Market Report: Soaking Tubs

I got a great email from a reader yesterday urging me to do a tub post, because she's considering remodeling her bathroom -- thank you for your email, it's a great idea. Her question to me was specifically about soaking tubs and the advantages or disadvantages of various styles, as well as materials that retained heat. Jets aren't her thing because of how much of a pain they are to clean, and frankly, I've never liked the idea of jetted tubs. It's just never the look I go for if I'm starting with a clean slate -- save it for the backyard and wine coolers ;)

I pulled a few images that are always my go-to's when concepting. To me, they are all timeless and upscale from top to bottom, and all of them have awesome tubs.

Brooke Gianetti

Decor Pad

Brooke Gianetti

Also, what a great treatment with the panel moulding-esque treatment to the tub. A really inexpensive trick with pencil that makes the shower/tub area feel very custom and elegant.

M. Elle Designs

Like you're surprised to see this one. I think it is on every designer's brain permanently. The tub from Lefroy Brooks is insane. I would die to even be in the same room with that tub. And what do you know, Kohler is making a verrry similar one.

This is how I like to do drop-in tubs. I prefer to incorporate them with a wainscotting-type surround and top it with stone. The same goes for "unincorporated" free standings: make it a statement of it's own if for some reason a traditional soaker doesn't work for you. For ideas, Michael Smith's Kallista tubs are all shown on the website like this.

Turner Davis Interiors

I think this is a great example of an amazing tub in a small bathroom. This tub is probably up against a corner, but it still feels luxurious because we get the wonderful shape and it was probably a creative solution for a small bath. Kohler, I believe, has corner tubs in this style.

Nate Berkus

Another silver tub, I know, but it's a great shape so indulge me. The bottom is more contemporary and the sides have a more severe angle to them. To me, it's a more masculine tub, almost industrial, and it would still be beautiful done in a monochromatic scheme.

On to options. I have to come clean, I love Faucetdirect.com. I think it's an awesome resource and their pricing is consistently great. I buy fixtures, fittings, the whole lot right from them because I've had great luck and their inventory on high-end items is extensive. Most of the tubs from below are from them and even on sale.

Porcher - $1000.05 (on sale)

Cast iron drop-in, I'm not as crazy about the shape, but overall it's a good looking tub that still incorporates cast iron at around the 1k mark. Because, of course, cast-iron is out there, but the challenge was to find them at the lower price range. In a traditional bathroom with high-end finishes, I think this shape would work well.

Porcher - $882.05 (on sale)

It's acrylic, but personally, I think that unless you upgrade to a radiant or inline heat system, you're never going to win the battle against cooling water. Cast iron will help, but if bath time is your only "me time" you probably are hiding out in there for awhile... it's not just me... right?

Kohler - $768.72

Another acrylic tub, but by Kohler and a great shape and an amazing price.

One of my first stops for cast iron tubs are always the salvage yards. This cast iron tub happens to already be in great condition and is gigantic - it's a two person coming in at 75". But because this one is already near perfect, you'll pay for it. I've found tubs in terrible shape and had them re-furbished at a cost that doesn't even compare to what I would have paid for one in good condition. To find a salvage yard near you, try searching for terms similar to "architectural building salvage (insert your city)." You will be surprised at the hole-in-the-wall places that pop up near you. Craigslist too -- I've driven way too far to pick up tubs, but for $150 bucks, it's worth it!

Cheviot

I also couldn't resist this cast iron beauty. It's beautiful and while it's not in the cheap and cheerful category, I don't think it's unreasonable for a freestanding soaker made from cast iron.

And while it's definitely not in the inexpensive category, for serious bathers who don't want to lose heat, MTI makes a large assortment of tubs with "Thermaltherapy" options. They have a number of patents out there so to a certain extent, they have got bathtub heating cornered. Their inline heating system is operated with on/off switching and does not necessitate jets in order to work. It gently recirculates the water -- no disruptions and no cooling off. Additionally, they have a "Radiance" heat system that can heat the tub itself, much like a radiant flooring. No chilly tubs and cold metal when you put your shoulders against it.

Good luck on the remodel, Katerina! Go for it, it's always worth it.

Update: Builder to Custom

I hope you don't mind crappy iPhone photos, because on a jobsite, that's about as good as it gets! I managed to snap a few pictures of some of the recent progress that's been going on and I'm happy to say that a lot happened last week. Hooray!

Gosh I wish this photo was better -- hindsight is 20/20. You can see that the cabinets are in and that the statuary marble is up, but not grouted and the newly milled shiplap is installed on the back wall. We're breaking up the wainscotting that is everywhere so that the bathroom has a breather. Plus, wait until the mirrors are hung and the three sconces are up -- so excited to see it painted and installed.

