If you haven’t heard, I’m pregnant (as revealed here). Very, very, very pregnant.  Like, the most pregnant I’ve ever been, because my body has officially surpassed the largest sizes of my previous pregnancies and I still have 6 weeks left to go.

Two weekends ago, I got food poisoning and was up all night tossing my cookies.  This left me super dehydrated. And apparently being dehydrated makes your body increase oxytocin levels, which leads to labor. I was 33 weeks and started having consistent contractions, 3-5 min apart, steadily. I had to go into the birthing center and get an IV to replace fluids to try to stop the contractions. It helped, but not entirely. I continued to have contractions with a bit too much consistency, so I wound up being put on bed rest.  

I should count myself lucky, as this is my 4th pregnancy and my first time ever having to be on bed rest. And I have enjoyed being able to take naps as needed, as I’m too old and worn out growing this baby.  But the many hours that I’m not sleeping and sitting in bed feel like a never-ending episode of insomnia. I also happen to be sitting in a bedroom that is full of unfinished projects, that got side-lined with the bedrest. The half-finished dressers I was painting and leafing just sort of stare at me from across the room. I hate unfinished projects….

Our bedroom furniture is also shoved haphazardly in random places due to the fact that our upstairs bathroom flooded a month or so ago.  We didn’t know it was overflowing until our daughter went into our bedroom and saw water gushing from our ceiling vents. Awesome. Furniture was pushed aside to prevent it from getting wet. But nothing has been replaced to its proper location because we still have to do the work of repairing the damaged carpet, paint, drywall, crown-molding, etc. And since we have to repair our bedroom and bathroom anyway, we’ve finally decided that we’re going to make our bathroom more user friendly with this new baby coming soon.

So, I thought I’d share with you the big ambitions I have for renovating our bathroom, since that’s what I’ve spent most of my bedrest time thinking about. And maybe you can help me with finalizing the details. Our bathroom isn’t terrible by any means, but since we have to make repairs anyway, it seemed like a good time to go ahead with making it our dream bathroom.

This is walking into our bathroom from our bedroom. On the immediate left is the linen closet, then a vanity, then the toilet. The closet is through the door at the end. On the immediate right is the shower, beyond the shower is a small vanity, and then the tub.  

Structurally, we won’t be changing a whole lot on the left side of the bathroom. We will be replacing the vanity, but the walls and everything will remain intact. 

The right side, however, will be completely revamped.  Everything you see will be removed.

When I realized I was pregnant and this 4th baby would be super close in age to my 2 year old, I immediately began wishing for a different shower/tub arrangement. My other kids have been much more spread out, age wise, and I’m nervous having these two so much closer in age.  All of my kids have always wanted to take a bath when I’m taking a shower. This wasn’t much of a problem with my oldest being able to help so much before (she’s almost 6 years older than my 2nd child) but with my now 12 year old and 6 year old in school throughout the week, it will be me left alone with a 2 year old and a newborn. So, I’ve been dreaming of a walk-in shower that also had a tub contained within the shower enclosure, so I could wash them and see them playing, while I was in the shower, but without them getting sprayed by the shower, since they all seem to hate that. I know the newborn won’t be able to play in there for quite a while, don’t think I’m crazy, but newborns don’t stay newborns for very long. Soon enough, she’ll be wanting to play in the bathtub.

I had never seen a shower like I was imagining, however, so I started searching Pinterest for examples. It’s actually a thing people are doing! Pictures exist, which makes it easier when describing to a contractor what you’re talking about.  This next picture doesn’t actually show a tub, but it’s almost exactly the look we’re going for. If you imagine where the window is in this picture, we would place a free-standing tub in that spot under the window.

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Photo by Tia Borgsmidt via Homelife.

So, the plan now is that when you walk into our bathroom from the bedroom, immediately on the right will be an opening to the shower, probably about 3′ wide.  Then a large sheet of glass, like in the above picture, probably 6’wide by 10’tall (floor to ceiling). Then on the other side of the glass, there will be another opening into the shower area and a tub to the left of that opening, parallel to the wall. Just a giant shower/bath area. One of the things I really love in this picture is the fact that the floor is continuous and there’s not a curb necessary to hold the water in the shower area.  I also love that it’s a larger scale tile than can normally be had in a shower because they’re using a linear drain instead of a traditional drain.  We only found one contractor who said they could do this. Everyone else we spoke to said there had to be a curb and the tile couldn’t be larger than about 2-3″ squared to work with a traditional drain.

