Bathroom Design

Welcome to the House 6 master bathroom. When I designed this, I knew it was going to be a smaller master bathroom. As such, the space had to be really scaled properly, and the one thing I really wanted to do was make sure that the experience of bathing would be one that related to the outdoors, because in this corner of the house you can see it is really beautiful out here, with the redwoods and such. And so I chose to make a very low window in the corner, and that would be where the bathing experience is. I went with a stainless steel bathtub because we can insulate inside just like a stainless steel thermos cup. I've been doing this for a long time in my house designs because I happen to like those kind of Japanese-style tubs, and this is a way of achieving that but having this full-depth immersion rather than these little shallow tubs.

Blending stainless steel, concrete and tileWe custom design stainless steel tubs. We line them with foam and they retain the heat of the water for a long time. In fact, if you put a foam cover on it, you can fill it up with hot water and it'll drop only a few degrees per hour. That's different than a standard tub, which sucks out heat all the time. And, of course, what would House 6 be without concrete? And here it is. We have a concrete counter that was poured in our shop with our Pro Formula in a stone color with the various inlays, of course. And I'm always a big proponent of using tile, mosaics, marble, granite, and things merged with the concrete, and this is no exception here. By putting these mosaic tiles here, it takes the brunt of the force of the water on the concrete, which will eventually wear. In this case, the mosaic is absorbing all of that impact and you won't get an erosive effect like you would if this was concrete. Eventually, in maybe 5 to 10 years, if this was just simply concrete, it would begin to wear away the cream layer of the concrete. So that's why oftentimes where there is a direct hit with the water, I'll use something like mosaic tile.

Terrazzo-look concrete floorThe floor was poured when we poured the big mat foundation floor for this, 18 inches thick. The very first day, this was the big first concrete pour, and in this corner of the house, I ran over with some 5-gallon buckets of green pigment and just sloshed it on with a mixture, sort of my own lithochrome, if you will, where broadcast color, sand, and cement were mixed up together and I broadcast it over. I threw in mother of pearl, bits of turquoise and sodalite, which is that blue you see in there, and then it gets troweled over and you hope for the best because you never can know what it's going to be like until you grind that floor and you polish it and it reveals all those aggregates and things that you've put in, the decorative material.

It wasn't until six months later that I knew if the floor came out or not. But, in this case, it came out really well. It almost looks like a terrazzo floor, completely terrazzo, which is poured at about 5/8 inch thick and it's all very controlled. Well, this is on an 18-inch slab of concrete the day of the pour, so it's a very different experience. You don't have as much control. On the other hand, being not so controlled, gives it an element or an organic quality that you don't get with terrazzo, which can tend to look really commercial because everything is regulated with terrazzo. They regulate the exact size of the aggregate, how much you broadcast, and with those exacting proportions, they can replicate those everywhere, in airports and things like that.

But here, in this case, with that more organic quality, it has a homier look and a homier feel in the best sense of the word, in the sense that it's customized looking. That speaks very well for the kind of work we do, which is customized for custom homes and people appreciate that. They can see and feel the difference. It doesn't look commercial.

From countertops to floors, fireplaces, walls, you can see that anything is possible with concrete. You can start small and dream big.