Bright Bold Colorful Miami apartment

Cobalt blue is my favorite color of this season. I love how bright and rich it is. 

This room is painted in Benjamin Moore Aura in Pale Oak. It's a perfect backdrop for all these colorful decor. 

a swirl painting by Henrique Oliveira

A Lepere table and Tom Dixon chair

A simple Ikea bed works perfectly well in this bedroom

A painting adds splash of color in the bathroom

via housebeautiful

Bathroom crush

In heaven there's a bathroom where you can have everything you want. Marble, wallpaper, gold, mercury glass mirror, chandelier...everything in one room!

 

Bathroom design as featured in May's issue of World of Interiors, designed by madduxcreative. 

Renovation week 31 | Master Bath update and what went wrong

The painting went really well in this master bath. If you recall when I picked the color for the cabinet, it turned out really handsome! Because of all the decisions I had to made, I already feel jaded at this point in time and didn't think that anything could excite me this much. The contrast makes this room look so fresh! I picked the color to match the darkest grey on my marble countertop. That was quite a quick decision for me because I thought it's just a bathroom, no one would see it. Now I really wanna show it off.

Color: Benjamin Moore, Overcoat

I chose to do lacquer paint because it's smoother and it's more durable, even though it's not low VOC. And any carpenter would tell you that it's the best kind of paint to show off woodworks and nice cabinetries. 

With lacquer paint you have to wear protective mask because it smell so bad. After I took this photo I had to run outside. If you consider doing this, pack your bags and leave for at least a week. 

The color dries pretty quickly and you have to repeat it about 4-5 times to get it thick enough. 

I used satin finish so when it dries it looks matte and nice like this. 

This deserves an artistic shot by itself. What a beauty. 

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Ok now some of you might be wondered why everything went so well all the sudden? It's because I haven't posted any mishap lately. And here's for some of you who miss the drama.

What went wrong with my Master Bathroom?
1. Marble tub surround
Awhile back when they installed marble countertop in my bathroom, I asked them to use the left over as tub surround. It didn't turn out well the first round.

My bathtub is an inexpensive acrylic, so I wanted to add marble around it to make it look less plastic. 

Round 1: they just slabbed the marble on the tub and left a huge 1/2" gap between the marble and the tile. It was ridiculous. I had to ask them to fix it. 

Round2: Then they just raise the marble up and leave huge grout line under the marble. That was so wrong! Who's in the right mind would think this looks ok? 

Not only they marble was cut poorly and thrown together, the pieces in the corners were not well aligned. And the seams were pretty obvious. 

Round 3: Finally the fabricator decided to come back after weeks of me bugging them constantly. Now we have a proper tub surround. 

They were nice enough to re do everything. They miter cut the edge of the marble to to make it look thicker and eventually fill that huge gap that used to be in-between the tiles and the marble. 

For those who doesn't know how miter edge works. Here is a picture. Typical stone countertops are 3/4" thick. Miter edge gives makes the stone appear thicker and stronger. 

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2. shower niche

I have posted earlier that I like shower niche that is well placed in the shower. But mine didn't start well either. 

Round1: I came in one day to find out that the cut out for the niche is very awkward. The top and the bottom rows of the tiles are cut off and that what I have told them in the beginning not to do. Because it looks like an afterthought. 

Then I took a tape and marked where I want the niche ends. I cut off the top and the bottom to where we don't have to cut off the tiles. 

Round2: They still did such a poor job. The shelf was crooked, so was the right side. I don't know if they tried to pass this as a decent job or not. I wasn't buying it. I had to ask them to re do this. 

Round3: Finally they did it right. They took everything apart and started over. They even mitered the edge. I didn't ask for that but it's sure looks nice! 

What I have learnt from this? 

Trust your guts. 

------------------If something doesn't look right, it's probably not done right.------------------

Happy thanksgiving!

Renovation week 26 | master bathroom update

We have installed wooden rails around the bathroom as well. Instead of going 1-1/2" thick like the kitchen, we are doing a smaller 1"rail to keep it consistent with the guest bathroom. 

