Need bathroom shower ideas

6 years ago

Hi all,

The main bathroom of our house in pretty inconvenient. It looks nice but it's not functional. The old owners were just that.....older couple, empty-nesters, when they renovated. Her husband was also a contractor so the work was done by him.

Although we have our master bathroom, they made this main bathroom (the one closest to the other bedrooms) a spa bathroom. Though small, it has an awesome skylight and a deep soaker tub.

With the pedestal sink, there wasn't much storage, not really usable for a family bathroom. We took out the mirror and installed a medicine cabinet and added the shelving over the toilet.

The problem is that the tile only goes to halfway up the walls and our inspector told us the wall sconces are not waterproof. So taking a shower in there is not a good idea. We have another bathroom but it's on the other side of the house off the kitchen and family room. That's where guests/family need to go to shower. It's not convenient.

We don't have the money to completely redo the bathroom and overall it's fine. What I want is the ability for people to shower there.

What we need are ideas for waterproof indoor wall sconces? Waterproof wallcovering? I'd rather not have to rip out the tile already there if I can avoid it. I'm not sure I could find the matching tile so if I went tile, would it look weird if a different tile was used? We are looking to do the work ourself.

Thanks in advance!

Featured Answer

PRO

Debbi Washburn

6 years ago

I think the issue here is none of us can "see" what is going on there so we can suggest to you all day long.... get the right person in there to look at it and go from there....

Good luck!

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Comments (18)

Lindsay K
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
I'd probably make an attempt to find the brown tile first. Then if you can't find it, get some sample tiles and hold them up there until you find one that looks like a nice transition...maybe look for one that matches the color of that lighter strip of contrasting tile or the color of the tub/sink.
functionthenlook
6 years ago
Get an electrician in there and get those sconces out of there. This is not a diy job. Sooo dangerous. You have enough light with the sky lights. This is probably another case of a brain dead pros. Some one probably seen a picture in a designing magazine or show and thought let's do it. It's right up there with hanging a chandelier over a tub as not what to do.
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It looks as if you have something crumbling behind the tiles. It could be the porcelain or the wall. This once happened to me. I paid for a professional to insert a gas fire into the fire breast. Consistently we had what looked like rubble falling down the chimney. No one knew what it was and we were baffled. Then one day we had the chimney swept by an amazing chimney sweep who informed us the wall prep behind the fireplace hadn't been done properly and what was falling down was the brick and rubble which was behind and had not been cleared properly. He said it wasn't a big deal and not dangerous so we left it, although it was an inconvenience having to clean it up every day particularly in bad weather. I would advise asking a tiler to come and have a look. Maybe your bathroom tiles need sealing, maybe water is getting in. If the tiler doesn't know ask a surveyor, he may not have the answer but he will know which trade to point you in the direction of. It could simply be a case of the walls not being prepped properly before the tiles were put up. Any which way, if a large tile which could potentially fall off a wall it needs to be checked because if it landed on you it could do serious damage or cause further tile damage which would make the job of rectifying more expensive.
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gigirambles
6 years ago
A contractor put those sconces in there?! Yikes. Definitely not safe. I'd remove them and patch the wall and repaint it.
PRO
Lampert Dias Architects, Inc.
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
You need to do it correctly or you will have water and mold issues inside your walls.

Have a licensed contractor do the work.

Remove the existing tile and the light fixtures. Properly prepare the wall with waterproofing.

The best method is to apply a waterproof mortar base with the tile applied over that. The other method is to install a waterproof backing board with the tile installed with a thin set mortar over this......not as good over time.........

Take the tile all the way up the wall on all three sides....Tile can be very affordable, but the installation is what costs the most....A good tile contractor is worth the money.

Add new light fixtures on the ceiling adjacent to the shower , but not inside the shower. Recessed can LED lights are great.
Mairim Wales
Original Author
6 years ago
Thanks for the thoughts. I'd really like design ideas.

I know I need to replace the lights. I do need to keep the lights there because the space is dark at night with just the light above the medicine cabinet. I don't think recessed lights would work since the ceiling is all open to the second story roof and there's a skylight taking up half the ceiling. I really need some sort of wet location indoor wall light, or maybe perhaps something that hangs down from the slanted 2 story ceiling?

