Bath Renovations: Refresh and Renew

The bathroom is one of the most important rooms in the house to its homeowners. Having a bathroom that fits your needs is sure to make life a bit more enjoyable. Read on to learn about four featured bathrooms, where the homeowners remodeled their own special space to their unique specifications. Also see the bathroom designs that are specifically made for man’s best friend.

A Bond for Bath

Karen Weber had gathered almost all of the parts to her puzzle of a bathroom renovation by the time she realized she needed help piecing it all together. One of her vendors steered her to Quality Design & Construction’s husband-and-wife team of Dave and Peggy Mackowski.

The amazing results were twofold: a bath Weber cherished and a prize for the Mackowskis – the Raleigh-Wake County Home Builders Association Remodelers Council 2007 STAR Award for Best Bathrooms over $50,000.

“I had an old bathroom that was built in 1984. I did not like the design of it and needed to get rid of the large Jacuzzi tub,” Weber says. “The window wasn’t centered on the tub, and the room needed more light. It was then that I realized that I would need to change the entire décor to match things up.”

The Webers had updated their kitchen a few years earlier, so they went back to Prescott Stone, the vendor who had installed their counters and picked out gray granite for the vanity top, backsplash and shallow ledge over the sinks. “I also asked them what they thought of my design,” Weber says, and had them order her dark-wood custom cabinets. It was then she began visiting plumbing suppliers in search of a tub and met the Mackowskis.

“It was an easy process,” she recalls. “While in the process of interviewing remodelers, I recall Dave and I talking about the whole design. After I had chosen them, he had me visit their office and store. I was also doing another bathroom at the time and they helped me with that as well.” 

“She [Weber] had made many choices [for the bathroom remodel],” Dave said, including a large glassed-in shower, deep, white soaking tub and travertine tile. “All we had to do was help put it all together and execute the actual work. We helped her finalize plumbing fixture selections, a replacement window, as well as selecting colors.” It was unusual to come in at this point in the process, but it worked out well.

Soaking in luxury

All Jan Salisbury wanted was a master bath where she could relax and unwind. A tub to soak in and read a book; Lots of natural light; A comfy seating area where her family could chat while she put on her make-up in the morning.

After Choate Custom Homes completed the renovation of her bathroom to the above specifications, Salisbury recalls sitting at her vanity brushing on her mascara, and turning to a friend sitting in the room’s overstuffed chair and saying, “I’m living the dream.”

So is her builder, John R. Choate, president of Choate Custom Homes in Raleigh, who recently learned the house and its bath had won the national 2007 Residential Design & Build Excellence Award from Residential Design & Build Magazine.

The almost 600-square-foot bath is decorated in soothing hues: khaki walls, cream-colored his-and-her vanities, travertine tile and dark wood trim accents. The awning windows, pitched ceiling and chandelier give the room its bright, airy appeal. But, it’s the dramatic freestanding tub in the very center of the room that steals the show. The novel approach was a suggestion from a friend, Salisbury says. And that says a lot about how the design process with Choate worked.

“Design on the fly” is what Choate called it, but when he explains the process it’s clear that he and his designer, Sondra Camerdella, put a lot of thought into each and every detail. They ask the homeowner personal questions about how they will use the room then tailoring its functionality to meet those needs.

Salisbury says what Choate means is that when she or a friend had an idea about how something should be done, he would enthusiastically incorporate it into his design. Take the tub, for example. He readily agreed to place it in the center of the room, then had the exterior painted a khaki color to complement the walls. “It cost a couple hundred dollars,” Salisbury says, “but it really had a tremendous impact on the whole room.”

Choate is very service-oriented, Salisbury says. “He makes it his passion to make your dreams a reality. He’s a great builder. It was a great experience. And that’s hard to say sometimes with houses this size.”

Transitional elements

One of the challenges in renovating a bath is how to update the existing design and fixtures without making the renovated room look like a new addition to an old house.