The new wall that faces the keeping room off the kitchen. Remember what it looked like before? Such a huge transformation already. Shiplap has gone up above the custom fireplace and it also marries with shiplap that backs all of the built-ins.

And last, but certainly not least, a humble pic of what will be a not-so-humble kitchen. The new chandelier arrives any day that will go above the island and the cabinetry will be finishing up next week while the painters also get started (it's going to be a crazy week!). The second row of cabinets help fill the 15' ceilings and Thassos marble is waiting to be grouted. I'm so excited about this kitchen. The faucets went in on Thursday and seeing them sparkling against that Calcutta made me want to tear up! Is that sad? I can be totally unmoved by the saddest episode of Oprah, but give me a newly installed Perrin & Rowe faucet and I'll choke up! I guess it's something only a certain group of us would understand...?

Onwards to a busy week. Thanks for bearing with me on the lack of posts. I have been burning the midnight oil since the new year (a classic example, simultaneously ordering at the drive through while on the phone with marble yards -- it was confusing for all parties, trust me!) but it will mean lots more updates of various projects and some good stuff coming up.

Have a good weekend!

So Long Faux River Rock!!!

It's a big week in these parts, well actually, a few big weeks! And for my clients, a few big weeks that are going to feel very long while they are living out of boxes and cooking with a microwave. But they say good things come to those who wait, and baby, this is a GREAT thing. Remember the house I posted about last week when I mentioned the builder to custom remodel? Well the cabinets arrived this week from Pennsylvania and demo started on the kitchen and attached sitting room. Just to give you an idea of what it was like before:

Great appliances were about the only thing the builder had splurged on so they are being re-used in the new kitchen. Other than that, low-quality cabinets in mid-tone wood and pre-fab granite. (Forgive the photo, we're feeling a little shy, aka, we did not know that photo was being taken!)

The beautiful media wall o' boxes and the three little pigs chimney. Why the builder thought it was a good idea to make a grid system, regardless of opposing drywall confounds me. Also, my client could literally FIT in these if she wanted to because they are SO deep! Who wants cubbies that deep at 14' high!?

And now, in progress after today:

Popping off the rock - I wish I had a picture of it with nothing, it's amazing the difference it makes, even at this stage and a few moments after this was taken, the top boxes were drywalled over and later the fireplace is being reshaped.

The wall where the range used to be. In the new kitchen, this wall is shortened and holds the bulk of the appliances - fridge, double ovens and microwave.

The biggest transformation: We ripped out the wall that used to separate the butler's pantry from the kitchen. The new plan opens up the space and gives the room a huge run of counters and it's now a wrap-around kitchen -- no hidden areas that don't get used and her desk area is actually a part of the space. Not to mention direct access to the dining room and another bonus is that it makes the soon-to-be-installed grasscloth visible from the kitchen. Gorgeous!

I'll continue to keep you posted. I also have a few more pictures of before and afters in this home and I can't wait to share more. It's truly a great example of what can happen to these "big box" homes when you have great clients and the opportunity to make it happen.

60's & 80's - A beautiful combination

From our 1911 Craftsman we moved across the lake to the dreaded land of suburbia, the eastside. The place I told my husband that I would move "over my dead body" now became our home. We bought a 1960's daylight rambler that looked like it had been lifted straight out of a trailer park. Seriously.

What it did have was a view of Bellevue, Seattle and the Olympic mountains on a big lot. It was in a good neighborhood with a great school. But it also had shag carpet, an inside BBQ in the party room (aka downstairs playroom), a bathroom that had a pseudo stripper pole as a divider for the toilet and vanity, and every inch was covered in wallpaper from the 60's and the mauve and blue variety from the eighties. It was a huge cosmetic interior and exterior project.

We were feeling brave from our last project. This would be easy. It was cosmetic after all. So what if we now had a baby. We could still do everything ourselves. That was our crazy mindset as we moved into the new house. Needless to say, our son rocked our renovation world.

We tackled it room by room instead of the whole house and we brought in a contractor to do most of the work. We started with the downstairs party room as it was in it's original 60's glory and I was scared of what might be living in the carpet! I can see it now - a family gathered around the indoor grill roasting marshmellows. That carpet had to come out and fast!

Once the downstairs was livable (not finished but livable), we moved upstairs to tackle the outside and main living areas. Here are a few before pictures.

The outside during the renovation. You can glimpse the original mobile home.

The upstairs living room fireplace. This brick fireplace is over six feet long. Lovely wood paneling. Imagine this fireplace downstairs with another two openings on the left for the indoor grill and firewood storage below. How they didn't burn the house down I'll never know.

