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Waukee Project: Master Bedroom & Bath

On this blog I have revealed the kitchen, great room, guest bath and now, finally, the master bedroom and bath. Not to seem repetitive, but for those who didn't read the other blog posts, here's a quick recap.

My client is a gentleman who initially hired me to update his kitchen and master bathroom. We ended up gutting the entire first floor of his ranch-style home. Everything from soup to nuts, as they say!

His only firm request was to keep the (recently installed) window coverings and two pieces of art in his great room. Yep, I had landed a dream client! This is not to say I didn't have a budget to work within or that he didn't have opinions but he respected my talents and trusted me to create a space that would represent his style.

As an aside, the most successful client/designer partnerships are those where there is trust. I think the designer has to earn that trust and it's definitely a collaborative process but the client should be willing to take a few leaps of faith here and there and trust his/her designer's expertise because, after all, that's why they were hired.

In our initial meeting Mr. Client told me he wanted his bathroom to feel like a nice hotel. He liked the look of open shelves in the vanity for towels and wanted the height of the vanity to be quite a bit taller than what was originally there. The typical height for a bathroom vanity is 30 - 32 inches. We went with 36 inches, which is the standard for kitchens. In the industry, this is referred to as comfort height.

The photos of bathrooms that he was attracted to most were those that used dark colors throughout and this was our inspo.

From here I presented a mood board and proposed tile.

By the way, I love the texture of the floor tile. It reminds me of a men's tweed coat.

Regarding the design process, one thing I do for all my clients is set up a shared Pinterest Board for each of the rooms we are working on. Mr. Client really appreciated this because it cut down on in-person meetings and allowed him the ability to peruse options after work and at his leisure. Let's use choosing wall sconces for the bathroom as an example of how slick this works. I Pinned quite a few options and he Pinned a few too. It's also nice because he can make comments right on our board and note his favorites. Next, I select two or three options and send to Mr. Client for consideration. We discuss, make our final decision and place the order. Boom. Done.

Alright, let's get into the photos shall we?

Before

Before

We replaced the open wire shelving with an enclosed linen closet.

Before

The bathroom door presented a challenge. It was very awkwardly placed. When open it covered almost half of the shower and made the room feel smaller. To solve this dilemma, we ended up moving the hinges to the opposite side and made the door swing outward toward the bedroom.

Before

By replacing the fiberglass insert with tile we gained a little more real estate in the shower.

Great accessories make the space!

I love the knurling on the pulls below. You will also see it on the kitchen cabinet hardware, lighting, kitchen appliances and even the curtain rod in the master bedroom. It's a very subtle detail that adds continuity, texture, interest and a dash of industrial.

The plumbing fixtures are from Kohler in their Titanium finish.

Instead of pencil tile for the trim I used metal edging called, Shluter. Shluter provides a cleaner line for a more contemporary look.

Now on to the master bedroom. I'll keep the narrative brief. We painted, replaced carpet, trim, doors, bedding, art....basically everything except the furniture and the plantation shutters, which we plan to install in 2019. Here is the mood board.

For the bedding, I was inspired by my favorite menswear patterns and fabrics. Pinstripes, tartan plaid and charcoal wool equals YUM in my book.

Before

Before

Here's that knurling again!

I hope you enjoyed this reveal series.If you would like to see the other reveals in this project, go to the tab labeled "Blog" and look for other posts titled, "Waukee Project". If you would like to see more photos of this project and others go to the tab labeled "Galleries" and select "Design Projects" from the drop down menu.

As always, thanks for stopping by. XOXO

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