While remodeling my own home I decided to incorporate a varitety of different textures and materials into the bathroom located in the basement. I was fixed on having true hardwood floors throughout the basement so it was necessary to build up a subfloor over the concrete using two by fours and plywood. In the bathroom, I decided the take advantage of the subfloor by creating a pathway of subflooring to the shower and toilet room while leaving both sides of the pathway at the level of the concrete floor. This planning allowed me to use the recessed space on both sides of a deep stained heart-of-pine pathway as a place to have loose mexican beach pebbles.
I found an locally made chopping block table at a antique store that was made out of stainless steel and reclaimed heart-of-pine. I decided to use this piece as a table for the glass sink bowl, and found a unique faucet on overstock.com. I had limited space on either side of the table so I started looking at thrift and antique stores for a unique shelving unit. Frustrated after days of not finding anything that fit the space I finally stumbled across an old Louis Vuitton style luggage case. This was perfect! It was lined with a nice golden green silk that had faded to a perfect color over the last 90 years. I cut the case in half and use one side as a storage unit for toiletries, cleaning supplies and towels and use the other side as a trash can.
The last finishing touch was finding a mirror that was unique. I had located two square steel lights at the local specialty lighting store which justaposed nicely with all the other elements in the room but it also limited the space for a mirror. I knew that I would have to settle on a somewhat small mirror. After some time of searching I finally found an antique store that transforms old chinese style shutters into functional mirrors. Of course out of all the Chinese shutter mirrors, the mirror that I liked the most and fit within my color scheme was the most expensive. But I didn’t want to compromise on design or color scheme, so I ‘bit the bullet” and bought the mirror.
Recently I added 3 small solar plate prints on the opposite wall of the mirror. One of the prints was by my college professor, Tony Askew; the other by the inventor of the Solar printing process, Dan Welden; the third print is one of my own from a couple of years back.