Puttin' on the Ritz

When we first talked about doing a walk-in shower in our master bathroom, my first thought was all white marble like they have in fancy hotel bathrooms - like the Westin at Canal Place for my wedding night and the Ritz Carlton for my last birthday weekend.

I just ADORE the look of sleek, head-to-toe white marble. Of course I learned that there are many types of white marble and there are many costs associated with such beautiful stone.

But we got a good deal on White Carrara Gioia marble (which I liked better than just White Carrara b/c it has more white space between all the grey streaks.

Needless to say, this room needed a good bit of demo and when we ripped the floor out, we found rotten ply wood and beams. So basically a major overhaul/face-lift. Here's the creation:

Before...

During...

Close ups of the hardware...

With glass...

With a mirror and finished custom cabinetry...

And my favorite time of day to take a shower is about 3:30 p.m. when the sun is coming through the West-facing window...the most beautiful light bouncing off of my white marble...and I feel like I'm back at the Ritz.

Last Night's Adventure

We ripped out the tile floor in our master bath and what did we find? Nothing but rotten wood and missing support joists. So that means we pop off weather board and crawl under the house and install new supports and drop in a new floor on top of it. Piece of cake, right?

Here is the before:

Here is the after shot from when the floor was ripped out:

And here is a shot from last night's repair job:

The final product of that evening - new support beams!! (It's sad when you get really excited about this kind of stuff):

I learned a lot from my carpenter-by-trade father. We seriously would be in bad shape without his guidance and talent.

Now, to make it into a tiled, walk-in shower!