I've done tile work before, replacing another bathroom floor. My husband and I have redone our kitchen ourselves so we are not quite novices.

I would rather not rip out what's there. I was looking at ideas of what I could add above the tile, whether tile or some other material, that would continue the look of what's there.
User
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
What is there is an unpermitted and uninspected DIY hack of the first order. Ready to electrocute someone, and rot out your house. The perfect storm And you want to keep it. You're completely in denial here about the danger. That's nuts. That all needs to get ripped out to the studs and rebuilt by a competent professional who understands water proofing. And the electrical code.

Hire a Pro. If you don't have any legal design ideas , then hire a designer. None of the Pros involved would keep a thing about that ridiculous mold factory electric chair.
Snaggy
6 years ago
Why the hell would someone put wall lights in a shower !
PRO
Curb Appeal Fixers Landscaping
6 years ago
I would defiantly get rid of the wall sconces (don't know why someone would put that kind of lighting that close to a water source). I would also rip out the horrible looking dark tile but I would keep the tub it looks like its in pretty condition and matches the sink and toilet and I love the wood flooring pulling the whole space together.

Bottom line (remove the wall sconces to make the shower safe again). And replace that dark tile with white subway tile (you can never go wrong with subway ... that's like my go to tile on projects).
PRO
Krugg Reflections
6 years ago
I would suggest buy water proof LED lights,

Some stuff on Houzz I found

Look around here perhaps
acm
6 years ago
I think they intended it to be a bath, and the shower rod is a way around a normal hand shower sprayer for the bath. That makes sense of all the other details.

Unfortunately, it's not easy to make this a safe shower -- there's no reason that, if it wasn't intended to be a wet space, there's any waterproofing behind the tile that's there, so no matter how good a job you did with the new stuff above, you'd never guarantee that water wasn't leaking down inside the walls.

If you want people to shower here, you're going to have to take out everything down to the tub, and do all new tile up to the skylight boundary. At the same time, you can put in a real shower fixture at a usable position. And rip out these lights and find some enclosed wet-rated replacements, hopefully placed above the shower head height.

The good news is that yours is the rare bathroom where you can do this job in isolation -- that is, it doesn't tie into tile on the walls or floor, there's no tile on the front of the tub, and honestly nothing about that brown is even reflected in the rest of the room. As a result, it can be a single project, although requiring a plumber, electrician, and tile specialist, so you need to get bids from general contractors. A shower is the very last project that anybody should be doing for themselves, no matter how much floor tile they've laid!
acm
6 years ago
You could try a light "recessed" into the wall, if there's no ceiling -- will have to see what space allows.
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Or do something similar with damp-rated fixtures placed just outside the shower but above the rod, so that they shine in...

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User
6 years ago
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User
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
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Debbi Washburn
6 years ago
Sure there are plenty of "waterproof " lights out there - they are outside your home, along walkways and in pools.... BUT the electrical work, boxes etc would all be done for outdoor installation - pretty sure this is not.... all it takes is one tiny tiny piece of wire to be exposed and that is it! Please don't risk it... if you are looking for something temporary - find where the wiring begins for those lights so you can kill those boxes, add new tile ( but regrout the old so it is newly sealed ) and change the light over the vanity to more bulbs so you get some more light or see if you can get a line up to whatever ceiling you may have and hang a chandelier ( not over the tub! ) - even a small 3 bulb one would make a huge difference...

Good luck and be very very careful! No remodel is worth taking a chance on someones life.....
PRO
Imperial Flooring Inc.
6 years ago
I would suggest getting the lights out of there; either cover up & patch the wall or if you can still find the tile still cover patch then install the tile on the wall. It is a nice tile but they must have not been thinking long term or functionality of the bathroom.
User
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
"BUT the electrical work, boxes etc would all be done for outdoor installation - pretty sure this is not.." NO. the wiring inside the wall would/can be the same for either location. I would suggest something like this that seals to the wall the same way as the shower valve escutcheon does.

Or something recessed if you want to change the junction box.
User
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
"I think they intended it to be a bath, and the shower rod is a way around a normal hand shower sprayer for the bath. That makes sense of all the other details."

Essentially, everything met current codes (NEC, IRC) until someone put in this sliding riser after inspection instead of just a low hook to keep the hand shower from falling into the tub.