Sometimes, trying to figure out what they were thinking is challenging. And so it was with the master bath in the mid-century ranch.The bit of blue that you see is all there was – the remainder of the walls were a pinkish white. Perhaps they thought it was reminiscent of the azure skies of a Texas Spring.  The free-floating cabinet in the perfect position to bang one’s head was a storage solution, I suppose, but itself cries out for a solution. And the lonely little towel bar? Well, there is a bidet there, after all. Even though it’s not a common fixture in north central Texas, where there is a bidet, there should be a towel.

Like the rest of the house, the space in the master bath was more than adequate and, while maybe not ideal, the plumbing didn’t have to be rerouted. All in all, it had the potential for a pretty cost-effective redo.The remainder of the room looked like this:

Obviously, the rolled linoleum flooring had to go, along with the Hollywood lighting and dated mirrors, and the hardware had to be updated. But the configuration of the space wasn’t horrible and the surest way to blow the top out of your budget for bathrooms is to start with massive plumbing relocations. If you can work with what’s there, do so. And so we did.

Wood-grain-patterned ceramic tile on the floors made the entire room feel much richer, as did painting the cabinetry with Benjamin Moore Dash of Pepper – one of my favorite colors. We replaced the Hollywood lighting with LED sconces – 150 watt equivalent, 5000 (daylight) temp – that gave more than adequate illumination, particularly in combination with the pre-existing pot lights in the ceiling. We replaced the pre-cast synthetic marble countertops with fine-grained granite and used under-mount sinks. We kept a grab bar on the tub but switched it to one that complemented the new hardware on the cabinets. The shower had to be completely re-tiled, so we used 3×5 beveled subway tiles in a brick pattern and penny-tiles on the floor.  The new faucets accented the contemporary lines. Going completely frameless with the shower enclosure would have made the door function awkward, so we went “semi” frameless. New top-down, bottom-up window treatments made a lot more sense than the standard mini-blinds (no mini-blind fans in our house).

And the mirrors!

The mirrors were the funky spice that made the whole room. Debra found them at Wisteria and we fell in love with them. Yes, conventional wisdom would hold that they are too “taste specific” for general appeal. When Debra eventually marketed the house, we gave buyers the option to replace them with more traditional mirrors of the buyer’s choice (within a reasonable price range, of course) prior to closing. No one who looked at the house was interested in exercising that option.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a pic of the finished “blue area” that started this post. We left the bidet – it was there, after all – painted the walls to match the remainder of the bath and replaced the floating cabinet with wide, contemporary, open shelving and woven baskets.

Next up – the main living and dining areas.