master bathroom update

This before-and-after is even more dramatic than the guest bathroom's, because when we moved in, our master bathroom wasn't even a bathroom. It was a closet. Inside of another closet. With a sink in it.

See?

 

Very strange. We gutted it, and found room for a full five-piece master bathroom; the air-bubbler tub went under the eave of the roof, and the gigantic hallway landing got a little smaller as we took space for a walk-in shower. The tub setting was very dramatic, as I recall.

 Nowadays, it looks like this:

 This photo, incidentally, was taken from the same angle as the very first one of the 'summer kitchen' above. Quite a difference, no?

(And yes, in the interest of transparency, I didn't really bother to clean up or stage the bathroom. This is what it looks like all the time, toothpaste, vitamins, and all.)

As for that shower:

Still to do: I'd like to put a towel ring in between the mirrors so that a hand towel can hang there instead of on the vanity. I'd also like to hang some art on the empty wall above the light switches. Also we need a new toothbrush holder, but that's probably on a slightly different decorative scale, not so much 'decor' as 'stop our toothbrushes from falling over'.

choosing tile

We're in the process of choosing tile for the master bath. We thought we knew what we wanted, but then realized that we were a little overambitious. The thing with choosing finishes is that, assuming you know you will eventually sell the house, you have to make sure that the things you pick are 'sellable'. While yes, this does mean that you probably shouldn't go with the lime green permanent tile or the bright blue carpet in the bathroom (our first house had this - bizarre), what a lot of people don't realize is that you should also think about your neighborhood.

Specifically, you should make sure that you don't overimprove your house for the area it's in, particularly if you want to recoup your costs. In some cases, it's fine to go big, especially if you know you're going to stay in the house for a while and will enjoy it - get the french door fridge, spring for the soaking tub. But for certain things, you have to think about the 'comps' - the nearby houses that will affect your eventual selling price.

Comps are a huge factor in house pricing - it's unfair, but that's the way it is. So if there isn't a single house in your neighborhood priced above $200K, good luck selling yours for $400K - it's not going to happen, no matter what luxuries you've stocked it with. It's just not that kind of neighborhood.

If our house were located about twenty minutes south, in Columbia or Ellicott City, it would be worth at least twice what it's worth here, and I'd have no compunctions about putting in luxe finishes and getting my money back. But it isn't. It's in a quiet neighborhood of old houses, most of which either haven't been updated or have been updated only to 'rental grade'. Our crowning glory is our huge property sizes and commuter-friendly location around here - not marble bathrooms.

So the travertine we wanted is out, and we're going with porcelain instead. It's exponentially cheaper, but we've found several options that mimic the look of stone without being tacky. And we're springing for one upgrade - we're putting river rock down as the floor of the walk-in shower. Just a few square feet isn't a huge splurge, it's an elegant touch, and it comes in neutral colors that won't alarm buyers. Now we just have to make a final decision on the tile that will go with it, and call our tiler!

new furniture and not much else

We have wasted our hiatus, I'm afraid. The bathrooms aren't done, the window trim is stalled, the house is messy. Nothing doing. We enjoyed ourselves, though. The holidays were, as always, wonderful. We've been enjoying some hobbies - we are developing some games, I've been working on jewelry, and Don is into charcuterie these days (we made our own bratwurst a couple of weeks ago!). Plus, we're both working, and Don is again taking three graduate classes this semester so that he will get his Masters degree sooner. So it's not like life isn't full. But no, there has been no significant house improvement in the two months (!) since I last showed my internet face here.

We did buy some new furniture, though! Our new dining room table is being built and won't be here for another month or two, but we finally found something to go in the window nook of the living room - it was delivered this morning.



It's a long, low media unit that is sturdy enough to sit on (yes, we tested it in the store). So it will provide both seating and storage in the living room. Eventually, we're thinking about doing some fancy audio-visual wiring and moving all of our components into this unit, invisibly routed to the wall-mounted TV. But that's a ways off.

You may also notice our new(ish) rug, which I don't think I posted about here. It's lovely and soft and was a great deal even though all I intended to buy that day was a new ladle. This is why it is never a good idea to take Don shopping.

living room detail

The throw blanket on the couch was a wedding gift. It's beautiful. We were almost as excited to get it out of storage as we were the couch itself.

pride and joy

We spend virtually all of our time in the living room now. It's amazingly comfortable. That couch? My new best friend. It was worth every second of the rain-soaked nighttime frenzy that was moving it (for which my father-in-law is officially a hero - not that he wasn't before).


The couch was a miraculous buy at Costco. I'd fallen in love with a couch from Restoration Hardware that cost five thousand dollars. Don never had any intention of letting me buy it, sensible man. But one day at Costco (where I do a lot of my shopping - did you know you can get a pound of goat cheese there for five dollars?), I happened upon a couch that was nearly an exact duplicate of the one I loved. And it cost $700. I snapped a picture of it on my phone and sent it to Don, with many exclamation points. There were only three left. We bought it that day, and it sat in my (very generous) in-laws' basement for months and months, as our house was still gutted at the time.

It emerged unscathed from its tenure as a basement dweller, and now we love it. The cat likes the ottoman - otherwise known as Kitty Sofa Adventure Island.


The image above is the living room from the front door. You can see Don's pride and joy, our gigantic new TV. The only reason it looks a little small in the picture is because the room - and the couch - is huge. It's 55 inches. The room is actually so big that we elected to install two ceiling fans, which have already been put to very good use in the warm spells we've been having. The couch seats seven or eight people, which means that when it's just the two of us we can comfortably stretch out and enjoy the gentle breeze from the fans as we watch Mythbusters in high definition.

Just like in the dining room, we still need a few pieces of furniture and decor - a new sofa table, a storage bench at the far end of the room, picture frames and art for the empty walls - not to mention some sort of window treatment. But it's an awesome place to relax, and we're really happy with it so far.