Building a Basement Bathroom from Scratch
This was a great bathroom renovation project and we’d like to share some of the inspirational ideas and thinking that went into the process of creating this new bathroom. As you can see from the pictures, the original bathroom was a typical 1990s early 2000s builder’s standard bathroom, with a huge jetted tub. I guess at some point these big tubs were popular, but as many Canadians are getting older, more and more people are starting to prefer showers – especially if accessing the tub may be difficult for physical or medical reasons.
Client Needs and Goals
In this particular case, our clients wanted to convert the tub into an easy-to-access shower, something that they can use and enjoy at this time and for many years later. They also considered the future – if they ever needed to use a walker, how could they enter the shower? This was the basic underlying idea and what we tried to accomplish.
Adding Window in Shower
Another, perhaps more aesthetic idea was to bring more light into the bathroom by removing a non-functional side wall and installing a window in the shower. In most cases, we do not recommend having a window right inside the shower, unless it’s already there and there is not much you can do about it but work around it. Since the size of this shower was unusually big and the distance from the shower head to the new shower window would be more than 85 inches, it was a safe recommendation to install the shower window and bring in more natural light into the bathroom.
Installing Heated Floor System
Another pleasant surprise and a feature of this bathroom project was the installation of heated flooring. See, when you have an old jetted tub, one thing you may not realize is that that tub is hard-wired to your electrical panel with a dedicated line going to it. That dedicated line, if it were to be installed on its own, can cost upwards of $1,200, but if your tub is jetted, you already have that line going to your bathroom. Now installing heated tile flooring becomes more affordable and makes a lot more financial sense. With this, we took advantage of the existing electrical feed that was going to the jetted tub and used it to install the Schluter Heated Floor System in this bathroom.
Custom Shower Finishes
The choice for the tile was 12×24 Classic Calcada Porcelain tile that was installed on both floors and walls to create a seamless and clean look.
Due to the large shower size, we have opted to install 2 Schluter Line Drains since the specific size we needed was not available. The entire bathroom floor was raised to allow for the gradual slope in the shower towards two drains. For that to happen we’ve built a custom door transition to have a gradual entrance from the bedroom into the bathroom.
Completion
For a project like this, we had to use custom glass as no standard shower glass of this size exists. Thanks to MirrorWorks, we were able to accomplish this task. The project took about 3.5 weeks from start to finish, not including the custom glass manufacturing and installation. All in all, it’s a beautiful and functional accessible bathroom that our clients will use for many, many years. We are very grateful to everyone who participated in this project and are looking forward to helping more clients with their bathroom remodeling needs.