For the past few months, I had been working on two pretty big home projects: my own condo and my parents’ new house. While my own condo has been mostly interior design, my parents’ house was a full gut job that needed a complete renovation.
With 3 bedrooms and 3 full baths, this house was built in the 1960s and had all the original appliances and fixtures as well as some of the most hideous wallpaper you’ve probably ever seen. However, this ranch-style home boasted an incredible view of the San Francisco Bay Area with a huge heated pool and jacuzzi to boot, just to sweeten the pot.
We’re still not completely done with the whole house, but there have been major changes already. Let’s begin with the guest bathroom. A lot of my inspiration came from the European bathrooms I had seen when I was living in London and traveling all over the continent. I loved how the European design aesthetic, especially in places like Paris and Barcelona, focused very heavily on textiles. It became a lot of my main inspiration for this bathroom.
Before I show the actual renovation, let me first give you a taste of what the original bathroom looked like. Lots of warm, neutral colors with that aforementioned wallpaper and disgusting pink bathtub that I just could not fathom. And what is up with the wooden toilet cover? Needless to say, a makeover was long overdue.
So for this part of the house, I wanted to create a bathroom with a unique floor textile. My first idea was a classic black and white tile. We found these incredibly charming floor patterns and decided to make this textile the main draw.
Since we didn’t want to pull away the focus from the flooring, we decided to keep it pretty simple everywhere else. White subway tiles served as the backsplash all throughout the bathroom with a circular mirror to keep the bathroom feeling modern and fresh.
One of the other things I wanted to include in this bathroom was a clawfoot tub. I’ve always wanted a clawfoot tub (I know this is not my house, but since I got to design it — a clawfoot tub was put in!) Â Keeping with the European design aesthetic (very Parisian), this clawfoot tub and the black and white tiles mixed with the modern subway tiles and circular mirror created that old mixed with new vibe that always jives with my design style.
Out of all three bathrooms in this house, this one was probably the most unique and featured some interesting choices that we didn’t make in either of the other bathrooms. Since this is the guest bathroom, we wanted it to be memorable and reflect that European flair, and we couldn’t be happier with that way it turned out. The rest of the house has some European inspirations for sure, but none more than this guest bathroom.
More to come …
~ Jenna
Girliest Tomboy 