25 September 2013

Basement Bath Reveal!

So it's been like 7 months since I first posted about installing the shower in our basement bath, talk about a drawn out reno! Truth be told all the major work was done back in March, but between being preggers and the fact that we don't really use that bathroom ourselves (it's for the in-laws when they're here, or other guests) we didn't get around to painting and caulking or the other finishing touches until the end of July - as in the day before my MIL was coming to town :) In fact, I was quickly snapping these after shots just as she arrived, while she patiently waited to actually use the bathroom :)


Here's how the room looked before:

Perfectly fine as is, but with only one tub in the house we really wanted to put in a shower, which also meant gutting the floor and ripping apart the walls. The wall to the left was shared with a storage closet, so we cut into that to install the new (huge!) shower.


This is pretty much the most luxurious space in our whole house. I'm so wishing it was our upstairs shower!


























I originally picked out a gorgeous marble subway tile and chair rail for the walls, but after a lot of urging from our handyman we kept it simple with these larger travertine tiles and a marble mosaic on the floor - slightly less expensive and a lot less maintenance for a guest bath.


At first I wasn't really feeling just how much the colours varied in the stone, but now I actually really love it. The bench was a nice added feature too - just that small added detail makes the shower feel super-fancy.


We repeated the same travertine tiles in a diagonal on the bathroom floor, and also gave the room a fresh coat of 'chocolate froth' by Behr (which is reading so grey in these terribly lit photos but is actually a warm greige). The pretty new towel rods and paper holder are from Homesense - I love their selection of bath accessories and I find the prices so much more reasonable than big box stores. We did salvage the toilet and vanity because they were pretty much brand new, although I really want to give the vanity a little makeover at some point. Once the vanity's painted out the new mirror (which i love!) hopefully won't look so out of place. 


But it'll likely be a long while before that happens - for now we're calling it done!