This client came to me with a challenge – take a very rough drawing of his ideas and make it work.

At first, I immediately thought, no shower door in that small of a space? I don’t think so. Make a circular shower soffit and threshold? – why? And, make a whirlpool circular base with a SOLID WOOD TOP that extends into the shower as a seat! – No way.

He also wanted to move the shower and relocate the 2nd floor toilet 5 feet to the left, across the 16’ 2×10 floor joists, which is always a challenge.

So, we came up with a plan to reinforce the joists with 3/4” plywood glued and nailed on each side with staggered joints to support the new soaking tub and relocated toilet. We took his “drawing” and transfered it to the new subfloor to get a better visual on how the shower size effects the over spray and made adjustments, considering there is no door.

I struggled with the idea of a wood top for the tub that extends into the shower. How would it drain? How can I make it so it won’t crack? What kind of wood and finish? And, how much is it going to cost?

He was dead set on this wood top at first, and I couldn’t talk him out of it. Sometimes, timing is everything. You can’t argue with a brick wall, so I put it aside and concentrated on the rest of the project. The top would be the last thing to install anyway.

The glass topped double sink vanity was perfect for this metropolitan look.

He didn’t want to have the copper supply lines show underneath but the problem was, that is an outside wall – no plumbing supply lines allowed. So, we padded the whole wall 1”, increased the insulation and created a drywall box so they were protected. It was a lot of work but we had the wall open already to rework the plumbing so it made sense.

The shower niche is always an issue. Where is the best place to put it based on pre-existing conditions (studs, plumbing) and make it work perfectly with the tile layout. Clients are all over the place as to what is a good size or location. The extra thick sill that extends beyond the opening was his idea. We continued that look behind the soaking tub which I think was a nice choice.

Well, the day finally came where we needed to make a decision about the tub top. Considering what the teak seat in my own shower looks like, and, I was going to have to warrantee this massive moving wooden maintenence nightmare, I gently pushed him in to making the top out of solid stone to match the tile floor. Having an estimate for the solid wood top that was twice as expensive as stone and had no warrantee helped him decide too.

The wood top would have looked very cool for a while but he says he is really happy with this choice. So am I.

If I had walked away from this project because of a crazy drawing, I would have missed out on a cool experience to do something different that came out nice enough to post here.

Even better, he hired me to remodel his kitchen which is now close to being finished.

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