I’m usually sharing photos of homes and spaces designed by the talented interior designers and architects I get to call my clients. But today, I get to share a little space in my own home – our new master bathroom.
My husband has been asking me to get started on a bathroom addition in our master bedroom for years. He knew I would want to be the one choosing finishes and I would be more available to meet with subs and the contractor. To me, it always felt like it would cost too much and be too much of an inconvenience. So, we spent the first eight years in our home, sharing one upstairs bathroom with our two kids. It was never too big of an issue to be sharing. Plus, I felt like we were fortunate enough to have the four bedrooms and two bathrooms that already existed in our 1930’s home. Did we really need a master bathroom?
I mentioned our home was built in the 30’s, 1931 to be exact. It’s a beautiful, traditional home with a ton of character but has a few mysterious spaces as well. One such spot was a room off the master bedroom. It was an empty room that lead to a small closet that I coined as my “cloffice.” It was fine as an office/closet but it was also begging to be made into a master bathroom. One of it’s corkiest features was a sliding glass door that lead out to our second story roof – no railing, no deck, just a roof that dropped off into the backyard.


Time went on and the kids got bigger and we had the funds to do it so a decision was made. I spent an hour on Canva putting together elements to create what I thought to be the perfect master bathroom. As with almost all creative endeavors for me, it comes like a flash and then it’s set in stone. There’s no changing my mind or stopping the momentum. I showed my husband and he said to go for it. Next thing I knew, the universe aligned and all my favs were on board.

I ran into my friend and favorite architect, Donna Rose, at our morning dog park run and mentioned that we were ready to add a bathroom to our bedroom. She quickly came by to assess the space and we had permitted plans within a few weeks. During that time, she mentioned that one of her contractors was going to be available and might take on our job. Brian, of Airehart Construction, signed on for the job and we began demo a few weeks later.
The process of creating this space was so fun to me. I truly enjoyed having the crew at the house each morning to work on the bathroom. I got to know how everyone takes their coffee and what kind of donuts or pastries they loved. The crew was extremely clean, friendly, and respectful of our home. I told everyone I should start a diary because day one I was so ecstatic and happy to have them all there working. The joke was that eventually I would hate having people coming over every day at 7am, banging on the walls, but that part hardly ever came. The job was run exceptionally well and went smoothly 95% of the time.


Since we couldn’t be in our room durning construction, we took over my ten-year-old son’s room and he moved in with his sister on her bunk beds. I thought this transition would be a lot harder but we actually loved having everyone in a smaller space and all together. Mine and my husband’s clothes were slightly organized in my son’s closet and out in the room on temporary rolling racks. Luckily, everyone had a positive attitude about the situation – minus a few knock-down-drag-outs between the kids…
In the end, the timeline wasn’t quite as short as we hoped, but it went as well as it could have. Brian and his crew wrapped everything up and tied a bow on it just before we were set to host my family for Christmas. It was the best present we could have asked for.
One of my favorite parts of the whole process is that my dear husband was kept in the dark the entire time. I showed him my initial design plans, but after that, he didn’t ask another question or ever ask see any progress. This was made possible because we ended up having to add new insulation and remove the old, so the door to our room was sealed off for a week or so. The crew mostly entered through the back of the house for the first six weeks of construction anyways, so unless you climbed up with them, there was no way to see it. The fact that he hadn’t seen it became a little joke towards the middle of construction and at one point, we decided that he should wait until the end to see the final product. He never saw an open wall, a half-tiled shower, new floors being laid down, nothing! What a saint. I could never.









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