The evergreen pattern stays on trend with safety advantages to boot

The little tile that could

If you’re looking for an instant “wow” factor in your bathroom, consider a graphic tile pattern. A bathroom floor in penny tile makes a visual impact and can easily be the main design feature. Yet, in a neutral color, it can be a supporting player to another focal point.

As one of the most popular tiles, it’s proven its staying power and has a delightful shape. Furthermore, this small tile requires a lot of grout. As a result, it provides more grip and is less slippery on a wet floor. Choose a matte finish for more texture and as an added safety measure.

Sweeten matches home renovation projects with vetted general contractors, offering guidance, tools, and support—for free. 

A black bathroom floor in penny tile anchors

A full apartment renovation meant there would be three remodeled bathrooms for a Manhattan family. Each designed with clean modern lines, one features a dark floor with black penny tile and dark gray grout. It emphasizes the ever-popular vertical running bond pattern on the walls. The penny mixes well with other tile shapes such as linear ones. 

From gutted to glossy

Katherine and Chris purchased a two-bedroom in Brooklyn that had formerly been rent-controlled. This meant the space would not have seen a renovation in decades. To make better use of the space, their bathroom received a layout change with the tub moving to the back of the room. Overall, the materials transformed it into a soothing space with a big dose of glamour. Their bathroom floor with penny tile echoed in the shower while mixing with large slabs of marble walls. As a result, the penny pattern breaks up the marble and adds subtle movement.

A bathroom invokes the water

Sweeten homeowner and artist, Katy Garry, gut-renovated her family’s vacation home by the beach. Her pop art is seen throughout the house as murals and artwork. The guest bathroom is just as vibrant with a variegated palette of water-blue penny tile and painted goldfish. Covering the floor and the entire shower including the ceiling, the tile gives the feeling of being in the ocean.

Materials score points for character

Sweeten homeowners Ed and Alicia planned for a classic NYC look for their bathroom in their garden duplex. The color palette would be black-and-white. To begin, they installed the two most iconic tiles: the bathroom floor in penny tile and subway tile halfway up the walls. A vintage-style schoolhouse trough sink and black painted walls complete the look. With a wall-mounted sink and toilet, the floor design is given a full view. Bonus: It’s also easier to clean the floors with no obstruction. 

When you’re ready to get started on your bathroom or home remodel, work with Sweeten to renovate with the best contractors.

A note on fixture and appliance deliveries: If you’re on a tight timeline, Appliances Connection has over 50,000 items in stock and ready to ship nationally. If you’re in the NY/NJ metro area, in-stock items typically deliver within 2-3 days.

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Sweeten handpicks the best general contractors to match each project’s location, budget, scope, and style. Follow the blog, Sweeten Stories, for renovation ideas and inspiration and when you’re ready to renovate, start your renovation with Sweeten.

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• Homeowners: Homeowners Rachel and Michael posted their bathroom renovation on Sweeten
  
• Where: Jackson Heights, Queens, New York
  
• Primary renovation: Updating the bathroom with more color and a more roomy feel
  
• Sweeten general contractor
• Sweeten’s role: Sweeten matches home renovators with vetted general contractors, offering input, support, and up to $50,000 in renovation financial protection—for free.

Bathroom need color

Owners Rachel and Michael didn’t want to go super modern with their bathroom update, so they went with a classic look that complemented their apartment’s prewar roots. The original space was dark and in an uninspiring neutral, the shower was cramped and confined by uneven walls, and old chipped tile throughout had clearly seen better days.  A remodel was in order. The couple posted their project on Sweeten, a free service matching renovators with vetted general contractors, and they chose their contractor.

Creating more space without changing the layout

Keeping the existing layout intact, Rachel and Michael made crucial updates, starting with tearing down the unnecessary wall framing of the shower—which added an extra nine inches to the height of the shower—and swapping the old glass door for a new one. With a bigger and brighter space to fill, a waterfall of penny tile in various shades of blue shines as a showpiece. The open and light-filled shower with its mosaic of tile is now Michael’s favorite part of the bathroom.

A contrast between colors

A dusky shade of blue paint dominates the upper half of the walls while balancing the crackle-finish white subway tile with the right amount of contrast. White hexagon floor tile adds another layer of pattern. The tub also experienced a major improvement: out went the old tub with a clunky, external drainage system, and in went the new with an integrated system, vintage-style wall-mount tub filler, and a tiled tub surround.

Same bathroom, bigger feel

After a month of going back and forth on deciding on the replacement, the couple switched out the boxy, builder-grade vanity for an open console design, making the space feel considerably larger. A mirrored medicine cabinet and triple-light fixture over the vanity—Rachel’s favorite details—complete the look. The result? A room once bathed in beige gets new energy. [For these homeowners, an open-console vanity was a must. Find out more about must-haves vs. nice-to-haves in this article from Domino.]

