Blue & White Master Bath Remodel

Reasons we remodeled our bathroom even though the house is only 13 years old.

1. I don't care for brown countertops.
2. I don't care for brown travertine tile.
3. I don't care for knotty alder cabinetry.
4. I don't like jetted tubs.
5. I also don't like tubs not big enough that I can not be submerged. (I am 5'9). This bathroom is way too small for a separate tub.
6. I don't like mirror slabs.
7. I don't like crappy one-inch grout lines. The tile job was so bad we couldn't even have an air vent cover fit the floor vents in the floor. Who knows how many q-tips I lost down that hole?
8. I wanted radiant heating in the floor because Utah has sucky winters and I was tired of playing Frogger, jumping from one floor mat to the next at 3am to avoid the glacially-cold floor.
9. We needed a pocket door to let in more light from the one window. The entrance to the bathroom is pretty wide so the door blocked way too much light.
10. Old vanity was too short for us tall peoples.

I love my new white and blue bathroom. It's the perfect mix of modern and traditional for us. A modern walnut vanity, paired with traditional beveled mirrors. Classic subway tile, but modern faucets. You get the picture.

Three colors of tile: white, denim blue, gray floors in shower and bathroom

Here it is before:

Before: Travertine floor with enormous 1" grout lines

Now that the too-small tub is removed we have a nice spot for a stool, some shelves, and a place to hang our towels. We opted to take the subway tile all the way across this wall and up to the ceiling. It's a west facing window so I ordered a navy black-out roller shade.  And now the floors have radiant heating. Best decision ever. Warm tile in the winter is life changing. 

After: No more tub!

Here is the same corner before:

Before: Very small tub I used 2 times in 13 years.

Wiring the floor for radiant heating.

I knew we would want a custom walnut vanity with big deep drawers (no cupboard doors!) that hold everything. The old vanity had very little storage. I found this vanity from Restoration Hardware as my inspiration, then had it custom made. Guess what? It was about $2,000 custom made, compared to $3,500 from RH. Score!

These mirrors  topped with these light fixtures take advantage of our 9-ft ceilings. They are super tall at 4-feet. The blue photo prints were taken by myself and overly saturated in blue; the black and white print is from Minted.

New vanity is counter height

Before: the drawers were too small to be of much use.

Old vanity, way too short

We had enough walnut leftover to make some floating shelves. Great for blown glass, art, and functional space as well.

The perfect spot to remove jewelry before showering.

My favorite feature, next to the radiant heating is replacing the big door, which blocked all the window light, with a pocket door. (You can read more about my navy doors here, best decision to paint them blue four years ago.) Adding a pocket door meant ripping out the entire wall where you now see the shelves, to add all the hardware. I felt sorry for the subs who had to do such an arduous task. They also had to carefully remove the transom window which we absolutely wanted to save.

Tearing out the old wall to add the pocket door.

Pocket door

radiant heating thermostat for floors

We've been living with this bathroom for 8 months now and honestly I would not change one single thing. Our contractor, Leah of L&D Construction in Provo, Utah was amazing as always. She is meticulous and demands perfection from her subs. She was in charge of our kitchen remodel 7 years ago as well. Ok she has been in charge of all our remodels. The bathroom took about 4 weeks total. And it's a pain to remodel because this is how we lived in our bedroom for about a month.

The fun of remodeling!

But worth it in the end!

Other sources: White paint is White Dove by Benjamin Moore. Most rooms in my house are now this color of white. I don't have the info on the Moen faucet, nor the specifics of the tiles. The denim blue tile in the shower I just found at Lowes. The gray floor tiles in the shower and bathroom, along with the white subway, is from Comtempo Tile in American Fork, Utah. The white quartz counters and shower bench are just a basic pure white quartz. 

Lattice King Size Quilt

I made a king size quilt in light gray and dark scrappy prints. Gracious I love how it turned out. I don't even think this pattern has a name. I saw some quilters call it basketweave, one called it Twinkle, one called it lattice, so I am sticking with that name. But really it's just a Snowball block alternating with a Nine Patch block. I don't do complicated patterns. Ever.

I am 6" tall with these boots and still the quilt drags on the floor. Huge!

image courtesy of Diary of a Quilter

My inspiration was this antique red and white quilt, early 20th century, found over at Diary of a Quilter. Big scale, no border. Borders are not traditional so I rarely if ever add a border. I think it dates a quilt. I want it timeless, if that's possible.

Do you know how hard it is to find larger quilt patterns for larger quilts? No, I don't mean that quilters don't offer measurements for king size quilts, they do, I mean that the scale of most quilt patterns are ridiculously tiny. For example, for this quilt I found a pattern called Twinkle that called for 6" blocks. Six-inch frickin' blocks for a king size quilt! That is insane. I would feel like I was working in a crayon factory; and my job was to put the Cornflower Blue crayons in the boxes, all day long, week after week. I would have needed 144 blocks to make a king size. I'd rather chew broken glass. I'll use this book for smaller quilts though, adorable layouts.

I decided to calculate my own measurements for a 12" block. That way I would need just 72 blocks, still a lot, but doable. I used 6.5 yards of Kona cotton in this light gray color and then bought a bunch of 5" pieces of fabrics from various small-scaled prints. I don't usually like fabric collections, I think they look too 'put together'. I opt to be my own curator of fabric.

Measurements:
-Make 36 Snowball blocks, 12". Cut your gray squares 12" and the corner squares, 4.5"
-Make 36 Nine Patch blocks, 12". Cut your patterned and gray strips 4.5" and strip sew, then cut 4.5" sections and sew into nine-patch blocks.
-These aren't great instructions, you can google how to make a Snowball and Nine Patch block. Sorry.
-Finished size is approximately 90" x 104" after washing.

