Bathroom Addition

As I mentioned earlier, a bathroom addition is highest priority on our renovation list.  The house of course was built before indoor plumbing, so at some point a toilet was put under the stairs.  Later, when the French decided regular bathing was a good idea, a shower was added and drywall put up, taking space out of the kitchen.  Not only is it a cramped little bathroom, but the water seeps out of the shower into the drywall and presumably the floor, so we want to get it out as soon as we can. I also hate shower curtains.

Shower

Current Bathroom

Because I have a hard time with spatial visualization (thus I'm not an engineer or interior designer), I made Jörg tape everything off with me so I could get an idea of how it would fit together. There are two windows in the back bedroom and we didn't want to give up the beautiful light by closing it in, so the bathroom will be open to the bedroom.  We plan to have some type of panels up the wall to the horizontal line so that the plumbing and electrical can go in behind, without having to cut into the old stone walls.  This will also provide a ledge which one can put toiletries on while getting ready.  I had wanted the tub parallel to the window, but the contractor and Jörg think it is better perpendicular, so they are probably going to win out.

The picture below is the original inspiration for what we want to do with the wooden ledge and the Kohler Brockway double sink that we fell in love with. Of course it is quite expensive, but we never found anything else that quite measured up.

We haven't completely settled on the color, but we are leaning toward leaving the upper wall and the rest of the bedroom white and painting the panelling in the typical grayish/green of Southern France.

Deciding on the tub has been the biggest challenge. We wanted a Victorian-style claw foot cast iron tub, since it will be the centerpiece of the room, but they are so big and heavy that it would be prohibitive to get one up the narrow old wooden staircase both because of the size and the weight.  We then looked at other options like acrylic, enameled steel, and composite materials.  Finding what we want is doubly difficult because we have to find vendors in Europe who will ship to France. Because I can't deal with negotiating with people, this part has fallen on Jörg, who is quite over it. One of the options under consideration is a composite material from a  British company called Victoria + Albert. They are made from "finely ground volcanic limestone carefully blended with high quality resins." Because we aren't familiar with the material, we located a store in San Francisco that carries their line for a trial run.

Amazingly, we both really like the tub, although the display model they had (above) is the standard 60" length and the one we plan to get is 7" longer.

Finally, Jörg fell in love with these industrial-style sconces from a German company.

After three weeks of going back and forth, I think we have finally settled on the basics. Jörg even made a spreadsheet of all of the options we are considering - very un-Jörglike when it comes to matters of the home.

Although finding fixtures we can agree on is going to cost us an arm and a leg, since this is our forever home we are going to make the investment. Our philosophy is perfectly summed up in this sign we saw today in a store in Bernal Heights. It is a school uniform/fancy dress store for children (saw it and stopped in for a princess dress for my visit to see Mei over February Break), where a sweet old lady has been selling uniforms to kids of the poorer neighborhoods of San Francisco for 34 years.

Thank God we are not renovating an entire home all at once! I don't think our marriage or our budget could handle it.