Gorgeous Spa Master Bathroom Remodel

When some floor tiles outside our shower came loose, we knew we had a leaking problem in our master bathroom. We had to do something!

Living in the Pacific Northwest, it gets quite cold in the winter months and our master bathroom was always the coldest room in our house. I longed for heated tile floors, so we decided to take this shower leak as an opportunity to re-do our master bath so it worked for us.

Here's what our master bathroom looked like before we started:

Vanity area before:

We put tons of thought into our new bathroom design - I was thinking "glammy spa". We ensured we had every decision made on all fixtures, tile, etc. prior to demo. We had everything we would need for the new bathroom in-hand prior to the job starting to avoid any unnecessary delays in our project. We planned it to every last detail.

How does that old saying go? "We make plans, and God laughs." Yeah, that applies here... in spades!

The first contractor we hired said the full master bath remodel would be a 3-week job. The majority of the job was demo-ing out the old bathroom and a lot of tile work. The contractor said tiling was his "wheelhouse" and really sold us on his tiling skills. Let's just say that tiling is NOT his wheelhouse.

Two months later, the contractor said he was finished. It was like a joke. The worst tile job ever. It looked like a 12-year old did it. Botched is putting it nicely. Everything was a mess... even things that were fine before he started. He also used Bostik's Quartzlock2 urethane-based grout incorrectly all over the whole bathroom, so all the tile had this grout haze that looked like milk had been splattered everywhere. No product known to man would remove it. No amount of scrubbing could get it off. It was a disaster! The entire bathroom had to be torn out (again) and we had to start over from the beginning.

So, needless to say, we fired the first contractor and got a new tile guy. After 5 months, our bathroom renovation from hell is finally finished. Yes, FIVE long months.

The new tile guy we hired was fantastic! Truly a master at his craft. The bathroom came out beautifully!

Here's the overall finished bathroom:

For the vanity area, we designed a new more functional vanity to better suit our needs. We split our large mirror in two and added the vanity tower cabinet for extra storage space. Our bathroom has 12-foot tall ceilings, so we added crown moulding to anchor the ceiling a bit more. We painted the whole space with a beautiful, soothing color from Sherwin Williams (Dewy #6469).

We couldn't be happier with the gorgeous tile work in the shower:

We added a pretty teak shower seat from Moen. It's functional and beautiful. We love that it folds up out of the way when not in use. It's a nice space-saver!

Over the bathtub, we really wanted to feature the beautiful mosaic tile, so we added a mosaic accent wall with a large niche in it. We also added a sparkly chandelier and a recessed in-wall TV to make bath time that much more fun!

We tied in the shower mosaic tile by adding a mosaic backsplash to the vanity area across the room. We also really wanted a marble countertop, but we didn't want the maintenance that marble can require, so we opted for a quartz counter from Cambria. The style is Torquay and the edge profile is Basin.

Another favorite feature are these beautiful vanity knobs by Schaub. At first, I was worried that they were too "Kardashian"-like, but they were so pretty, I didn't care.

We tore out the old MDF window sill and replaced it with the same quartz we used for the counter. We also swapped out all of our fixtures from the dark oil-rubbed bronze we had before to all brushed nickel. We're hoping the brushed nickel does better with the hard water.

We added lots of technology in the bathroom too, by adding automated lights and fans, dimmers and timers, LED accent lighting and, of course, heated floors.

All in all, we are so happy with the new bathroom. Our 5-month long renovation nightmare is now becoming a distant memory.