If I had a bigger budget and more time (baby is due too soon), I would have this tile for the floors.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY VINTAGEANDCHICBLOG

But it costs about $11/sf (which I would probably find a way to pay for, honestly, because I LOVE it so much.) The part that makes it an impossibility is the 5-6 week lead time 😦 It took me forever to find the info on being able to order this tile and by the time I found it, it was too late for us to be able to have it delivered and installed before baby comes. Sad, sad day. If you fall in love with it like I did, it’s by Arto and called Conche Charcoal Gray Tile.

So, instead, we’re doing a black herringbone pattern, similar to the first example pic. We found this tile at Home Depot.
It’s about $4/sf and in stock at a couple nearby stores.  I actually really like the texture of this tile. I think it’ll be great for a shower floor tile. It’s 3″x12″, so I don’t think quite as long as the tile used for the herringbone in the example pic, but I think it’ll still look nice.

 

We’re also going to use this white subway tile, also found at Home Depot.  It’s a traditional 3″x6″ white subway tile and is only $1.76/sf and in stock in stores.  We’re going to do a dark grout on the walls and the floors, because I know I won’t be able to keep white grout clean.

Deciding on the tub finish has been the hardest decision for me.  

We bought this tub pictured above in all white and without holes drilled. But I don’t have any intentions of having an all white tub. We bought it because it was the cheapest/best rated new cast-iron clawfoot tub we could find that would also be delivered fast enough.  But I’ve been debating forever if I would make the tub look like this golden dream: 

Or if I’d make it look like the tub in the pic with the fish scale tile above, black outside and gold feet.  After hours and hours of bedrest contemplation, I think we’re going to do the black tub with gold feet. At least for now.  The reasons for this are because I have read many successful stories of spray-painting  the outside of cast-iron tubs and spray painting is much faster, cheaper, and easier than gold-leafing the tub.  I’m waiting to hear back from Rustoleum if they recommend their Appliance Epoxy spray paint or their regular metal spray paint for the job. Hopefully they respond in time! If they say neither, I’ve also heard good things about using chalk paint on the outside of cast-iron tubs and may go that route. Also, I can gold-leaf over the paint at some point in the future if I still really want the golden tub, but it’d be much harder to get the gold-leaf off in the future to create a smooth surface to paint black if we decided we would like that better in the future.

The vanity is the only other thing we’ve already purchased. I found it on HomeDecorators.com but actually ordered it through Home Depot. It was on sale the week I ordered it and they have free shipping, so I saved about $500! This sounds like an ad for Home Depot, but it’s not. I just happened to get a lot through them. 

The vanity doesn’t come with faucets for the sinks, and finding bathroom fixtures has been a less than stellar experience. I want coordinating black fixtures for the shower heads, bath tub, and sinks. It seems like a reasonable request, but apparently it is not.  The closest I have found comes from a website that is based in China and I’m a little nervous to order from them…. If I can’t have coordinating black fixtures, then gold would be second choice, but it’s also almost impossible to find that. And I also don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on the fixtures… But I’ve even looked at the thousand dollar fixtures and still can’t find something I want.

This is what I have found. It looks nice, but there are no reviews and it’s coming from China. I worry it’ll get installed in my nice new tile and break 3 months down the road… Even much more expensive fixtures from well-known brands have many bad reviews on Home Depot and Lowes, so I’m nervous. Does anyone know where I can find coordinating pieces like this in black without breaking the bank??

The other things we still need to buy are new mirrors for the new vanity wall and new lights.  We have 10′ ceilings, which is pretty tall for a bathroom, so we kind of like the idea of doing tall mirrors and lights, kind of like this:

Our ceiling isn’t as tall as the one in this pic, but we can still play up the height. I think we found lights we like, I’ll save those for the reveal, but we’re having a hard time finding mirrors we like. Also, I plan on doing a gold striped accent wall or gold wood board accent wall behind the vanity… I’ll show you what I mean when I figure it out 🙂

And I think the finishing touch will be a crystal chandelier to go over the tub. I bought one a while ago because it was only $60 and was originally hundreds of dollars.  I didn’t know where it was going to go at the time, but it was too good of a deal to pass up.

So, these have been my big bathroom ambitions I’ve been dreaming about while on bedrest. One thing I am most excited about is getting rid of the CREEPY FACE IN MY SHOWER that haunts me every time I take a shower.

Let me know what you guys think about the items we’ve already purchased, as well as the ones we’re still trying to find! I’d love to hear your suggestions! The only thing I really would love to have, but in trying to save money we won’t be getting, is a see-through fireplace between the bathroom wall and our master bedroom wall… What does your dream bathroom have?