Walk-In Shower & Soaking Tub Primary Bath Remodel

Project Specs

About This Bathroom

In our experience, the mauve-walls-and-gold-trim primary bath is one of the most common “we finally cannot look at it anymore” calls we get in Malvern and across the Main Line. This one had the full kit of its era — a corner glass-and-brass shower, a drop-in jetted tub on a tile deck, an etched-ivy glass niche, and gold-framed mirrors over a shell sink. We took it to the studs, reframed the layout, relocated the plumbing, blocked in a new Andersen awning window with privacy glass, and converted the old pocket door — which never sealed or aligned the way the homeowners wanted — to a hinged door that swings into the bedroom.

The walk-in shower and freestanding tub share a single wall of glossy cream Look Lino tile, with a fixed frameless glass panel that keeps the whole wet zone open and bright. Brass runs through everything — shower head and handheld, controls, towel bars, deck-mount filler at the tub.

Two niches tie the room together: one in the shower, one set into the wall beside the tub. Both are framed and backed in the same Cosentino ECLOS Tajnar quartz as the vanity top, so the stone reads as one material through the space instead of an afterthought cut into tile.

We’ll be honest about the freestanding tub: the relocated rough-in costs more than a deck-set tub, and you give up the ledge a drop-in tub gives you for bottles and a place to sit. The homeowners wanted the look and the soak — on a primary bath, that’s the right call — but it’s a tradeoff we walk every client through before they commit.

Underfoot, a heated floor on its own dedicated circuit sits over the waterproofing. On a Chester County primary bath, it earns its keep October through April.

The wall tile is Look Lino in a glossy cream, set in a tight vertical stack. A glaze like that has real shade and surface variation tile to tile — part of why it looks the way it does — but the long continuous vertical joints punish any lippage, so our tile crew set it on leveling clips and accepted a slower pace to keep the lines true. The double vanity is Tribeca’s Hudson in rift-cut white oak, run full height with a powered utility pullout built into the cabinet for hair dryers and the tools that otherwise live on a counter. The Cosentino ECLOS Tajnar quartz on top is a quiet, warm-white surface that carries into both niches, so the eye reads stone, tile, and brass as one set of decisions rather than three. Back-lit framed mirrors and a brass sconce over each sink finish the vanity wall.

What we tell our clients on a dated primary bath: the gut is the expensive part whether you keep the old layout or not, so this is the one time it pays to move the walls, the window, and the plumbing while everything is open. Spend there first — the tile and the brass are what people notice, but the layout is what they live in.

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