Bonus: Dust bunnies averted! Michael noted that his contractor did a spectacular job of keeping the bathroom clean, combating the huge amount of debris generated by the work.

Renovation materials

Wall color in Hale Navy from Benjamin Moore. 24″-wide console sink, Parlington tub fixtures from Signature Hardware. Medicine cabinet by Restoration Hardware. Archie Collection vanity light from Progress Lighting. Edenton tub by Mirabelle. Kohler rain/handheld shower heads and toilet by Kohler. Ceiling light by Rejuvenation.

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Sweeten’s founder + CEO, Jean Brownhill shares the ideal number of contractor bids you should get.

Sweeten handpicks the best general contractors to match each project’s location, budget, scope, and style. Follow the blog for renovation ideas and inspiration and when you’re ready to renovate, start your renovation on Sweeten.

The post A Beige Bath Turns Blue Beauty appeared first on Sweeten.

After Roxy, a rescued Rhodesian ridgeback, joined their household, Alicia and Ed realized “a little more space in a laid-back neighborhood” would be a better fit for the family of three than Manhattan, where they were currently living. They set their sights on a 1,400-square-foot garden duplex in a Park Slope brownstone. They fell in love with the building, which had been converted to condos by a developer about a decade ago. Despite the high-end finishes that were chosen at that time, there were issues that had developed in the interim. The couple also wanted to bring the renovations in line with their tastes, and in a style more befitting a building dating from the turn of the last century. As Alicia put it, “We really just wanted to make the place something we loved coming home to at the end of each day. What we had wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t terribly practical either—we had mismatched countertops, cracked tiles in the bathroom, a lack of counter space in the master bath, and most importantly, no space in the fridge to store our wine. The place just lacked the ‘wow’ you would expect from a building this pretty.”

They reached out to Sweeten—a free service matching renovating homeowners with vetted general contractors—for their contractor. For the couple’s custom kitchen renovation, Christina, their Sweeten Planner, was present at regular site visits and contractor meetings, providing detailed progress reports. Initially, the couple intended to focus their time and money on the kitchen. Instead, they also updated the guest and master bathrooms executing an overall vision—“a muted, classic design with a modern twist.”

In the kitchen, this meant replacing the mismatched countertops as well as the cabinet fronts, and creatively finding space for a built-in wine fridge. Ed and Alicia knew that when the kitchen was renovated a decade ago the developer had used top-of-the-line materials, from custom Italian cabinetry to Viking, Miele, and Liebherr appliances; the space didn’t need a gut, simply a refresh. The downside of the custom Italian kitchen, however, was that none of the cabinetry was standard-sized. Refacing was a custom job, pushing out timelines, but it meant they could keep all the existing built-in shelving and customized organization that would have been extremely expensive to replace. Countertops resembling marble from Caesarstone unified the space and were chosen for their hardiness and durability. Ed had always wanted waterfall-edge countertops, which completed the look perfectly.

They had hoped to replace a smaller-than-usual refrigerator, as well as add a wine fridge. But the floor plan wouldn’t afford them the space for a larger unit, so they focused on adding a wine fridge instead. Working with their Sweeten contractor, Ed and Alicia poked exploratory holes in the drywall underneath their stairs. Happily, they discovered that a 36-bottle dual zone wine fridge would fit in the space without making any structural changes. “It’s a luxury you would never think you could have in New York. We painted the surrounding wall with chalkboard paint—it’s a great way to leave notes for each other, plan out our grocery list, and try out some amateur artwork,” they said. “As a bonus, we found the current kitchen fridge is more than large enough for our needs.”

The downstairs bathroom was next on the list—it already had a great soaking tub, but the vanity and medicine cabinet were outdated. The tiles, too, were showing their age. Alicia had always loved the feel of a traditional New York City bathroom—penny tile floors, subway tile, and a classic black-and-white color palette. They replaced the sink with a trough style: “There was debate whether the sink would be too large, but after lots of measuring and imagining how close it would be to someone using the shower or toilet, we decided to do it. We are so glad we did. It is a perfect fit. We also went for the matching faucets and soap dish.” Having forgone storage under the new sink, they added a small shelf and a 1940s American Red Cross medicine cabinet (found online in Bulgaria!). The large closet just outside of the bathroom made up for the limited storage. Lastly, a wall-hung toilet was a lot of trouble to install, but ultimately worth the effort, since it’s incredibly easy to keep clean and makes the room feel larger.

During the renovation of the downstairs bath, the contractor discovered that there was preserved exposed brick along one wall. They hoped that the brick was in the same condition a few feet away in the living room, and asked the contractor to rip down the sheetrock where their dining table would sit. “It turns out we were in luck. The brick looked wonderful, and though we had to unexpectedly reroute some electrical cables and find matching oak to patch up the flooring, it was worth all of the expense and impact on the timeline.”

