My master bath used to be 4'x8'. I demo'd two bathrooms that were back to back and stole 1.5' from the other to make it 5.5'x8'. >I would like to know from others who renovated a small master bathroom from an older home if you were able to "find" space and make it appear bigger, gain space by using small vanities, etc. Our toilet is in a bump out so that the door--on one of the short ends--can open. This was original to the house. Now, it's just a shallower bump-out, 1' instead of 1.5'. We're using the full depth of that 1' for a wall cabinet, which will be 48" tall x 28" wide. This gives us a place for the humidifier, my box 'o Ace bandages/splints/etc, the cleaning bucket, and all the linens for that bath. Our medicine cabinet will be recessed. It back up to another medicine cab, which must have a light above, so it has sconces. There is a 10.5" gap between the door frame and the wall. We found a 10" deep cab that we're filling back there. Our vanity is actually a full 36". Part of it is 21" deep, and part is 18". We found a brand that looks nice but packs a huge amount of storage into the space. To put in the wall cab, we had to replace the toe-kick heater with a towel warmer, due to space constraints. Our colors will help open the space. The 66" tub will have frameless sliding doors. The walls and floors will be patterns of white with a light gray grout. There will be tile wainscotting to 40" in patterns of white, and the ceiling and substantial crown molding will be white. The walls will be a medium blue-green, but so little will be visible that it'll function as just an accent color. We can't steal space from the walls except for the medicine cabinet because it backs onto an outer wall. If it weren't for that, our 10" cabinet would be 14" deep, inset into the wall. With an 18" vanity, you'll have plenty of room to feel comfortable, even though 21" is murderous. At 4' depth, our 17" sink was bad, but an extra 6" would have made it okay. Our hall bathroom is now 8'x5.5', with a bite out of it where the toilet is for the master bath's toilet to have room with a swinging door. We stole space in that bathroom outrageously! A cabinet above the toilet, which is 8" deep, is recessed 4" into the wall (3.5" stud plus wallboard). I made two other in-wall cabinets, each about 14"x12", interior. One will be hidden behind a picture frame, so only one will be noticeable. I also but a HUGE medicine cabinet above the vanity, which is only 28" wide but packs in 6 drawers and even a shelf in the plumbing space--and looks nice, too. We couldn't recess that cabinet because the one backing it in the master bath is recessed. The lower in-wall cabinet will hold the first aid kit, while the upper one will hold meds that we use but not regularly--cold meds, etc. The medicine cabinet will hold all daily use things that don't fit in the drawers--even the kids' toothbrushes and tooth-brushing cups aren't going on the counter, which will have just the bathroom clock and the soap, and that's it. On the back of the toilet bowl is a kleenex box holder. In the tub area, I don't use regular shampoo bottles but travel-sided ones with really small openings to make it easier to get just a little shampoo or conditioner, even, and the toys are in a cute plastic frog toys scoop on the wall. Clear glass shower doors--when they arrive--will also help keep it open. I can't emphasize enough the importance of not having stuff sitting out to making a space look larger. Nothing makes a room feel small like a lot of stuff just cluttered around. The mud will only be in the shower. The rest will be sheetrock--the size of the room you have is what you get! In your case, if you REALLY can't move any walls (I'd want a tub in there!!!), I'd indulge in some creative thinking. Your bathroom is 4.5x9' total, which REALLY isn't horrifically small. (Remember that mine was 4x8....) I'd start with the shower. I'd stay in the same footprint but do a Kerdi shower so the threshold could be SUPER narrow--just 2". That gives you a good 2" of apparent interior space in the shower, plus likely another .5" of width without the mud base. Recessed niches are a MUST. Too big is better than too small! I'd get a frameless shower door--almost goes without saying in this setting. I'd do wainscotting to 40", continuing over the top edge of the vanity--this is a kind of "special effect," because unless you paint the upper part of the wall a dark color, it tricks the eye into believing there's more space. Continuing just those 4" behind the vanity makes a big difference, here. For the flooring, I'd do either a small mosaic OR 12x12" or larger, and the 12x12" should be on the diagonal. A "rug" effect actually makes a small room seem larger if the rug part has diagonal lines and the border is small. For the ceiling, crown molding make it seem higher as long as the molding and the ceiling are both white. Painting the ceiling any color but white lowers it in comparison to white. Use hooks rather than rods. They make the space seem bigger and stick out less. I designate a minimum of two hooks per person--one for a towel, one for a robe. The back of the door is a good place to hang things. Use art--and use it strategically. A properly-sized picture can make a space seem larger, and you can use it to hide another recessed medicine cabinet. With a .5"-deep frame, you can have 4.5" shelves. Extra TP, first aid stuff, and irregularly used meds can be stored there. Recess the medicine cabinet, if you possibly can, and make the mirror as WIDE as possible for maximum reflection. I'd commission a custom vanity for the space, and I'd use an undermount sink or would install a square vessel sink in an apron-front manner, like this: http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Kraus-White-Rectangular-Ceramic-Vessel-Sink/3250161/product.html You have 42" of space, which is plenty for quite a nice amount of drawers plus a good-sized sink. If you used the sink above, you'd have, with a frameless design, 10.5" for drawers on either side. Make the cabinet kitchen counter height and have two shallow drawers and a deep drawer, and you can still have 8" of open space at the bottom. Even a bun-foot design has less visual weight than going all the way to the floor. Under the sink, add a shelf directly under the plumbing to make a shallow extra "landing" for a small container of things. The one thing, in my bathrooms, that I want space for and don't have is dirty clothes. But as far as everything else, I have MORE storage than I know what to do with! I have space for a cleaning bucket in each bathroom, for all our meds, for my makeup (and plenty of space for kid makeup, when the time comes), even for the Drano, for linens in my bathroom, for tons of bulk storage (extra soap, extra lotion, extra hair products, etc.). We have so much space that the counters can be basically bare. AND far from looking crowded, our hall bath strikes people as much larger than its square footage.

