Design for the Smallest Bathroom in the World

Let's chat about my design philosophy. I believe in saving my clients' money. I believe in using what we have. I believe in using architectural salvage. I believe in creative design solutions. I believe beautiful design saves money. I believe wonderful design is life-affirming and life-changing.

This past fall I had an opportunity to design a small bathroom in the Ballard. A long-time client of mine called to tell me the tile was falling off the walls in her shower and she didn't have a single second to deal with it because her daughter was at Children's fighting for her life. And, she said, "Keep in mind, I'm on a very tight budget."

Here are the "befores" ~ not terribly inviting:

     

When I went in to see the bathroom, I knew we needed to find a beautiful solution for the lack of storage and the very deep window that had turned into an unfortunate catch-all. Custom storage was out of the question. It was not in our budget.

However, without the "problem" window, the storage and the bathroom wouldn't have been nearly as beautiful. Finding a beautiful solution turned a "difficult, problem" window" into a star! Using a couple of sink bases from IKEA, I effectively doubled the storage space and put it all behind doors. Nothing like zapping the clutter of a very small room for a feeling of deep satisfaction. A beautiful solution! 

Every decision was a constant reminder that money was tight; the budget was the major issue. While the contractors gutted the space and restudded the walls, I started looking for a very small, very pretty vanity. I tried all my favorite salvage haunts ~ 2nd Use, Earthwise, the ReStore, etc. and Craigslist. At the first three, I didn't find a thing. On Craigslist, I scored. I found the fabulous marble vanity and sink for $50.










So, we have a lovely vanity and we have solved the storage. Toilet? The existing one was very plain vanilla. I found a darling one with double flush capabilities on Craigslist for $50. Done.

So, what about the tile, the floor, the shower? Well, one of the most wonderful bathrooms I've ever experienced is in a very small boutique hotel in Florence. I mean the room was tiny by anyone's standards, but, it was glorious. It was all crema marfil marble. Certainly, there was no way to do a marble bathroom on our budget but there were things we could do. What we needed was another beautiful solution. I found some very well-priced honed (not slippery) 6x6 crema marfil marble tiles for the shower floor at Home Depot (who knew?) and around the corner from that there was a pile of large scale porcelain tile that exactly matched it ($2.00 sf) Done! And, beautiful.


I did a quick sketch of the tile layout for the installer. For the walls, I decided on what is called in the trade "French Sanitary White" ~ clean white tile in different sizes with matching trim from Home Depot. A beautiful solution! The final effect is elegant and luxurious. Using the chair rail and braid trim pieces along the formerly difficult window sill established a nice line that allowed the deep window sill to really be the star. Following that line into and around the shower effectively expanded the space visually. Done. And, beautiful.

I matched the wall paint to the crema marfil (a wonderful chamois Sherwin Williams color called "Interactive Cream"), added a band of small 2x2 colored feature tiles in a checkerboard pattern around the bottom of the wall in my client's desire to celebrate the family's Hispanic heritage, bought the glass towel bar on Craigslist, found the wonderful Waterworks faucet (our biggest splurge), added a couple of alcoves and a shelf in the shower, new down lighting, a new fan, and hung my client's Scotty dog art and, voila, beautiful bathroom.

Using a combination of architectural salvage, vintage items and an eye to finding a beautiful solution at every opportunity, I was able to create a luxurious jewel box of a bathroom at a staggeringly low price. All good things when we still face recession worries. And, best of all? I turned problems into challenges and challenges into beautiful solutions.