Finally, the couple also decided to renovate the master bathroom upstairs. (One of the pluses of living through your renovation is that you can figure out what else needs work while the contractor is on-site!) Since Alicia and Ed moved in while the renovation was still ongoing, they lived with the space for a while and found the bath to be unsuitable in many ways. “The overhead lighting was terrible, and the illuminated mirror died the day after we closed on the apartment. There was the complete lack of shelf space for us to set things down while getting ready, and the leaking pipework rendered the vanity useless for storage. The space really felt unloved.” To give the room a facelift without breaking the budget, they kept the large soaking tub (same as the one downstairs), the flooring, and toilet. A new white shaker vanity with a marble countertop provided ample storage while an illuminated medicine cabinet and built-in LED lights lit up the room. Adding a glass panel in place of the old shower curtain opened the space up. Lastly, a herringbone wallpaper from Ferm Living took the master bath to the next level.

They made the home “smarter,” by adding outlets in convenient locations for their Sonos sound system, converting regular to USB outlets where appropriate, adding a video intercom, and installing a full Nest thermostat and smoke detector system. Now, they can control the temperature via Amazon Echo (thanks, Alexa!) and ensure that the apartment is a comfortable temperature for Roxy while they are away.

Although they’d hoped to finish the renovations prior to their move-in date, they ended up living through the entire renovation, which lasted four weeks from beginning to end. The toughest part, according to Alicia and Ed, was keeping Roxy out of trouble. (See above.) Their advice to future renovators? “Find a contractor you trust, and take their advice on what things would work well and what to avoid. We used tools like Pinterest, the Sweeten blog, and other online tools to get ideas. Also, if you have space, try to keep some spare materials once you have completed your renovation. We spent a long time trying to find a flooring that matched our current style to patch in around the exposed brick wall. We decided to buy an extra pack this time and store it in our basement in case of emergency. The same thing with all the tile. You never know what could happen in the future—for a few hundred dollars, it is worth the investment and peace of mind!”

Thanks, Alicia and Ed, for sharing your gorgeous new garden duplex apartment! We hope you and Roxy enjoying living there for many years to come.

KITCHEN RESOURCES: Flooring: original. Cabinet fronts: custom. Statuario Nuvo Countertops: Caesarstone. Marble herringbone backsplash tile: Home Depot. Art: Ryan Duggan.

GUEST BATH RESOURCES: Glossy white penny tile flooring: Home Depot. White subway wall tile: Home Depot. Shower fixtures: Kohler. Brockway sink/vanity: Kohler. Cannock faucet: Kohler. Wall-hung toilet: Toto. WWII Red Cross cabinet: Etsy. Mirror: Houzz. Art: Ryan Duggan. Shower curtain: Pottery Barn.

MASTER BATH RESOURCES: Vanity: Home Depot. Verdana lighted medicine cabinet: Kohler. Glass panel: Houzz. Herringbone wallpaper: Ferm Living.

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Tina, an architect, drew up plans to renovate a Cobble Hill garden duplex for her family—focusing on each and every room from the kitchen to the bedrooms.

Sweeten handpicks the best general contractors to match each project’s location, budget, and scope, helping until project completion. Follow the blog for renovation ideas and inspiration and when you’re ready to renovate, start your renovation on Sweeten.

The post A Retro-Modern Update for a Brooklyn Duplex appeared first on Sweeten.

While the minimal approach of floor-to-ceiling tile in the shower surround can be beautiful, where does one keep the shampoo? If the answer is the lip of your tub, adding a few shelves or niches in the shower can be a game-changer. Below, five homeowners who worked with Sweeten, a free service matching renovators with vetted general contractors, mix storage and organization with style.

Rachel and Michael designed a backdrop of penny tile in a multitude of blue hues for their shower, extending the tile to nearby niches. The mosaic, clearly visible behind the glass door, is now the couple’s favorite part of the bathroom.

Marble corner shelves were cut from the leftover tile for Holly and Christian’s space, an idea that scores points for ingenuity and thriftiness.

Mario and Joe used gray porcelain tile with the appearance of coarse denim to fill the alcoves in their shower, a callback to the floor tile and accent wall behind the sink vanity that ties the room together.

For a sleek, streamlined approach, glass shelves attached to the tile surround in this half-bath create the perfect perch for bottles of shampoo and conditioner.

Pallavi and Keyur added some much-needed depth with contrasting black accent tile to their shower niches and along the tub exterior in their mostly white bath.

This post has been revised and updated from its original publication on July 20, 2016.

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You can never have too much storage! Keep things nice and neat with bathroom storage ideas for every nook and cranny.

Refer your renovating friends to Sweeten and you’ll both receive a $250 Visa gift card when they sign a contract with a Sweeten general contractor.

Sweeten handpicks the best general contractors to match each project’s location, budget, and scope, helping until project completion. Follow the blog for renovation ideas and inspiration and when you’re ready to renovate, start your renovation on Sweeten.

The post A Fresh Approach to Shower Storage appeared first on Sweeten.