our new house bath design

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Construction is going on slowly but surely at the TLD Highland House. We’re encountering many of the same issues our clients are that are slowing things down. The good news is that our house is framed, the bad news is that finishing it out is moving more slowly than expected due to delays in things like construction materials and appliances. But such is life.

The silver lining is that being behind in designing my own house hasn’t caught up to me yet since we have a few extra weeks. Enter the next edition in our house design plan – the master bath! Please behold the amazing floor plan, which is near 3x the size of our old master bathroom, and our closet, which is larger than Henry's last bedroom (true story).

Floor plan talk – we opted not to go for a freestanding tub, which was not an easy decision. To work in a tub would have made the shower on the smaller side, so we opted for the big shower. I had some heartburn and second thoughts about this because freestanding tubs are so beautiful. I really began fretting over it when we moved into our rental house because it DOES have a beautiful freestanding tub. I used it within 48 hours of moving in, it was heaven. And in the 6 months since I’ve used it exactly ONE other time. As it happens I’m not actually a bath person, I’m a person who WANTS to be a bath person but gets bored in the tub and then wants to get out but feels guilty so stays in until I say “to heck with this, I’m a grown woman and I do what I want.”

Thank you for coming on that journey with me. Now onto the design.

This was a tricky one like the kitchen because I design approximately 67% of my waking hours designing bathrooms (I did not fact-check this). Translation: I have access to literally every material and love too many of them. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it in every one of these personal design posts – it is so much easier to do this for other people instead of myself. So I took my own advice and started designing this room like I would any other: trolling Pinterest and pinning ANYTHING that caught my fancy, then culling it down by looking for the common threads, and finally by making a mood board. You can read all about how to do this yourself in this post where we break it down step by step.

What I had in my mind is a really moody bathroom with a dark floor. But after a little time, these are the images that kept floating up to the surface:

Inspiration 1 I Inspiration 2 I Inspiration 3 I Inspiration 4

Yes, there is some moodiness in there, but it is also really airy. I decided I was going to do the thing I NEVER thought I’d do, I chose a white marble tile for the floor. We did this piece with our builder, along with the design and finish of the vanity, because these things would be a terrible pain to try and do after the fact. You can read more about why we’re doing some upgrades with our builder and some on our own after we close in this post. We were able to design a vanity with our builder that is light wood to complement our wood floors, and we lifted it up on our feet to make it extra airy.

And yes, we need to talk about the pink wall tile. Because WE ARE DOING PINK WALL TILE!!!!

I know, I know. You have many thoughts. Let’s talk about them.

Pink is lovely, but also it’s a wee bit out there. But really, I’ve loved pink since the day I was born, and 37 years is a pretty solid track record. The bigger question you may have is “what the heck does your husband think about this?!” I honestly didn’t even bring up with him for months because I was just so sure it would be a NOPE. But we were watching one of our favorite movies a couple of months back, Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Image credit

That movie is completely coated in pink, and it is a masterpiece for the eyes. We were chatting about how beautiful the movie was as we watched it, and I ever so casually tossed out the idea of a pink tile in our bathroom, and he was like “cool.” So I totally played it cool and didn’t make a big deal about it.

Hahahah no. I immediately paused the movie, ran to the office to grab the pink tiles that I’d been stashing in case this moment ever came, and we talked about tile for the next 30 minutes of date night. It’s fun to be married to me, you guys.

My undying love and affection for both my husband and pink wall tile established, the other decisions needed to be made. I truly oscillated between a pink accent tile and a dark green option, but those colors work so well together that I decided to work them both in. We’re painting the walls in the restroom a dark green (one of my favorite bathroom moves) and bringing those colors in with art and rugs.

Gold hardware was pretty much a given with our warm palette, but we’re adding in black mirrors to keep it from going overly glam.

This is a far cry from where the bathroom sits now, which is coming together but looks fairly Frankensteined. It has beautiful marble floor tile and some hideous builder-grade wall tile. That vanity is REAL pretty though.

But here’s how it will (hopefully) look soon:

Here are all the pieces that are in the final running. We will close on the house in about 2 months (!!!) so it’s time to start pulling the trigger.

1. Paint– SW Snowbound 7004

2. Paint – SW Courtyard 6440

3. Towels

4. Vanity Faucet

5. Shower Faucet

6. Towel Ring

7. Wall Tile

8. Art

9. Accent Wall Tile

10. Mirrors

11. Shower Floor Tile

12. Hardware

13. Floor Tile

14. Sconce

15. Runner

Cannot WAIT to show you how this comes together! Thanks for following along.

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