You will have 9 blocks across and 8 blocks going down for a king.

Sewing this large of a project is a workout just hefting all that fabric. Notice below that not all my points match up. I am a lukewarm quilter, I am not a perfectionist. My life motto is, "it's good enough." Plus you'll never see the mis-matched points once it is sewn, quilted, and crinkly. Don't let perfectionism stop you from quilting!

I sent the quilt to a friend who has a long arm. We chose this geometric pattern. I don't like swirls, flowers, or anything froo-froo. Keep it simple, keep it geometric.

I cut 2" strips for the binding and finally bought these clips for holding the binding in place. What took me so long? Oh right, I only make a quilt every few years. It's been four years since the last. This adorable yellow print from Riley Blake is delicious. I have always loved yellow. I machine bind because life is too short to bind by hand. Again, I'd rather chew broken glass.

I always add the year I made the quilt instead of a tag on the back. It is subtle in the yellow thread, and that's the point. This is embroidered with my 1" Redwork Alphabet available on my website. You can see how I embroidered the year on this quilt and this quilt as well.

A bed layered with linens in the my favorite. Right now in February I have a down comforter folded back, and my quilt folded back as well. Euro shams in white linen, topped off with a lumbar pillow in an African mudcloth. The perfect combo of modern and cottage-y.

There's nothing like a quilt folded up at the end of a bed. Perfection.

My Family Room

Our family room is a very busy room. It gets hammered by all five of us. We use it for parties, TV watching, exercise, napping, you name it and it usually happens in this room. After ten years of living here, and various furniture layouts (click here and here for how it once looked), this current layout seems to be the best use of space.

It seems like a big room but when you consider all the space we have to leave open for walkways, it really isn't very big. and because it isn't very big we have to have appropriate sized furniture. I would love to have room to have two couches but that is not possible--simply no room. The fireplace takes up one entire wall and the TV entertainment system takes up another. Shucks.

Our 5-yr old Keaton sofa is only 78" long. And while I still love it I was a fool to order a down couch. Look at how slouchy and sloppy it looks. I am ordering new cushions for it because I am sick of how sloppy it always looks. We fluffed all the cushions last night and still they look sloppy. Do not ever order a down couch! Do not let how happy your butt cheeks are in the showroom, sitting on that sofa, allow you to be suckered into paying extra for down! You have been warned!

The coffee table is from Crate & Barrel's small-scale furniture line. Most regular coffee tables were way too big for this space. 

The green cabinet is from Four Chairs. I had the paint custom matched to that crazy green. I want to paint it navy blue now.  It used to be in my kitchen years ago but then I moved it here to be a TV stand. I believe good furniture should be able to live happily in many different rooms. 

The ottoman is the now-discontinued Ikea Klippan footstool slipcovered by me. I simply gotta have a cushy place to rest my feet when watching TV!

All the furniture in this room is several years old, but this chair is brand new this week! It completes this room, finally.

It is a swivel chair. I have been wanting a swivel chair forever so that you could easily turn it for TV watching and spare your poor neck muscles. Like I said, this small room requires some creativity to maximize important functions like TV watching. We like TV in this house.

The gallery wall was 'curated' four years ago, here's a tutorial for that. I rotate the photos/artwork sort of regularly. 

Notice in the bottom right corner of the photo above my husband's adjustable Power Block weights. This is also our exercise room. (Yes it is tacky to store them in open view but I haven't figured out a better alternative yet. My weights are smaller and fit under the green chairs.)  Just move the coffee table and ottoman and sweat away at dark-thirty in the morning. Five brutal days a week.

My green arm chairs are the Kara chair from Mitchell Gold. These are down filled just like the sofa but for some reason they don't have that slouchy look. Thank goodness! I chose to have them stain-guarded 5 years ago and thankfully that has helped them hold up really well. Too well. In fact I am tired of the green upholstery and want them recovered but it is in perfect condition. Nuts. The pillows are blue linen embroidered by me. Buy the pillows in my etsy shop.  Buy the embroidery designs here to make them yourself.

My fireplace has the ugliest tile ever but that's what the last homeowners chose so here I am ten years later still living with it. I call it Baby Barf with a touch of gray. I still have not found the perfect artwork so a simple mirror just leans against the wall. 

I keep the mantle sparsely decorated with a few vases, an unframed print I bought at the garden tomb in Jerusalem last year, and an orchid that my husband somehow gets to bloom every few months, year after year.

This corner has lots of unsightly cords so a big plant hides them nicely. A basket holds my handmade quilts, and our family photo is a gallery-wrapped canvas print from Costco. I made the drapes four years ago-- here's a tutorial.  The white table is from Ikea.

The Van Gogh artwork is from Art.com and was blogged about here. The table is at least 10 years old, purchased from Pier One Imports. It used to be my bedside table. The blue gourd lamps are from here. 

Lastly the rug is from Rugs Usa. It is 100% wool and was on sale for $300. It sheds like a dog. I thought after four years of owning it it would go completely bald and would stop shedding but nope. We vacuum up wooly-dust-bunnies every few days. Nuts. It's lovely but you have been warned.

I like an eclectic house. I don't like anything to match too much; I'd rather have things coordinate, that way I can move items from room to room when I get bored. Free makeover, ya know? 

Oh and look at that messy kitchen in the background. I do not pretend to have a well-put-together life. We are messy people on the inside and outside. Life is hard dang it. Pretty things put a smile on my face, I make no apologies about that. Sometimes I take issue with home tours on blogs because everything looks perfect when life never is. So please know this blog post is just a snapshot of how my house looks sometimes, not all the time. Ok rarely.