The Concept

Here's the basic layout that we're thinking about:

We were heavily inspired by Barry Briscoe's remodel, and love the idea of opening up this small space as much as possible.

The main changes are removing the wall between the sink and toilet/shower room, and enlarging the window in the shower, and (possibly) adding a floor to ceiling slit window in the closet area.

The main considerations we have to get comfortable with are:

• steam from getting into the rest of master bedroom
• splashing from the open ended shower stall
• loss of valuable closet space with the floor to ceiling window
• whether resale value will be hurt by lack of privacy doors, etc.

If you have any thoughts or experiences, please leave a comment.  Thanks!

Fixtures 'n Things

Here's the shopping list we came up with for the tile, fixtures, and furnishings for this project.

• Floor Tile: Porcelanosa - Silk Verde, a modern gray/green textured porcelain tile in large 17x26 rectangles.  For master bedroom, bathroom, and shower.
  
• Wall Tile: Porcelanosa - Glass Acido, light blue with white pinstripping in 12x35.  Will probably run it vertically rather than horizontally.
• Sink: Catalano Domino 100 ceramic basin w/aluminum leg stand and Dornbracht Meta 2 faucet.
• Mirror: custom built-in 24" wide mirror / medicine cabinet.
• Lighting: Ginger Kubic 3.2" sconce on either side of mirror.
• Shower: More Meta 2 fixtures with 10" downpour shower head and shower wand.
• Toto Aquia III toilet
• Panasonic WhisperWarm ventilation fan.  Much quieter than our 20-year old Nutone.
  

Unfortunately the recent fire at the Dornbracht factory has pushed back shipments of any chrome finished parts, so we may have a 10-12 week delay.

Great store and even better book

We love the Bridget Biscotti Bradley Bathroom Book!

It has tons of great pictures as well as reminders and tips about everything you might need to consider during your bathroom remodel.

We stumbled upon the author's store in Menlo Park, Reclaim, where we found the book.  They also carry lots of interesting tiles and other green materials for home building.  Definitely worth checking out

Our Eichler

First some background before we dive into our current thoughts on remodeling the master bathroom.

As part of the Royal Manor tract in Palo Alto, we believe the house was built in 1958 or 1959, based largely on the toilets, which have 1958 embossed inside on the tank cover.

It is very close to the Model 914 design that I grew up in a few miles away - what I call the "twin hallway" design.  But I think the master bedroom & bath layout may be very similar to many other models.

Previous owners had remodeled the kitchen significantly, turning it into a larger, more open design, and had added Nutone bathroom vent fans up in boxes on the roof at the same time.

Then I had done new appliances and counter-tops in the kitchen and a quickie master shower remodel soon after moving in nearly 10 years ago, as it had the original 3x3 square shower stall.

But now we're embarking on a major remodel... more details soon!

Time for a Dwell magazine master bath!

As the title implies, we look at Dwell a lot, and I dream about a house with some of those beautiful design features present in those magazine homes. So now that we've decided to modernize our master bathroom, I'm dreaming of Dwell in my bathroom.

It's been a ball shopping around for and choosing plumbing fixtures and tile and sinks and so forth. I can't wait to show you what we've found. The bathroom design sketches are being drawn by our contractor now. So stay tuned, there's lots of fun design news to come. I hope to post stuff up here regularly. We'll see. See you soon.