bar and better view of granite

niche to hold our smelly goods

close up river rock

If you go back and look at the before photos, it hardly seems like the same bathroom.  Here is the progression:

Day One

Day Two

Day Three

Days Four and Five

Days Six and Seven

Eight and Nine

Ten

Eleven and Twelve

Thirteen

Its been fun watching it all come together.  You choose all these finishes and stones and fixtures and paint colors and you have no idea how its all going to look when its put together.  I can't wait to start living in there again.  It will sure be a nice, peaceful place to begin and end each day.

latest on the latrine

Yesterday and today marked days 12 and 13 of the bathroom project, and its moving right along.  Its been exciting getting to this stage since all the design elements are coming into play now.

Today Craig and his son finished the tile in the shower, and grouted the floor. The only part left to do in the shower is the smaller tiles inside of the rock framed areas (and they'll be at a diagonal).  He'll work on that tomorrow.   The floor looks different with grout, and it was still wet when I took these photos.  So as it dries, it will look lighter.

We're so happy with it, and everyday it looks a little more finished and how it will be at the end.  The granite and sinks will be installed Thursday (counters and shower thresholds), the glass company will be coming to measure soon. That will really add to the whole design as well...nice and open.

The inside area within the two river rock frames will be smaller squares of tile, turned diagonally.

A closer up look at the frame..

This is the niche in the shower for shampoo (shower has no grout yet).  We'll add a shelf in the middle to hold more stuff.

Here is the floor, with grout.  It feels great to walk on...very substantial and cool. 

You can see new step into the tub too.

Still to come.. toilet installation, installation of new fixtures, painting entire bathroom, hanging mirrors. Installing new light fixtures on dimmers. Putting cabinet drawers back in and placing new apothecary cabinet in between vanities. Placing artwork order, and hanging framed prints on the wall. Hanging curtains back up and adding a plant or two. The glass will take a while to come in, probaby two or more weeks. So we'll have to wait to try out our new digs...


I can't say enough great things about our contractor. Everything has been great - the communication, the work, the skill and talent he has brought to the project...  Not only that, he leaves no mess behind.  This is right off our master bedroom, with double doors leading into it.  He's always very careful to put tarps down so as to not track dust all over the place, and he leaves the bathroom as tidy as possible at the end of the day.

I only wish we could afford to have him do other rooms in the house right now.  But since we can't, we'll just have to spend as much time as possible in the master bath once its done! 

the spa, day 11 and 12... we're getting closer!

Craig's been super busy cutting tile and stone the past two days, drawing in the stone design we want on the shower walls, and getting the travertine tile and river rock glued into place.  The grout will come later, towards the end, so it still isn't exactly how it will look at the end. But these photos give a good idea of what is going where so far.

Here's Craig hard at work today.

The granite guys came to measure the vanities today.  The counters and shower thresholds will be installed next Thursday.  Once those are in, the glass company can come measure the shower for the frameless door and glass walls and start working on that for us.  It might take another two weeks once they measure for the glass to come in and be installed.  You can't even believe how expensive frameless glass is.   I'll be cringing when I write that check.  It will be well, well worth it.

I shared my blog with Craig so he can be watching the progress of the fruits of his labor.  He's doing such a fantastic job and there is no question in our minds we chose the right guy for the job.  He's had such great input on ideas, and such talent and skills.  Not only that, he's about the nicest guy you could ever meet.  We're very happy we found him.   We're also happy with Mosaic Tile, in Chantilly (they have other locations in MD and VA as well).  Their designer Anna did a great job showing us tile/stone options and drawing it all up for us.  

Once we knew we wanted river rock in the shower, we talked to her about wanting to extend it to a couple of other places in the bathroom.   Its so pretty, we didn't want it to just be the floor of the shower. So she, together with Craig, brought it up onto the new shower bench seat, onto the deck of our tub, and onto two framed design areas on each shower wall.  You can see the beginnings of the shower wall design Craig started today. That was Anna's idea, and I think its going to add a really nice touch.

He put in a few corner shelves to hold stuff.

Here is the shower floor, all the stones are there but will now need to be grouted and sealed.

here's the bench seat in the shower

In this photo you can see that Craig's got tile on the bathtub step, it all had to be at specific angles.  I'll get a better photo of that soon.

Gosh, when I think back on this project its really taken some brain power and legwork to make it happen.  From getting estimates and meeting with contractors in January, to picking out every single fixture and piece of tile and to go in there... from the big things to the small things... its been a lot of decisions.  Thus far, Andrew and I have agreed on almost every element of what we wanted the bathroom to be and how we wanted it to look.  What can I say, he has exceptional taste.  Ha!

Here's proof.  We've been trying to decide what we'll want to go on the walls once its all done.  We wanted something natural, related to water and rocks.  Check out this artwork by an artist named George Dombek.  He's an artist Andrew used to know in college when he worked in an art shop cutting matte board.

We'll probably go with these, there are a series of them.  I just love the colors and they tie in nicely with the whole natural theme of the bathroom.

You can see more on George Dombek's work here.  Its really beautiful.

So... stay tuned Monday or Tuesday for the next update on the latrine.  Its clearly been exciting for us, and the boys are pretty excited about it too.  Now that we'll have a luxurious bathroom, they'll surely never use their own bathrooms again.