My clients live in a gorgeous old home on a tree-lined street in Denver’s beautiful and historic Park Hill neighborhood. It’s the kind of neighborhood in which you could picture raising smart, well-read children while engaging in witty banter with the eccentric, yet friendly, activist neighbors.
This particular home was built in the early 1900’s and there was only one upstairs bathroom for the entire family. The client challenged Golden area contractor West Elevations and myself to create a second family bathroom in a small office that had originally been a back balcony for the home.
The client and I had so much fun designing this little space. We both wanted to play up the vintage style of the home, but not be beholden to it. Also, adding a new second floor bathroom is not an inexpensive thing to do, so we did need to be budget friendly with the finishes. We found a beautiful cast iron, extra long claw foot tub by Barclay at Rampart Plumbing’s Showroom and knew right away that we wanted to paint it a fun color.
I love this yellow – it’s a soft daffodil that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
I decided to run the tile up to the top of the door frame to help with water splash (this is a room used by 3 kids). I added a black pencil liner under the ceramic chair rail to tie it in with the black tile baseboard. You can see the chickadee art tile to the right of the tub in the photo below. The tile installer did a beautiful job making it level with the rest of the tile. The wall tile is by DalTile and the flooring is from Merola Tile – all purchased at Denver’s Floor Club.
I shared the making of this Craiglist-find furniture piece into a double vanity in another blog post – you can read more about that here. It was important to the client to put something unique in the space here.
This photo is featured in April’s Bath Issue from Colorado Homes & Lifestyles! There are a lot of really gorgeous bathrooms in it – this one might be the most budget friendly though in terms of finishes.
If you have an old home – I urge you to love it and all of it’s imperfections. If you don’t, treat your home well in the hopes that it will be an old home too someday.
“Give me an old house full of memories and I will give you a hundred novels!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan
The Colorado Nest 
Couldn’t stop reading, absolutely love what you designed for this home!
Thanks!!! I could have written more – had to stop myself! 🙂
Hey Laura! Awesome before & afters, you have such a talent and an eye for style! We’ve featured your work on Studio Designer’s Twitter, take a look! https://twitter.com/studiowebware/status/981603560013156352
Awesome! Thanks Ken!!