The Bathroom Revolution
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Per square foot, your bathroom has more equipment than any other room in your house. It’s expensive space, and every inch counts. This is increasingly true today as bathrooms are required to do more than ever before. Fitting it all in is no simple task.
Photo courtesy Kohler.
Toilets, tubs, showers, and lavatories are often placed in distinct areas. From Kohler's Folio Collection.
The role of the bathroom is changing rapidly. The importance of the bath in our homes has grown dramatically. Spacious rooms, closeted toilets, double bowl lavatories, whirlpool tubs, and recently large walk-in showers have found their way into our homes. No longer just a functional room, the bath is becoming a retreat. Purely utilitarian functions of bathrooms are now being relegated to small cubicles. Toilets are housed in separate enclosures; tubs, showers, and lavatories are placed in distinct areas.
Our Bathroom Portfolio
This small bath was dark, poorly lit, and had crooked walls. See how we turned it into a bright, charming guest bath, and made the crooked walls go away without having to rebuild them.
The average bathroom in new housing has tripled in size over past decade. Boundaries between master bedroom and master bath are disappearing quickly. The bath morphs into a dressing area that seamlessly merges with the sleeping area. Meanwhile new equipment is moving in. Exercise machines are being introduced into the bath area. Personal spas, televisions, telephones, audio equipment, and even fireplaces are being installed with increasing regularity.
As a culture, we are in the process of a conceptual transformation of the bath into a private retreat. To many homeowners, baths have become "morning" or "evening" rooms. While public areas of homes have become less personalized, bedrooms and baths now form a kind of inner-sanctum where people can indulge themselves in the lap of luxury. The bath is becoming our private sanctuary — a place to get away from it all.
White paint, reflective surfaces and careful use of space make this very functional small bathroom appear more spacious.
Unfortunately, our houses do not automatically adapt to these new trends. And those of us who still own the home we bought 20 years ago probably still have that old, tired, well worn room squeezed between two bedrooms and the stairs.
It's not that we would not like to own one of those new, spacious, designer baths featured in all the magazines and on television home improvement shows. It's just that those expansive flourishes of Italian tile, porcelain plumbing fixtures by the square yard, and as much sparkling chrome as a '58 Cadillac grill all have to have someplace to go, and we just don't have the floor space.
And if we did happen to have an unused 200-300 square feet of space sitting around, we probably have better use for the $30,000 it would cost. We are, after all, Nebraskans. And although we like beautiful living spaces as much as any one, this is one place where common sense tends to prevail — at least most of the time.
Can I Do It Myself?
Maybe. Certainly you can do part of it. It depends on the extent of the work, the expertise level required, and your time, skills and experience.
Take a look at the renovations that can be done by a careful do-it-yourselfer, and the ones that should be left for the pros. Then you decide. If you think you may need professional help, contact us and we will do all we can.
Still, you don't have to settle for a ugly and dysfunctional bathroom. A whole lot can be done with even a very small room. And there are ways of finding more bathroom space if you know where to look.
That's where we can help. We know that most of our clients do not have the floorspace required for a grand "designer" bath. So
Careful planning and quality components transformed this small, nondescript bath into an elegant, luxurious retreat.
we have become the small space specialists — using imagination, ingenuity and creativity to pack more design, more features and more utility into less room. We know how to plan and build distinctive bathrooms that conform to all of the accepted
design rules, building and safety codes. Most importantly, we know how to build affordable baths by painstaking design, cost-saving construction practices and careful substitution of less expensive alternatives that will still give you that special look and feel that is uniquely yours.
We will work with you through a three-step design process to merge your ideas and lifestyle with the available space and structural requirements into a design that meets both your needs and your budget; guiding you through the myriad of choices available for your new bathroom, and helping select the right products and materials for your pocketbook.
Some Basic Bathroom Reading
But, first things first. Before we start helping you formalize your ideas into a concept plan, some preliminaries need to be gotten out of the way. A little planning along with a thoughtful selection of fittings and fixtures can make a big difference in your bath design.
So don't miss Ten Important Elements of a Good Bathroom by designer David Edrington to find out how. You must become a minor expert on bathrooms. Before you sit down with us to work through a plan, you should have a very clear idea of the look you want to create, the features you want to include, and the space you have to work with.
At right are some articles that will help guide you through these preliminaries. Written largely by our talented design staff based on years of experience; they run the entire gamut of design issues: cabinets, fixtures, flooring, lighting and more. When you are ready, contact us and we'll get started developing your special room.
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