Ian Dawson, C&I Studios
Walk-in shower - small modern master gray tile and ceramic tile ceramic tile walk-in shower idea in Baltimore with a vessel sink, a two-piece toilet and gray walls

Art Gray
Rustic one-story wood flat roof idea in Austin with a green roof

Photo: Rachel Loewen © 2019 Houzz Design: Found Home Design
Bathroom - transitional bathroom idea in Chicago

The goal with this project was to create a functional kids’ bathroom for this family of five and the elegant master bath that their parents so deserve. The client was looking for classic, clean style but with unique details. In the kids’ bathroom, we did floor to ceiling shiplap on the walls and doors. We picked a textured porcelain for the floor tile to reduce slips! The master has herringbone Dolomite marble in two scales on the floor and shower floor, and we used the same Dolomite marble for the floor to ceiling feature wall. Both bathrooms feature custom vanities and modern polished chrome plumbing fixtures. The overall look is coastal, fresh and sophisticated.

Interior Design: Rosen Kelly Conway Architecture & Design Contractor: Level & True Marble: Atlas Marble Tile: Virtue Tile Design Fixtures: WaterWorks Photographer: Donna Dotan

A bold choice to place the foot of the bed against the wall pays dividends, turning the main bedroom into a sleeping porch just by opening the large sliding windows. Photography: Andrew Pogue Photography.

Inspiration for a transitional bedroom remodel in New York

ZeroEnergy Design (ZED) created this modern home for a progressive family in the desirable community of Lexington. Thoughtful Land Connection. The residence is carefully sited on the infill lot so as to create privacy from the road and neighbors, while cultivating a side yard that captures the southern sun. The terraced grade rises to meet the house, allowing for it to maintain a structured connection with the ground while also sitting above the high water table. The elevated outdoor living space maintains a strong connection with the indoor living space, while the stepped edge ties it back to the true ground plane. Siting and outdoor connections were completed by ZED in collaboration with landscape designer Soren Deniord Design Studio. Exterior Finishes and Solar. The exterior finish materials include a palette of shiplapped wood siding, through-colored fiber cement panels and stucco. A rooftop parapet hides the solar panels above, while a gutter and site drainage system directs rainwater into an irrigation cistern and dry wells that recharge the groundwater. Cooking, Dining, Living. Inside, the kitchen, fabricated by Henrybuilt, is located between the indoor and outdoor dining areas. The expansive south-facing sliding door opens to seamlessly connect the spaces, using a retractable awning to provide shade during the summer while still admitting the warming winter sun. The indoor living space continues from the dining areas across to the sunken living area, with a view that returns again to the outside through the corner wall of glass. Accessible Guest Suite. The design of the first level guest suite provides for both aging in place and guests who regularly visit for extended stays. The patio off the north side of the house affords guests their own private outdoor space, and privacy from the neighbor. Similarly, the second level master suite opens to an outdoor private roof deck. Light and Access. The wide open interior stair with a glass panel rail leads from the top level down to the well insulated basement. The design of the basement, used as an away/play space, addresses the need for both natural light and easy access. In addition to the open stairwell, light is admitted to the north side of the area with a high performance, Passive House (PHI) certified skylight, covering a six by sixteen foot area. On the south side, a unique roof hatch set flush with the deck opens to reveal a glass door at the base of the stairwell which provides additional light and access from the deck above down to the play space. Energy. Energy consumption is reduced by the high performance building envelope, high efficiency mechanical systems, and then offset with renewable energy. All windows and doors are made of high performance triple paned glass with thermally broken aluminum frames. The exterior wall assembly employs dense pack cellulose in the stud cavity, a continuous air barrier, and four inches exterior rigid foam insulation. The 10kW rooftop solar electric system provides clean energy production. The final air leakage testing yielded 0.6 ACH 50 - an extremely air tight house, a testament to the well-designed details, progress testing and quality construction. When compared to a new house built to code requirements, this home consumes only 19% of the energy. Architecture & Energy Consulting: ZeroEnergy Design Landscape Design: Soren Deniord Design Paintings: Bernd Haussmann Studio Photos: Eric Roth Photography

