Designing a Petite Bathroom

I have been in the process of renovating my bathrooms for about one year. The guest bathroom was easier to design because it was a standard size, meaning I had I enough room to put a 24 inch vanity and a regular toilet in the same wall without having problems with inspection standards.

I had an idea of what I wanted to do for that bathroom and after doing lots of research, I was able to create what I wanted. I even added a second medicine cabinet which I now use as an apothecary in the place where I used to have an old fashion laundry basket.

For my vanity and medicine cabinet I used the Restoration Hardware's Cartwright Collection. I had no option but to use the powder room size vanity but I increase the storage with the extra-large medicine cabinet.

But by the time I moved to my master bathroom, I found lots of difficulties. Beside it being much smaller than my guest bathroom, I had weird walls and columns that I needed to add to my equation.

For more information about my guest bathroom, click here.

How to Create More Storage in a Petite Bathroom

I have been renovating my bathrooms for about 1 year, an a major problem I found was trying to find storage. With the renovation, I need to stick to building codes and as I result I need to decrease from a standard 24 inch vanity to a 20 inch wide vanity.
In that process, I had to get creative with what to do to add storage. I knew switching to a pedestal sink was going to be significant on regards storage and after lots of compromising with my husband I won the battle and got a custom made vanity 20 inch wide vanity.

Other things that we could do to add storage to a bathroom is:

• Take measurements of your vanity and see how big can you go with a vanity, if not,
• Buying a 6 inch-deep mirror medicine cabinet (rather than the conventional 4 inch deep). This way you can store more product and not sacrifice the look of the bathroom. Important to know that you need to know the cavity hole for the medicine cabinet before ordering/buying the medicine cabinet. I you don't mind the couple of inches off the wall, then go for it. But if you can't, then you can't. 
• You also have the option of adding a toilet-topper cabinet (about 9 inches deep) over the toilet. You can buy some pre-made which stand over the toilet, or you can hang one of the wall. Depending of the look you want, if you already have a mirror cabinet then you can add a mirrorless medicine cabinet there too. If it can be inset, it would look better design wise.
• You can also add a decorative tower of shelves in a corner of your bathroom.
• Add hooks where ever you need. Remember that the over the door hooks look temporary and unorganized. The sooner you decide the location and number of hooks you want to add to your door, the better it would look design wise. 
• I've seen people adding basket on the back of their bathroom doors for toiler paper, towels  spares and/ or toiletries.
• See if you can buy soap dispensers and/or toothbrush holders that go on the wall in order to clean out your vanity. It will not change the design and it will make your live so much easier.

I'm still working on my bathroom and I will eventually add pictures to this post, but if you have any other ideas to add storage in a petite bathroom, please let me know.

Bathroom Remodel: Subway Tile Ideas

I live in an apartment building that was built in the 60s. I bought my place in 2006. The previous owner did an ugly update with pink tiles and after years and years of suffering by looking at it, we finally decided to update it this year.

My husband and I had been looking for ideas for years and we decided that we wanted subway tiles. We liked the look and we thought it would bring the apartment back to a classic look.

Although we wanted to go all the way up to the ceiling with it, an ugly vent (mandated by code) is in one of the walls by the bathtub and we are unable to make it that high. We compromise on many looks and thanks to the internet, I was able to collect plenty of looks in order to pick and choose what I like.

Here are a collection of pictures I collected to help me brainstorm with what I like.

Once I decided on the walls, I was ready to move to the vanity and Medicine Cabinet. I used Restoration Hardware Cartwright Collection.

Recycling Old Home Fixtures

As I embark in a construction adventure, I felt very sadden to know that many of the furniture and fixture that were in very good condition needed to be thrown out in the garbage. I searched all over the internet for ideas or suggestions of what I can do with this items but I found very few.

What I was able to do was reuse my old kitchen cabinets and created a bed for my guess room. I did this by arranging the cabinets to mold the bed. The short cabinets sat as is and the tall cabinets were laid sideways on the floor. In areas that were uneven, I used the inside shelves to balance it all out. I left a small hole on the side of the bed so I can store suitcases under the bed. Then I put on top the box spring and created the bed. You can add a bed skirt over the box spring and you hide the carpentry.
This idea created a lot of space and storage in my little guess room so I was very happy with it.

