Before & After: A Classic Refresh for a Brooklyn Bathroom

The bathroom in Amy’s Brooklyn Heights condo wasn’t terrible or falling apart. But after living there for a while, she started to notice how the finishes picked by the previous owner weren’t in line with the style of the rest of her home, and the vanity cabinet and countertop extension were making the narrow bathroom feel unnecessarily cramped. So she decided to swap out a few fixtures, and replace the tile, to make her bathroom feel bigger and give it a classic, timeless feel.

Working with her contractor Pedro, Amy was able to make her streamlined new bath a reality — and also deal with some unexpected issues that came up along the way.

Amy chose classic but inexpensive subway tile for the walls and shower surround, which allowed her to splurge a little on light green Ann Sacks penny tile for the floor. Pedro installed the tiles with a light grey grout, which won’t show dirt as much, and adds a nice little bit of contrast to a mostly-white space.

But the piece of the reno with the biggest impact is probably the new vanity, which takes up much less space, visually and literally, than the old one. While most sinks are 24 inches deep, Amy found that the shape of the room made a 20 inch deep sink make more sense, so she sourced a custom-cut Carrara marble top and paired it with chrome legs to create a console that perfectly suits the space.

The new sink means losing a little under-vanity storage, but it makes up for it by making the bathroom feel a little more open. Plus, a linen closet (the door is on the left in this photo) and new, streamlined medicine cabinet mean there’s still plenty of storage.

Sometimes remodeling leads to not so pleasant surprises. During this one, Pedro discovered leaks in the shower body, behind the tile, that needed to be fixed. Although this added additional time and expense to the project, the whole thing was still complete in three weeks — and now Amy’s bathroom is much prettier, inside and out.

You can read more about the project and see more photos at Sweeten.