Timber frame homes offer unique challenges during a remodel. What often makes them beautiful and attractive to most homeowners, also makes them challenging for space requirements. Context: The lovely couple that owned this home were struggling with some interesting floor plan challenges that just didn't work for their family. The loved the beautiful timbers and woodwork of their home, but the dramatically sloping ceilings on the second floor, particularly in the bathroom, just didn't work for this 1 1/2 bath home. Needing to use the skylight to approach the toilet was a less then ideal scenario. Although the bathroom footprint was more then adequate, the sloped ceiling only made half of the space useable. Check out the Before/After post on our blog to see the photos of the house pre-renovation. As much as they loved all the wood features in their home, another challenge they had was light. The wood ceiling made everything inside the house darker, even with a fantastic array of south facing windows, there were spaces in the home that felt dark and small. When they contacted us they wanted to know how could they make their brighter and more inviting, were there solutions to the 2nd floor sloped ceiling issues, and if they were going to do all of this work, how could they make their home more comfortable and efficient. A nagging water leak in the upstairs bathroom spurred them into action and here is how we solved their dilemma. Conclusion: First, we added a little dormer to the rear of the house so we could get full headroom in nearly all of the upstairs bathroom! Then we decided to extend that dormer one more timber bay over to create a walk in closet with natural light and plenty of space. Since we were contemplating energy efficiency, we resolved a nagging issue that is present in a lot of timber frame construction, air tightness. Commonly found in timber frame construction, fiberglass insulation is installed in the rafter bays and board ceilings are installed over top. Unfortunately, board ceilings are anything but air tight, and fiberglass insulation needs to be in an airtight cavity for maximum effectiveness. So we were able to solve two issues at the same time for this homeowner. We removed the board ceiling and fiberglass insulation, we dense packed the rafter bays with cellulose insulation, and installed sheetrock in place of the boards. The boards were salvaged for re-use by the homeowner, and the space and light quality was dramatically improved. Some may think that losing the board ceiling took something away from the space, but what you'll see in the pictures is that it highly accentuates the heavy timbers and really makes them stand out in a beautiful way. Now with this added airtightness, better insulation, and brighter space, the homeowner hardly runs their wood stove, and it's so quiet in the space, an added bonus from changing the insulation. It became necessary to also add a sheetrock ceiling to the living room to hide the plumbing from the new bathroom layout above. Changing this ceiling gave the homeowner some real quality lighting that was lacking in the living room before. The brighter ceiling and new lighting layout completely transforms the living room into a space you want to hang out, even though the layout didn't change at all. When the homeowner saw the finished spaces she said "I can't believe this is my house, I want to live in this house" Energy Efficiency: I touched a little on the efficiency above, but like all projects done with Mottram Architecture, we always want to leave you with a little extra. Timber frame construction with board ceilings and fiberglass insulation are notoriously leaky! If you want to know what we think about fiberglass insulation, check our our blog post on Why Fiberglass Insulation Sucks. By installing cellulose insulation and covering it with sheetrock we were able to greatly reduce the heat flowing out of this home. It not only improves cashflow it improves the comfort level in the space. Who wants to sit in their living room and feel a draft? Let us remind you, we are not saying cellulose insulation is an air barrier, we use the sheetrock to help with that, but it does significantly reduce the air flow over fiberglass insulation. And when we reduce the airflow, we reduce the heat flow. And when we reduce the heat flow, we reduce the need to re-heat that drafty air from outside. When it comes to energy efficiency the first and best place to start is air infiltration. We greatly reduced the air infiltration with the new insulation, but we also added a hat and warm boots. What I mean by that is, we improved the insulation in the roof, and we installed insulation in the basement. Maybe it's a silly analogy, but when you think about keeping warm, we always start with the hat and boots! With sustainability in mind, the next project will be to add a deck to the front of this house with rain catchment barrels from the metal roof. They are planning to plant a garden in the spring and the rain catchment system will help to irrigate the new garden. Builder: East Shore Builders Photographer: Michael Eric Berube