Even though our backsplash is marble, we cap it off with the wood rail as well. It's just inexpensive and keep all the rails the same material.

top left is what will be my toilet area. It looks like a cute little room. 

Finding a shower niche I can tolerate

When my architect suggested me an idea of putting a shower niche in my bathroom, to be honest, I was not convinced. Why?

1. Hard to clean. If that niche made out of tiles. Oh my god I hate it when the tiles are being cut unevenly in the corner of the shower. Plus I would spend all my time cleaning gunk from the grout lines. 
2. Doesn't feel vintage. I don't think I ever seen an old house with this. Did they even have such thing as shower niche back in 1920s? I'm just afraid this would look so dated one day.
3. Feel a bit like an after thought. Why don't they just design a shower with some sort of architectural detail that would function as a shelf. Like this photo below. Oh wait a minute I don't have a space in my shower. I can squeeze one tub in and nothing more.

A chair rail that also serves a purpose as a knickknack shelf. This would look great in a shower. 

Since I can't 'find a better solution for my shampoo bottles. I don't wanna have to put shampoo around the bathtub. I have to go with the niche idea anyway.  Under one circumstance though, no grout lines! In search of finding something decent that won't hurt my eyes...Here are what I'm thinking..

This is my first thought if we don't want any grout then maybe we use floor tiles inside the niche. But in this case we still see a lot of grout lines which I don't like. I also don't like that bull nose edge. I'm more like a sharp edge kinda gal. 

Good use of stone right here. This minimize the grout and it looks like a clean skinny shelf. 

We most likely are going to go with this one because we will have left over marble that can probably work in to something like this. The thing that bother me about this photo is that I just don't like seeing the tiles being cut in half on the bottom of the niche and that weird small piece in the right corner. Do you see it?

This is such a neat looking niche. I like that black skinny frame. I'm not sure what kind of material that is. The tiles are cut perfectly. There's no weird skinny piece anywhere. 

This is another idea. Just frame it make it look important. The moulding is so great because they look like window frame or something. The tiles that I use for my bathroom just doesn't have decorative option like this. 

A mix of stone and subway tile. Except dark grout on off white tiles and off white stone just makes this bathroom look dirty. 

Nice clean niche made with tiles only. All the tiles are being cut neatly. I doubt my niche will go perfectly right in the middle of the wall like that. 

What about you? Have you ever been bothered by the look of shower niche in your bathroom?

Renovation week 24 | master bath

I just realized I have not talked about my master bath at all. The master bath is a part of room addition we made to my tiny bungalow. The bathroom started to take shape just recently. I thought this would be a good time to post some plan and progress. Here is the design the architect has drew up for us. There are huge medicine cabinets. Those are the biggest highlights for me. If you remember my old bathroom, I never had a counter space or a big medicine cabinet before. That's a big improvement. I'm excited.

I took inspiration from this photo when I was picking a look for this bathroom. I like the use of telephone style tub filler. It adds character to the space. Especially my bathroom being a new addition, I want it to reference some part of an old world.

 

In the process I took my own initiative to pick the fixtures my self. Here are my picks.

I decided to choose a tub filler first because that's going to be the biggest fixture of the room and it's right in the middle of the room. I go with cross handle because it feels vintage and classic. There are not that many brands that make vintage tub filler that doesn't cost me an arm and a leg. The one above is from Elizabethan Classic. 

For the sink faucet I'm using wall mount faucet because I don't wanna clean the water stain in the back of the faucet all the time. The reason why I picked this one was because my original choice from Elizabethan classic isn't comply with California lead code. They won't even ship it to me. 

Above is a low lead compliant, Hansgrohe Axor Montreux Wall Mount Faucet.

The shower doesn't really matter much for me. I just picked anything plain with small tiny knob that won't over power the tub filler. This one is Hansgrohe C collection. 

The floor is marble hexagon mosaic I ordered from Home Depot. They are pretty good price. I used the same tiles for my guest bath to save the cost. I have just received them today. They are beautiful.

This is where I'm at with the bathroom. The marble slab we picked out from that stone yard in North Hollywood has been installed. There's still a lot to do. And a lot to be fixed. To be continue...