We made this bathroom work for a year and it desperately needed an update. Hardwoods in the bathroom and these were on their last legs.

We took the floors down to the floor joists and added new subfloor. Here is where Philip framed out the shower as well.

We debated keeping the cast iron tub and I’m glad we were able to make it a soaking tub and added a shower.

We looked into fancy paints for the exterior of the tub - but Cathy at Spectrum Paint told us any paint should work fine so we used the same color we used on the trim in the room next door.

Penny tile is not for the faint of heart. We knew the letters would be hard, but just getting the tiles all laid just right is also a challenge. We added a 3 tile black border on the edges.

To plan out the tile, I used a dry erase marker to sketch out ideas. I decided to do a lowercase peachy and add a little whimsy to it. If you turn your penny tile the other direction - it changes the way the letters look.

Note if you try this project: They make penny tile with a mesh backing and they make them with a glue backing. The glue backing was much more difficult to remove the tiles to place the black tile in. We set the tiles and then we removed the individual white tiles and replaced them with black ones to write the text.

We used Pfister faucets and use a tub filler to create a modern play on the beautiful cast iron tub. This is the Hillstone Faucet and we repeated it in brass on the sink.