The updated eighties kitchen. Notice the orange formica countertops with the oak cabinets and bay window. The backsplash was harvest gold with leaves imprinted in the tile. You can't see the harvest yellow linoleum floor that tied into the backsplash. This is the danger of following trends.

An example of some of the wallpaper in the house. Every inch, and I mean every inch, was covered. It took me weeks just to remove it all.

Our friends thought we were crazy. How could we have given up our beautiful old home in the city for this? They didn't see the potential in this old rambler.

Now they think we're geniuses.

Circa 1998 - 2002, Part 1

I grew up with a real estate mother who was always taking me through houses. I learned to appreciate a good house from a house that had potential from a house that no amount of money could fix. This was the 70's and raising a house and rebuilding wasn't part of our culture or vocabulary. My mother was and is, also a closet interior designer. Always moving furniture around, ripping out walls, repainting - you never knew what you'd find when you came home. She also had a passion for junking and collecting antiques before it was fashionable. She taught me to find a treasure on the side of the road or in a little crowded store. The thrill of the hunt was part of my DNA and my mother nurtured it.

My step-dad is an architect and once we blended families we needed a much larger house. As a result, I spent my high school years living in a house that he was building for us. After cramming 5 kids into a small rental for over a year, we bit the bullet and moved into the shell of the house. The kitchen wasn't finished and we had one bathtub as the only running water and sheets as divider walls. A wood stove heated the entire 5,000 square foot house. Needless to say we spent a lot of time in our ski clothes. We spent weekends shoveling gravel or dirt or whatever needed to be done. It was a family effort. It was glorious and fun. I learned a lot about houses and myself.

Fast forward to 1998. Seattle was in the middle of the real estate boom years. Houses had many bids over the asking price or weren't even coming on the market. Prices where climbing by the day.

My husband and I had been married a year. We wanted our first house and wanted to stay in the city. We happened to find a 1911 Craftsman house in Wallingford that had just come on the market and after I ran through it for 5 minutes, and we made an offer.

It was one of the worst houses I'd ever seen.

It had been a rental for over 20 years. Ceilings with water damage; A dead bird in the shag carpet of the scary torture attic (and I mean scary attic!); One bathroom where if you sat down on the toilet you're knees hit the bathtub; Pepto Bismol pink walls in the living room and original 1920's wallpaper in the dining room. The kitchen was so bad it wasn't even functional.

We were young and naive. We didn't understand the scope of the project we had just embarked on and it became our life. We were fortunate enough to have great friends who lived a street away that offered to let us move into their basement while we got the house to move in condition. Meaning, once again and not the last, working plumbing. We spent every hour outside of work rehabbing our house on a newlywed budget. It was sweat equity at it's best and this was prior to craigslist so it was harder to find treasures on a budget.

We moved into the main floor of the house, took the upstairs down to the studs and then closed the upstairs door until we had the time and money to tackle the giant project. It took us about 2 years to finally get to it.

Other than plumbing and electrical we did everything ourselves. Raising ceilings, removing a brick fireplace than ran through all three floors of the house, tiling kitchens and bathrooms, installing wainscoting and cabinets, creating a patio with the used bricks from the chimney, fixing leaded windows. You name it - we did it. We worked many nights after work until 1 am and did the same the next night. Did I mention that we didn't have a garage and it was 25 steep steps to the front door? 25 steps to haul all of our materials -- claw foot tubs, bricks! Good thing I was in my twenties.

By 2002 we had our first son and needed more space. The house was finished and we needed to move. We were addicting to renovations and we needed a new project.

Houses, remodeling and decorating is in my blood. Anything (well, almost anything when it comes to houses) is possible if you are willing to do the work or pay for it to be done. It can be very rewarding and fun.

I hope you enjoy the before and during photos.

Living Room, Dining Room During. The pink walls are still visible but the original wallpaper had been stripped by this time.


Kitchen during the demo phase. The fireplace ran through this room so we had to take everything done to the studs and start over.

Me. This was a common sight during those years. My friends couldn't believe that I would get dirty and do this work myself. It was normal to stop by and see me with a tool belt and a nail gun putting up wainscoting or installing hexagon tile. Very glamorous.

Part of the original bathroom. You can see where the tub was. All floor joists had to be replaced. All in all, this room was gutted to the studs.


Bathroom during construction. I found an original claw foot tub and did the bathroom in the period style.

Upstairs on the day of demo.

Chimney that ran through the house. This is an upstairs view in the middle of demo. You can see the sagging walls and water damage. Pretty tile floor that was under the scary shag orange carpet. Dead bird is gone by now.

Once the walls were down. Chimney still has to go....

The upstairs once it was completely gutted. A blank canvas.

Check back for the "after" pictures.