I wanted to reuse the fixture but did not find any company that would take them. So the rest of my items where thrown away.
As I started to remodeled my bathroom I did a similar search.


Connecticut
The Reconstruction Center  located in Newington, CT 06111 
731 New Britain Avenue (Rte 174) (Twin City Plaza)
I found my this place in Connecticut that may take some items if they are in good condition. They ask for the items to have its complete pieces (toilets with tank and tank cover). Their motto is that "if you wouldn't buy, they don't want it". Here is a link to this store criteria.

Pennsylvania
ShopDemoDepot located in Mount Pleasant PA
One Cooks Way, Mt. Pleasant PA 15666
This place also has a criteria. 

My 10 x 7 Kitchen Renovation

As I discussed in a previous post. I took me a lot of time to find the perfect contractor for my super custom Kitchen Cabinets (See Remodeling a Kitchen).
With a lot of work I found this company All Star Woodworking located in Thornwood New York that were able to create the cabinets that I wanted for so long.  This company was very professional and they cater to all my needs. At the end of the work, I was absolutely happy. I picked classic white for the cabinets and use black galaxy granite on the counter top and floors. The combination was gorgeous. We also painted the kitchen walls cranberry red, which looked fantastic with all the combination.
One thing I wanted was a back splash of cranberry red glass tiles for easy clean up, but because I wasn't able to find the tile I wanted I opted to hold on that till I find the perfect tile.
After this project was done. I was very happy with my kitchen. However, the need of a backslash was clear when the walls would splatter with water or with grease from cooking. It was in 2011 that I finally found the perfect tile. It was called Red Hot Mamma from Artistic Tile and it was exactly what I needed. I opted to work with my own contractor (Contractor #3), who kept telling me over and over again that he know what he was doing. But from the moment I saw the first tile go in, I knew the guy did not have my best interest at heart. I complained but he kept saying that he knew what he was doing and that at the end it would look great. As the job continued, I felt more and more frustrated till I reached I point when I told him to take it all out. He didn't and continued. I opted for black grout, but turned out the contractor used clear glue died clear and you could see the mesh in the back. Also when I used the black grout, due to little glue, the grout moved to the back of the red tile, staining it back, not longer looking red.
The job is sitting as is. Every time I see my kitchen I cry since I know it has the potential to be beautiful. I might just have to pay to get the job done all over again.
I will post pictures in the future.
   

Remodeling a Kitchen

Usually when I person has decided to remodel their kitchen, they have hit a point in their home living when they are sick of what they are looking at or what they want to change. They already have an idea of what they would like and what they want to avoid.

With a big kitchen, things are easier since there are so many options and in reality, one can do whatever they want. In my case, my kitchen is a 10 by 7 and is very small so my options where minimal.

I collected a number of kitchen pictures and magazines in order to get ideas of to create the perfect kitchen for my small space, but nothing was useful. Even the pictures for galley kitchen were much spacious than what I had. So on regards a different set up for my little kitchen I was stuck.

I had to keep my already set working triangle (sink, stove & fridge). I couldn't move the sink to another location because of piping and I couldn't do an island because of a gas pipe in the stove wall. I would have love an open island (stove included) so I could open up my space and make the kitchen bigger. Unfortunately, that wasn't an option.

One thing that I had was super tall ceilings and one thing that I wanted to do was to get custom cabinets that went to the ceiling. The cabinet stores that called themselves custom had cookie cutter cabinets that were pieced together to make the kitchens people see on the magazines, but because of the weird measurements in my kitchen I couldn't do that.
The magazines and books targeted for small spaces and kitchens, did not provided me with many ideas., I basically used the color combination from my previous kitchen but this time I wanted to do it right, with lots of lots of glamour.
I postponed the work on my kitchen for about 1 year, till I finally found a company that made real custom furniture. Then, the adventure began....(See the story in My 10 x 7 Kitchen Renovation)