Several years ago, Jill and Brian remodeled their kitchen with TKS Design Group and recently decided it was time to look at a primary bath remodel. Jill and Brian wanted a completely fresh start. We tweaked the layout slightly by reducing the size of the enormous tub deck and expanding the vanities and storage into the old tub deck zone as well as pushing a bit into the awkward carpeted dressing area. By doing so, we were able to substantially expand the existing footprint of the shower. We also relocated the French doors so that the bath would take advantage of the light brought in by the skylight in that area. A large arched window was replaced with a similar but cleaner lined version, and we removed the large bulkhead and columns to open the space. A simple freestanding tub now punctuates the area under the window and makes for a pleasing focal point. Subtle but significant changes. We chose a neutral gray tile for the floor to ground the space, and then white oak cabinetry and gold finishes bring warmth to the pallet. The large shower features a mix of white and gray tile where an electronic valve system offers a bit of modern technology and customization to bring some luxury to the everyday. The bathroom remodel also features plenty of storage that keeps the everyday necessities tucked away. The result feels modern, airy and restful!

Louvered bifold doors offer more ventilation to the closets.
Mid-sized elegant master bedroom photo with purple walls

Inspiration for a mid-sized timeless gender-neutral carpeted walk-in closet remodel in Jacksonville with flat-panel cabinets and medium tone wood cabinets

This Master Bedroom remodel is part of an extensive push out of the existing floor plan. The other 2 projects with this are "Master Bathroom floating wall and Master Dressing Room. A sitting area with temperature sensor gas fire has a custom designed fire surround with flanking display shelves. The swivel rocker chairs allow either reading by the fire or with a turn watching the wall hung TV. The new wall of French doors with flanking fixed panels allows a lot of light in this bedroom as well as the 2 new windows either side of the Kingsize bed. The tray ceiling has a soft effect as all the walls and trim are in the same color, giving an architectural envelope to this beautiful room.

Photo: Caroline Sharpnack © 2019 Houzz
Cottage chic freestanding desk dark wood floor home studio photo in Nashville with white walls and no fireplace

The 6 ft wide shower offers the ultimate spa experience. The permanent showerhead was placed on one side with the handheld shower on the opposite, creating, in essence, a dual head shower. The bench seat is floating to keep an open, airy feel. The previously large window over the garden tub was reduced to a transom to prepare the space for a shower.

This Siteline Cabinetry tall storage cabinet has roll-out shelves at a height that makes it easy to access. Deep shelves offer ample storage. Photo credit: Dennis Jourdan

Formerly a very divided bathroom, our goal was to open the space up allowing the natural light from the window to pass through the entire bathroom while still providing privacy. We worked to creatively incorporate additional storage and to close off the toilet into a private closet. The homeowners were very interested in a Japanese soaking tub and maintaining a very clean and modern space to relax after working heavily in color and pattern with their work. We created a taller showering space by moving the plumbing into the floor. We used a floor length linear drain to allow for the large format tiles throughout reducing grout lines. All beams were original to the space and were important to keep visible for cohesiveness throughout the home. They really bring an element of warmth and a touch of rustic to an otherwise very modern space. With thoughtful modern finishes and a neutral color palette, we were able to create a space that is relaxing for the mind and body.

Today’s resilient vinyl flooring offers the look of ceramic tile and hardwood floors with less expense and hassle. Resilient vinyl tile and plank flooring is a heavy duty vinyl floor made of solid moisture resistant PVC or virgin vinyl. It ranges in thickness from 2 mm to 9 mm and above. As with most flooring, the thicker it is, the more it costs and the more durable it will be. In addition, a thicker vinyl floor reduces the chances of imperfections in the subfloor showing through.

Today’s resilient vinyl flooring offers the look of ceramic tile and hardwood floors with less expense and hassle. Resilient vinyl tile and plank flooring is a heavy duty vinyl floor made of solid moisture resistant PVC or virgin vinyl. It ranges in thickness from 2 mm to 9 mm and above. As with most flooring, the thicker it is, the more it costs and the more durable it will be. In addition, a thicker vinyl floor reduces the chances of imperfections in the subfloor showing through.