where to read the blog in chronological order from post to post, grab your coffee

Hey guys! Hope you’re having a great week!

We have been plugging away with progress in our master bathroom and we are both kind unexpectedly giddy about how it’s coming together. Momentum is a funny thing and sometimes at this stage of a project when everything is ugly it’s hard to stay positive and motivated. But we just feel like progress is steady and the projects are fun ~~for the most part~~. Not to say that we’ve loved every moment of crawling around the attic running new electric or maneuvering around the crawl space strategizing a new plumbing plan. But I can’t complain because I haven’t actually had to do those tasks. This is what I do while I wait for instructions yelled to me like “drill the hole where you want the light” or “OK, turn on breaker 11 for 5 seconds and then turn it off”. 🙂

Kidding! That’s totally staged, except for the mug of coffee, that is real. It just reminded me of the time we insulated the attic and I took a similar photo so I couldn’t resist.

While Joel handles all of those things, which is so awesome I can’t even express, his attitude that he can do it (and the fact that he actually can) has kept us on track … because no one wants to get me started on the plumber. I’m serious, do not even mention it. Them are fighting words these days.

And while Joel’s DIYing like a boss, I’m working on the carpentry … and listening for orders yelled from above or below. “Can you see this wire I’m wiggling?” 🙂

The wall to the kitchen is framed out. (Sorry for all of the wacky lighting and shadows, until we actually get some real lights in here I’m carting around a floor lamp and a couple of table lamps without shades … which is great for work light, not exactly for photography lighting.)

The little bump out that we decided to add so our washer and dryer would fit in our hall bathroom is framed, drywalled and has a few coats of spackle already. I left an opening for a door so we can have some added storage up there for randomly used things.

A half wall and even a little bench that will be in our shower have also been framed out. And I didn’t even bother to take up my painter’s tape floor plan before install. #WhyBother

But, instead of just a “here’s where we’re at” update, I would love to pick your brain on something I’m undecided about.

Because, seriously, you guys have proven over and over to be the kind of friends that I wish lived right here and would come and sit on our front porch at the end of the day with a glass of wine so I could run my ideas by you and hear your thoughts. And smack myself on the forehead when you suggest something awesome I haven’t even thought of yet.

You had some great advice for removing the old cut nails, you gave professional advice about making lined curtains and in general you just have really good ideas. So even though I should have thought of this many posts ago, like before the pallet walkway project, I’m reaching out to you for help.

Here’s the situation, ~~my parents went away on a week’s vacation~~ …

We enjoy an oversized shower and wanted one big enough that we wouldn’t need a door or curtain so we made sure to incorporate that into the space. And although the bump out to fit the washer and dryer in the hall bathroom is a little inconvenient to the master bathroom layout, it gains us space enough in our kitchen for a bonafide pantry and real storage for all of the kitchen extras so after weighing the decision heavily it was totally the way to go for us. And storage is a premium in these smaller, older homes in Key West so we really like that the storage we’re incorporating in this house can really set us apart from other houses on the market when it comes time to sell. But let’s not think about selling and leaving Key West, not today. 🙂

BUT, what we did sacrifice is vanity space. To us, no biggie, we rarely are getting ready at the same time and we really don’t even need double sinks, but we’re going with them because it’s a sought after amenity in master bathrooms.

The question is, what should we do about the master bathroom vanity lights?

Update: I should have included the other lights we’re planning on in the bathroom. We are putting a recessed light above the shower and one above the toilet area and I’m looking for a small chandelier to put above the tub. Do people do recessed above the vanity AND a wall light?

One light fixture or two?

Option #1: Two fixtures.

I like that we can center them over each sink and in general just like the idea of two lights. But would it feel too crowded? How many bulbs should we get per fixture? Here are some options with affiliate links.

Here’s a one bulb light option. I think it would definitely fit but would it be enough light?

Here’s a two bulb option, and I’ve seen options I like that are up to 19″ wide. The whole space is 64″ wide. I think it’d be the perfect amount of light, but would it look cramped?

Option #2: One larger fixture.

Would it look right with two sinks? That’s my one big question. I’m not normally one for symmetry but I’m just really drawn to the double sinks and two lights look. Can we pull off the double sink but single light look?

Here’s a three bulb option.

And a four bulb option.

So, yeah, I’m all over the board. I’d love to hear what you’d do. What set up do you have? What set up do you wish you had? Advantages, disadvantages to one or two vanity lights? I don’t know what we’re going to do for mirrors yet but I do know that we don’t have the width in the space to do lights on the side of the mirror if the mirrors are going to be in front of the sinks. So whatever it is, it needs to be installed above the mirror/mirrors.

