Hi there! Back at ya with the One Room Challenge. As a recap, we are updating our master bath which we actually use as our guest bathroom.
Catch up on my weekly progress here:
Week 1 / Week 2 / Week 3 / Week 4 / Week 5
Now that you’re up to speed, week 2 is all about the shower stall. We’ve talked in week 1 about how much we haaaate this shower stall and so it was naturally the first thing to go.
Demo Woes First
We demoed the shower first down to the studs. It only felt appropriate to start with the shower since it’s what sent us to renovating in the first place. We pulled out the fitter and by we, I do mean our awesome tile guy. I promised myself that I was going to do less DIY this year and spend more time focusing on work and the rest of my life. This comes with it’s own problems especially for a control freak. Tile Guy didn’t cut off the water and nicked a pipe. Insert me trying not to morph into the Incredible Hulk. Luckily, Marcus manages most of the work with anyone who comes into the house so it was smoothly dealt with and repaired.
I knew I wanted shower niches. Not only are they trending but they are just down right practical. This shower stall is so tight and I learned my lesson about having anything like a shelf protruding into the space like the bath fitter previously did. So with the niches we are working inward. There was a stud directly in the center of the wall which kept us from going straight down the middle with the niches. After realizing the stud was in the middle, I quickly sketched what it would look like with the niches on the right before realizing that putting them to the right of the stud would conflict with the shower head.
Before I forget, the little niche on the bottom is a gem that I spotted on SGardnerstyle from Shavonda Gardner who built a niche in her shower stall in order to be able to shave your legs which is just genius. Mind Blown. This space is way too tight to build a ledge for shaving so I knew that whenever we redid the shower, I would make sure to include that little feature.
And now for more of the ugly. Insert Tile Guy nicking the electrical while cutting the niches into the backer board. Slaps forehead in exasperation. If you look closely to where the light is shining in one of the below photos, you can see the nick in my little shaving niche.
Once the War of the Nicks was over with. We could start tiling which went off without a hitch on the back wall. We left the right wall open since we had an idea of what sort of shower head we wanted but it was out of stock so we are back to the drawing board on the shower head situation. Until then, the tile will commence on the other two walls and the right wall will be left open until we decide what to do.
And Now the Part I Actually Care About
In the mean time, we are going to work on the floor which is the feature in the shower. I loved Outkast growing up and I do mean LOVED. So much so that I had an Outkast screen name on AIM. (Judge ya mama, don’t judge me.) So it only felt appropriate when doing this renovation that I pull in the lyrics “so fresh and so clean, clean”. I initially leaned on the idea of doing “Clean” exactly where you first put your foot down in the shower. Tile Guy laid the pattern out on the floor in our living room which gave me the chance to practice. I popped the mesh sheet of pastel blue penny tiles that we bought and began trying them out by laying them over the grid of white penny tiles. Because of the diagonal pattern, the words were spelling in a way that wasn’t, how you say, clean. I realized that if I rotated the pattern a few degrees, I could get the straight lines I was after. Having it laid out also helped me to realize that I wanted more letters! ‘Fresh & Clean’ read so much nicer than ‘Clean’ alone.
I put the sheets of penny tile in the shower and began trying again with the blues on top of the whites. I tried a few different iterations of the ampersand sign with the center around the drain and settled on one that I liked. I then used a sharpie to mark all of the white pennies under the blue pennies. I plan to pop out all of the white pennies and replace them with the blues.
And Now For More Woes
I desperately want a vintage looking brass shower head but can not seem to find one anywhere for the life of me under $2000. I have looked all over God’s green earth and have decided to try hunting for one in the Restoration Hardware Outlet in Asheville, NC. It’s a decent distance away from us but worth the trip if they actually have any of the fixtures that I need. In the mean time, I will purchase a faucet that looks similar to the one on the mood board. If I find a shower head and matching faucet at RH, then I’ll just return the other one, no problem.
We were only going to demo the shower this week but while Tile Guy is in here, he volunteered to pull out the vanity and toilet so that he would have more room to work which is great for us. So we are off to the races.
Hopefully, our adventure to RH goes well and I’ll have an awesome update for you around the shower head. Cross your fingers and see you next week.
XO Prepford Wife