Our kitchen shot by Trevor Tondro in the February 2017 issue of House Beautiful.

The biggest change we made during our renovation upstairs was in the configuration of the master bedroom suite. I don’t much care about a big bedroom- as long as I can fit a king sized bed, the smaller the better really. But I ADORE a spacious bathroom. While I loved what a jewel box our smallish master bath was at our old house, if at all possible this time I wanted a little more space and privacy.

The master bedroom suite is in the 1960’s addition portion of the house- and the best part was the wall of giant, floor to ceiling windows which we have on both floors- but the way it was configured before wasn’t taking advantage of all of that wonderful light. As you can see from the House Beautiful shot- our mission was making the most of the windows (which we replaced- more on that in another post).

Off of the master bedroom was a long corridor with several closets and two full separate bathrooms off of it. At the end, the corridor connected to a small office, which was then opened to what we turned back into a guest-bedroom but had been used as an exercise room. It wasn’t immediately obvious what actually would be possible since the space was so divided up and maze-like. 

Our wish-list for the space included two private water closets, separate bath and shower, and if possible separate washstands. Als0- a spacious walk in closet though we didn’t care if we had to share. After closing off access to the former exercise room/now guest bedroom, we gutted the rest of it so we could see what we were working with. 

What we found was SPACE glorious SPACE. Once it was opened up, the light just poured in and immediately made me think of this gold-leaf glass tile from Ann Sacks I had obsessed over when we were working with them on the Coastal Living Showhouse. When I brought the sample to one of our meetings with Curtis & Windham they were unfailingly polite, as always, but had some understandable concerns about how Liberace this was going to be. (and yes, I know there is another more troubling possible gold-tile connotation but this is my happy place and I’m not going there)  

I had spec’d calacatta gold marble for the floor and shower walls. Their suggestion-which was brilliant as always- was to temper the affect of all that bling by bringing the marble up the walls as a wainscoting. I love how the marble wainscoting, gold tile surround, windows, and floating bath all make the room feel so solid and architectural.

I know to some the gold might be tacky- but in the words of Diana Vreeland:

“A little bad taste is like a nice splash of paprika. We all need a splash of bad taste—it’s hearty, it’s healthy, it’s physical. I think we could use more of it. No taste is what I’m against.”

And besides, I love it. 

See more from our home in this months House Beautiful