Change of plans in the master bath

Change of plans in the master bath

We’ve been talking a lot about the downstairs lately so I wanted to change gears a little and bring you up to date on the upstairs bath. Our contractors are expecting to demo it as early as maybe even today, eek! They’re downstairs right now putting some final touches on the guest bath and doing the backsplash tiling in the kitchen. I can’t even believe that I’m saying “final touches” in relation to anything with this project, but seriously, we’re so close!

You may remember our plans for the upstairs master bath, which include removing the teeny tiny standup shower and replacing it with a clawfoot tub, and then converting an old dresser into a vanity.

We ordered a clawfoot tub through our contractor. Originally we thought we’d do this on our own because we wanted this room to be our DIY project as much as possible, unlike the downstairs bath that the guys are doing completely, and we thought we might be able to find a good deal online. However, after looking at tons, and I mean TONS, of tubs online we got too overwhelmed with knowing what size to pick and what brand was trustworthy, and what do you do if you buy a tub online and don’t like it or it’s broken? How do you even return that? So we left it up to the professionals. Plus, this is much easier because now they’ll deliver it and help with the plumbing.

So now that we have the specs, we decided to tape off the approximate location on the floor to get a better idea of how everything will fit together. Well… good thing we did. Wah-wah.

Here you can see the approximate shape of the tub in blue tape on the floor. The drain is to the left, inside the current shower, and that isn’t moving (moving plumbing costs a fortune). There’s a piece of tape on the shower wall about where the tub will start (but it will be farther towards the window wall in real life — we just couldn’t put all the lines in the right place because we were still using that shower), and then you can see the end of the tub on the right.

Whoops, there is almost NO space between the tub and the vanity. And the dresser we wanted to turn into a vanity is a couple of inches bigger than our current vanity. Technically the new vanity would fit in that space (there’s a few inches to the right of the vanity where it could be moved down), but it would still be tight all the way around. I don’t like the idea of the vanity being so close to the bathtub that you can’t reach behind to clean (80% of my decisions are based on “can I clean it?”), and I also think the large vanity will look really heavy in that room, taking up too much space.

Here’s a view from standing inside the shower, looking towards the end of the tub. (Ignore the mess. The guys started working on the electrical in this room already. And how 1985 is that phone jack in the bathroom??) So this is approximately where you’d be standing if you were in the bathtub. The little piece of tape in the middle is where the tub floor stops and it swoops up.

Here’s a view from the end of the tub looking towards the drain. (And yes, that shower is gross. I know. I can’t wait to never see it again!)

So what do we do about a vanity now? We panicked for a minute. Especially me. There may have been tears. I had my heart set on turning that dresser into a vanity. I thought it was going to be so perfect painted white, and it would be a fun project for us to do. I loved the idea of using something I’ve had my whole life in this new way. But it’s just not going to work. After the panic was over, we almost immediately decided we like the look of a chrome pedestal sink.

We did a lot of online research and the one we liked most was the best price at Amazon (that’s their photo above, which coincidentally looks A LOT like what what we’re envisioning for our bathroom). We’re losing quite a bit of storage space and counter space with this new sink, so we’re going to have to find creative ways to add storage to the room. I think it’s sooo pretty, though, and perfect for the age of our home. I think this is going to look much better in the long run. I still plan on painting my old dresser white and repurposing it somewhere in the house. I just can’t bring myself to get rid of it quite yet. Don’t you love it when a crisis is averted?!