After demolishing the soffit above the shower, we had the hole in the ceiling (as well as several other miscellaneous holes that were created when we removed the old vanity & medicine cabinet) repaired and drywalled. The drywall was something we hired out. I’m sure we could figure out drywall (and we may still get the opportunity), but we needed a professional to swoop in and finish the job quickly.

Our original design was a wet-room style shower where there is no lip or edge from the bathroom floor to the shower itself. The design included an infinity drain and custom glass shower walls. However, when we researched the complexities of the floor installation in a seamless wet room, we realized it was almost impossible without rebuilding the entire floor. In order to drain properly, a slope would have to be created through installing an elevation gain on the other side of the bathroom floor.

The point of this renovation is not to make the house 100% perfect at the expense of our sanity and budget. Since we are on a schedule and don’t want to spend all our money on the bathroom floor, we went with a standard shower pan installation with a ~4 inch lip you have to step over to get into the shower. I GUESS I can manage to pick up my feet and step over the edge (dramatic sigh).

For the floor, Laura found some lovely matte gray hex tiles from Home Depot for about $9/sq foot. For the shower walls, we found some 3″ x 8″ marble wall tiles locally for about $24/sq foot. But Laura is an internet shopping genius. She found a distributor in Texas who had the exact marble tiles we wanted for $7/sq. foot. And that deal was not too good to be true – it was legit. Less than 2 weeks later, we had a pallet of marble subway tiles in our driveway. None of them were broken. They were all in great shape and carefully packed.

We had a recomendation for shower/tile work, but they were at least 6 weeks out, ugh. We found some tile guys on Thumbtack, and they ended doing an amazing job and being great to work with. They implemented our design and improved on it by suggesting some custom shelving made out of two tiles sandwiched together and embedded in the wall (you can see below). The integrity of the shower is probably one of the most important elements of your house, so you don’t want any half-ass or learn-while-you go scenario. We were excited to have professionals handle this part.

Next steps: Now that the tile is in, we can have the custom shower doors measured & created, and the plumber back to finish up the hardware. Then we can make plans to actually move in and shower as often as we want!