top five mistakes in mid-century modern bathroom remodel

You have read about my five favorite bathroom remodel features, now for the five top mistakes. If I had to do our remodel of two bathrooms and build of a third bathroom in our mid-century modern home all over again, what would I change? And, what may I correct eventually.

5. did not match white paint to tile in first two bathrooms.

Rookie mistake. I was so careful about everything except selecting the white paint. I should have matched the white paint to the white tile. But it didn't occur to me that white doesn't necessarily mean white. Had I gone onto the Benjamin Moore site and typed white, all would have been revealed to me.

Benjamin Moore endless shades of white.

top five favorite features mid-century bathroom remodel

I have restrained my natural impulses (nit picking the issues) and will provide my top five favorite features of our mid-century bathroom remodel. Next post will be top five least favorite items from the bathroom remodel.

#5 the tile.

Miles and miles of beautiful clean linear tile. I love the plank tiles and I love the white tiles. I love all the tile and very little drywall. The tile was a bit of an expense for sure. But we picked three different kinds of fairly standard Dahl tile, and didn't do all the tricky things that our plans initially called for with the tile. The results are simple and very modern. The white square tile and the mosaic floor tiles are both nods to mid-century.

Master feature tile wall

3 mid-century bathrooms remodeled

Veni, vidi, vici. I came, I saw, I conquered. Attributed to Julius Ceasar, 47 BC. It is done. Final sign off from City of Newport Beach inspector happened last Friday. The punch list is complete. I wrote the last check to the contractor. The porta-potty has been removed. For Mother's Day this past Sunday, I had a bath in my new tub. And Albert and I slept in the master bedroom for the first time in four and a half months. Whoot whoot.

Tub in the Guest Bathroom

solving the mantle problem in a mid-century modern

When you live in a house for many years (say ten or more), three things naturally happen. You get older, your tastes change, and you get smarter about home projects. It was love at first site when the real estate agent first showed us our house 15 years ago. I had no idea we were buying a mid-century modern. We thought we were buying a 1,600 square foot, 1955 tract house in a decent neighborhood.

A wall was added years ago before us, supposedly featured
in a Sunset article (the walled courtyard) - Picture from Nov-1997 when we purchased.

weep screed and inspection

During construction, you just never know what will come up and what you will learn. Weep screed. This is a metal piece that is installed at the base of an exterior stucco wall, as opposed to having the stucco go right down to the dirt. And, we learned last week, the City of Newport Beach requires 4" of dirt be removed below the weep screed, next to the house, in order to pass final inspection. Bringing our 1950's foundation up to code during this project has been something of a challenge (read here for foundation footings issue).

This is before, you can see concrete mixed into the dirt and
gravel shoveled back against the fence.

the punch list mid-century style

We are getting down to the nitty gritty. It is punch list time. I realized the contractor was scheduling the last of the sub appointments for this week and next, and we had to speak now or forever hold our peace. I made Albert walk through the addition on Sunday and help me make notes of all the little things. He actually got way more into it than I did, typing on his iPad enthusiastically. I finally discovered why Apple added cameras to iPads. Evernote plus iPad camera equals an amazing punch list. I found myself saying, "I can live with it" kind of a lot. You get to this point. Plus Albert is really picky, if you ask me.

Amazing Punch List