Thanks all for the nice comments on our hallway bath reveal. I thought I’d go into a little more detail and answer a few questions I’ve received.

 

Silestone Corner Shelves in Shower

A few of you asked how the Silestone Lagoon corner shelves are installed in the shower. They are installed while tiling. The shelf is set on a row of tile, then cut the next row to fit around them. The thinset on the wall and the grout locks them in.

We put the shelves in that location because I didn’t want the first thing you see when you walk into the bathroom to be our shampoo bottles. While the shelves are one of my favorite features of the bathroom, the doorway to the shower is right at the top of the stairs and you can see into the shower and the other corner, so I wanted to keep that corner looking clean and tidy.

 

The Hand Shower

I’ve also received some questions about how we like using a hand shower on a sliding bar as our main shower head. I looove it.

I’ve seen tons of pictures of bathrooms with the regular shower head and then a hand shower on a bar off to the side, which seems to be the thing to do these days, but it’s more expensive to have the plumbing done for this configuration, and I’m guessing that second hand shower gets mostly ignored if it’s off to the side like that. A hand shower was important to us because I like it for cleaning, and I just think they are super functional. Also, our alcove tub isn’t as deep as, say, a luxurious master shower you see in BH&G, so to fit in a hand shower would have been tight, especially with the corner shelves up by the plumbing.

For a tight space or budget conscious I’d highly recommend going with just a hand shower on a bar.  I particularly like having the style on a bar, as opposed to the kind you can just screw into your regular shower head arm, because I’m 5’1, so it’s much more comfortable to have the shower head at my height. You taller folk might be wondering why :). Down where I am, I end up getting the widest part of the spray, so if I’m rinsing out my hair, half the water is going around my head. It’s nice to have the more concentrated part of the spray closer by lowering it down. Not that big of a deal, and I could certainly live with it if we had a different setup, but it was an easy enough fix while we were renovating the bathroom. Marty still uses our other shower mostly (it’s kinda nice that we each have our “own” showers!) but when he does use this one he can easily raise it up. I also think for a hand shower, the kind on a bar look nicer than the kind you screw into the regular shower head arm. The kind you can use with the arm are great if you are working with an existing shower, but since we were renovating, we figured we’d design it for the way we planned to use it.

 

Cleaning Beveled Subway Tile

I’ve also had some questions about cleaning the beveled subway tile in the shower and if the bevels attract extra soap scum and grime. It doesn’t seem to…but I’ve also been actively preventing that, which I’ll get to in a sec. Our beveled tile isn’t as deep of a bevel as some. I would definitely recommend a shallower bevel for a shower and save the deeper bevels for backsplashes and other decorative areas. I could see a deeper bevel being an issue.

I have actually gotten in the habit of wiping down the shower with a towel after getting out, and I’m experimenting with this to see if this will keep us from needing to clean and scrub it as often. So far so good. It’s been over a month that we have had the shower, and not a single bit of mold, mildew, or soap scum, and I haven’t cleaned it except for wiping it out daily. I have a special towel that I wash regularly that hangs on its own hook for this purpose, and we had a bathroom fan installed which I make sure to run. This might seem kind of gross at first, since we’re all so in the habit of spraying bleach, chemicals, or even vinegar to disinfect, but what makes showers a germ-fest is  the standing water, day after day, which allows bacteria, mold, and mildew to grow. We started from day 1, so a clean slate, literally.  I’m still going to disinfect it sometimes, just because I’ll probably start to imagine these things are crawling around and I just can tell, but drying it out seems to be keeping the shower clean and sparkly. I’ll keep up with this experiment and let you guys know how it goes!

I also realized I didn’t show a good picture of our mirror and vanity together, and I LOVE how this area turned out.

If you haven’t already, check out my hallway bath “done” post for all of the sources and to see the rest of the bathroom!