Bathrooms · Seattle and the Eastside
Small rooms, and the least forgiving work in the house.
Everything that goes wrong in a bathroom goes wrong behind the tile, and nobody sees it for four years.
Water finds the one joint that was rushed. So the part of this work we are most careful about is the part you will never look at: the slope of the pan, the membrane taken up the wall rather than stopped at the curb, the blocking behind the drywall for a grab rail somebody may want in twenty years, and the extractor ducted outside instead of into the loft.
Three things worth deciding early
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01
Tub or no tub
A freestanding tub wants a window and floor space; a wet room wants neither. Deciding this late is what forces the plumbing to run the long way round, as it did in Ballard.
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02
Where the light comes from
Light behind the mirror flatters. Light above it does not. In Kirkland the mirror is backlit and there is nothing on the ceiling above the sink.
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03
How much stone
One stone floor to ceiling reads calm and costs more in slab and in labor than tile. It is the single biggest lever on a bathroom budget.
Adding a bathroom where there is not one is usually a question of three feet.
Three feet from a bedroom, a landing or an oversized cabinet, plus a wall that a waste pipe can reach. The Ballard project was exactly that: a bedroom gave up its back corner and the new window went where the tub is.
