Master Bath Preview

As you guys know, we’re in the middle of construction and deadlines and coffee and Redbull and mess.  And we’re tired.  But we’re almost to some really exciting things, including the launch of our new website (which you have been oh-so-patiently waiting for).  Even though I need a little nap right now, I decided to take myself to coffee and write you an update.  And Dave is taking a break by installing medicine cabinets into a wall that was tiled and ready for mirrors to be hung.

If you want to imagine what it’s like to be sitting right here at the moment, check my Instagram page and look at this amazing mocha that Merridee’s in downtown Franklin made me.  It helps, you know?  Sometimes I’m not all that inspired and feel like going back to bed, but this little latte-art masterpiece made my day.  The little things really help, right?  It’s like that Danish concept of hygge that everyone is talking about.  However you choose to say that word, latte art is a great example of enjoying the little things.

But back to the master bath project.  My husband is our resident installer and he has had his hands full with this.  You might remember this from my last blog post:

These are 2-inch strips of onyx and marble.  You might think we bought them neatly attached to mesh, pre-laid in an amazingly random pattern and ready for installation.  Lol.

They don’t make these that way.  Each strip is well over a foot long and was installed individually, taking 27 hours, not including sealing and grout (and then sealing the grout, which hasn’t happened yet).

And if you want to know who is crazy enough to specify tile that would cost, like ten grand to install, that’d be me.  And I only did it because I found all this marble and onyx at ReStore for $140, including enough for the shower floor and a shower accent wall.  The only similarly-priced option would’ve been sheet vinyl, which presents its own challenges when it comes to aesthetics and also function if you happened to be dumb enough to use that in the shower.

So that’s how we got hundreds of strips of onyx and marble and the massive job to install them.  Once Dave finished the floor, he did the shower floor and accent wall.  Then came the focal wall of the bathroom:

That’s me enjoying the tub (which has yet to be installed) and admiring Dave’s tile- and wainscoting handiwork!  Then he worked on finishing the other walls of the shower with massive cement tiles:

Both the gray subway-esque tile (made in Italy) and the huge cement tiles are from ReStore, at different times.  I was excited to use cement tile, which is just cool, especially in these huge sheets.

We had originally painted the tub pink, which I loved.  But when we got it in the bathroom, we had a new problem.  The yellowish onyx made a complementary color scheme with the hints of purple in the gray subway tile.  Then adding a pink tub made it look like we had a pastel pink and purple color scheme, which was pretty but not at all what I was going for.

So, the tub donned a dark charcoal-y blue-gray-black called Peppercorn from Sherwin Williams, and it solved the Easter-egg color scheme that we inadvertently introduced with the onyx, subway tile undertones, and pink tub.

Here it is:

You can’t see it too great in that picture, but that’s the gist.  There’ll be more pictures soon!  The wall and wainscoting colors are a custom white I love.

There’ll be more details on this bathroom to follow, but here’s where we left it as of yesterday:

Thanks for following along!