“That’s what makes a remodel more of a challenge, and that’s what I like,” says Barry Corbett, president of Corbett Construction Company, Inc. One of his more recent challenges was to redo the master bath at Mark and Heather Luckinbill’s 20-year-old Raleigh home. Working within the existing walls, the project called for gutting the interior, but keeping the bedroom door, the closet door and a large shuttered window with a crescent transom.
 
The layout was developed by Corbett while the color scheme, fixtures and appliances were Heather’s ideas. “She did an awesome job,” Corbett says of Heather’s choices. “It really looks sweet.”

Creamy furniture-style custom cabinets, a sage green wall and a travertine floor created a calm environment that also made room for some natural elements such as a pebble stone shower. More dramatic accents are the green-black granite vanity, freestanding tub, and the dark pewter hardware on the cabinetry and doors.

The entire bath was opened up and a curbless shower was installed. The only closed off area was the toilet room for privacy.

“A curbless shower is the right thing to do regardless of mobility issues,” Corbett says simply. “And the best part is that there is no shower door to clean.” Heather was definitely onboard with that idea, but wondered if she would be cold in the shower.

A heated floor was Corbett’s solution. Heather’s child also enjoys the openness of the bathroom and often crawls across the heated floor and into the shower to bathe with Heather.

The only part of the project that had Corbett and Heather stumped for awhile was the positioning of the tub. We knew we wanted to locate it near the window, Corbett recalls, but lengthwise it took up too much wall space. “Then, we turned it perpendicular to the wall. It took up a bit of floor space, but made room for the shower and vanity.”

“Barry is very visual,” Heather says. “He had 15 ideas the first time we went to visit him. He thought about everything. What it would look like from the outside when you entered the room or when the doors were open.”

Heather loved Corbett’s 3-D CAD drawing system that allowed her to look at the project from every angle. “He didn’t have to explain anything to me,” she says. “He could just show me. It was a wonderful process, and we love the results.”

A Bath for Barks and Bubbles

“I know Wood Wise Design & Remodeling thought I was nuts when I described what I wanted,” Terri Hamrick says of her request to include a dog shower in her 2,400-square-foot basement renovation.

“We show our dogs in competitions,” she explains. “I didn’t want to continue to bathe them in the same tub that my kids bathe in. For one thing, leaning over the low tub was hard on my back. And, I wanted a place for pictures of important dogs I’ve had, ribbons and training paraphernalia as well as the old towels and grooming supplies.”

“Those were the parameters,” says Sondra Nevitt of Wood Wise Design & Remodeling. The result recently took home the Raleigh-Wake County Home Builders Association Remodelers Council STAR award for Best Basement over $200,000. The project also included a pub-style kitchen, guest suite, screened-in porch and another shower for the two-legged members of the family, but the dog bath stole the show.

“Alot of the commercial dog grooming tubs are stainless steel laundry sinks with a large stainless steel backsplash,” Nevitt says. “The homeowner did not want that. So, she chose Wedgewood blue cabinetry, bisque subway tile for the back splash and a small white porcelain tub, which we raised almost to counter level.”

Piper, a young Belgian sheepdog, doesn’t particularly like baths, but can jump into this one on her own, Hamrick says. “It came together nicely, and would be easy to convert into a downstairs laundry room if we ever sold the house.”

Across town, Emma, a 6-year-old yellow lab, is one of the few dogs in town whose bath rivals Piper’s.

Corbett Construction Company, Inc. built the mudroom for homeowners Edgar and Sonja Vega, complete with Emma’s tiled shower stall with hand-held spray. “We just didn’t want to bathe Emma outside during the winter or in our shower,” says Sonja. “We needed to keep her [Emma] contained.”

Although Emma hasn’t learned to like baths any more than she did before, she is comfortable in her new shower, Sonja says. And if children Niklas, 2, and Alexandra, 5, get muddy from being outside, “we can wash them both off at the same time, and it keeps the house clean.”

JANE SHEALY IS A FREELANCE WRITER