What do you think we should do? Helllllp! Thanks. 🙂

I don’t know about you, but I definitely don’t need all of the options that we have available to us. That’s a general statement and not really specific to our master renovation. We actually confirmed this while living on the island of Curacao. Some move down to the islands and don’t find all of the usual products and brands we’re used to in the US and quickly declare that they can’t find “anything” and that the grocery store has “nothing”. We’ll give them a gratuitous picture of some Curacao water. 🙂

But we move down and discover that we actually really like broccoli and chicken and don’t mind eating it on the regular. Now don’t even get me started on my first trip to a US grocery store after over 3 years on a Caribbean island. Two hours later my cart was full and I’d only been down 3 aisles and didn’t even have any essentials. I had forgotten that we literally have a whole aisle of cracker options. 🙂

Anyway, when I started looking into picking the finishes and fixtures for the master bathroom remodel it immediately made me feel like I was back on that first visit back to the US grocery store. #TooManyOptions

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Like the grocery store, at first it was so fun. And then it just didn’t end. How could I decide before sticking my head in the sand and calling it a day?

Did someone say sand? 😉

What I’m about to tell you might sound like crazytalk to some, but this little strategy helped me move forward with decisions and will hopefully help anyone who also suffers from a little aversion to too many options.

1 – Decide on a floor plan. Your final floor plan may shift a bit as you go, but really getting a solid understanding of spacing will make it clear up front what features you have room for and will actually work for your space.

2 – Head out to a few local stores and take a look at all of the showroom options, this will help you determine what things are important to you. I guess you could do this online, too, but for me it’s easier to visualize with 20 different toilets lined up in a row right in front of me. Checking out the aisles of tile made it easy to quickly pick out what I like and what I don’t like.

What you’re looking at:

fixtures (faucets, shower heads, etc)
finishes (brushed nickel, oil rubbed bronze, brass, etc)
tile (large-scale, mosaic, natural stone, etc)
flooring (wood, carpet, if not tile, etc)
tubs (free-standing, built-in, etc)
toilets (how long, how tall, etc)
sinks (under-counter, vessel, etc)
vanities (color, size, closed cabinet vs open shelving, etc)

What you’re deciding is what “style” you like. You’re not committing to any specific item, unless you find the perfect thing then of course grab it. But you’re figuring out what you want the room to “feel” like.

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Buy a couple of samples of tiles you like and live with them for a few days.

Tip!!! When tiling a floor we like to try to stick with a tile we can grout with a gray or darker color, because who really wants to deal with cleaning white grout on the floor?

3 – If you’ve found some things you like now is a good time to head back out into the world wide web and price check similar items. Trust me, it will be a little easier now that you have a bit of direction. I mean, just imagine the difference in the amount of search results you’ll get for “bathroom tile” versus “2 x 2 marble mosaic tile” or “toilets” versus “dual flush toilet”.

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With this plan I quickly found a site that I have since spent a lot of time scouring. The Builder Depot has the largest selection of Carrara marble in the world and they have been incredibly responsive regarding all of my questions about the need to seal marble and matching colors when using different styles of marble throughout one bathroom project.

I didn’t start this master bathroom project thinking that I was going to install marble, but the more bathroom inspiration pictures I pin (to my bathroom board), the more I realize that I really like light floors, but didn’t want to go pure white. Marble is kind of the best of both worlds, it is very light in color, but has plenty of gray in it, and I can grout it with gray. And it is the perfect complement to the airy, breezy, greenish/grayish/bluish colors I’m gravitating to for the walls.

I think it’s big to nail down the tile choices first since they cover so much of the space and can really dictate the direction to go with the other finishes. It definitely feels like big progress. 🙂

My inspiration pictures also have me thinking:

stained wood vanity with open shelves
white vessel sinks
polished nickel finishes
gray/green/blue walls
whitewashed wood slat walls
free-standing soaker tub
a rolling style door would be super fun!

(photo source)

What about you, how do you narrow down all of the choices? What do you think of deciding on the tile first in the bathroom remodel? Would you do it different?

Only after hours of research did I reach out to The Builder Depot and inquire about a partnership. I am thrilled that they have agreed to provide the tile for this master bathroom renovation.

master bathroom vanity lights – what would you do?

narrowing down all of the choices in 3 simple steps