Project House Update: Master Bathroom Inspiration

In typical fashion for our household, we've gotten swept up in starting another potential giant project as a result of something small from a different, much easier project. I hinted to this a bit on Monday in my post about our new curtains, so let me start from the beginning.

When we hung the curtains, we had to remove the trim surrounding the sliding glass doors to move the vertical blinds downward so there would actually be room to mount the curtain rod. With the trim removed, Dan realized there was no insulation around the door, just some pieces of poorly placed wood, allowing for some sizable gaps for air and insects to move in and out. Since the doors are terribly energy inefficient to begin with, this seemed to be the straw that broke camel Dan's back.

So, on his off-Friday last week, Dan went to Home Depot and bought some insulating foam. Once the can is open, you need to use it all, so he began pulling the trim off of the other sliding glass doors to insulate them as well. Our master bathroom has a sliding glass door which is covered with some hideous vertical blinds (what a novel concept for this house).

Apparently, once he removed the exterior trim, he learned two things. 1) This door was as poorly insulated as the other one. 2) The door is pretty simply framed so it should be remarkably easy to replace it.

Per usual, things quickly snowballed and we've got a new project. There's some tax credit for upgrading to more energy efficient windows, which means we need to purchase a new glass door by the end of the year. And since we're upgrading to a new, pretty door, I don't want to hide it behind vertical blinds, so those have to go. And since the door is partially covered by Dan's vanity, we should pull that out so it's not in the way. And since it'll be out, we should replace it, and mine, too. And since the vanities will be out, we should rip out the carpet (CARPET IN THE BATHROOM! THE THIRD HOUSE I'VE LIVED IN WITH CARPET IN THE BATHROOM!) and put down tile.

And that's where we're at now. We're trying to find a door we both agree on (Dan likes sliding, I like French) and tile and vanities. We have been able to agree on the overall look we want though, so it will flow with our bedroom and my dream closet. Light, stone tiled floor, dark wood footed vanities with light countertops, and framed mirrors. Something like this, but with two separate vanities since there's a door between our individual sinks.

Image Source

The floor has been the most debated issue at this point. Dan is 100% convinced that he wants stone tiles and I am 100% convinced I want something with some visual interest. We may have reached a compromise with this idea: white marble tiles in a octagonal pattern.

The numbers haven't been crunched yet, so this may be completely out of our budget, but the idea of it makes my heart flutter.

So, the overall look will hopefully be something like this:

This, of course, will be only Stage One of the bathroom re-do. There's a lot of dry wall work and lighting and painting and all that sort of stuff, but the sliding door or the floor or vanities aren't dependent on it, so for now, we're ignoring it so there's not too much on our plates.

What do you think?