First, I'm a little confused by your post. So I'll write a little, then you can come back to clarify. Shower walls: If they are "concrete", is sounds like he floated the walls with mud. That can be a top-notch installation that can give you perfectly flat wall surfaces to tile on and dead-on 90-degree corners at the wall-to-wall intersections. Usually a barrier of some sort will be put behind the mud...typically tar paper...then wire lathe over that. The mud then gets keyed to the lathe and troweled/screeded flat. All you really need is one moisture barrier or membrane behind the mud. And with floated mud wall, you don't need or even want hardibacker or any other type of tile backer board on the wall. You tile right on the surface of the mud. With your new guy saying he always uses two layers, realize that more than one is not always better, and depending on what membrane is used, it can even be prohibited by code. Code, as well as best building practices, requires that there be only one vapor barrier within a wall. While there is a lot that goes into the reasoning, the goal is to not trap moisture between two barriers. So for the shower walls...if your first guy used one "barrier", then wire lathe, then put a thickness of mud or "concrete" on the walls, that's actually an excellent installation. Regarding the "hardibacker on the floors". If this is on a shower floor, Hardibacker, or any other type of tile backer board, should not be used on a shower floor. On a bathroom floor it's fine, But on a shower floor? It's the wrong product. If it is indeed a bathroom floor and you want waterproofing on your bathroom floor, that waterproofing should go on top of the hardibacker, not underneath it. The reason being that on any floor, if a tile backer board like Hardi is used, it gets set in a bed of thinset on the subfloor, then screwed or nailed to the subfloor. The fasteners will penetrate any waterproofing membrane. If you can clarify what methods and materials were actually used it would help. Example, does it sound like your old contractor did "floated mud walls" as I described above? Is that what the "concrete" is? And your new contractor uses two moisture barriers? What material are they made from. And why does he recommend two versus one? And the "floor"...is it the bathroom floor or the shower floor we're talking about? Details help. Best of luck!

My name is Andy and have been fabricating solid surface in Southern California for 25 years. Solid surface will burn if a hot curling iron is placed directly on the material and left for a period of time. That said, we as fabricators don't have many calls about a burned Corian countertop in the bathroom. Nail polish remover with Acetone will technically make a mark on the Corian if left long enough. If you spill and wipe off there will be no effect. We actually use acetone to clean parts before gluing together in the shop. Corian is not effected by contact, but by prolonged, continuous contact. Hope that helps, Andy Olive Mill

Did the first guy admit he was "cutting corners" or is that your opinion? It's not clear that he was. There's more than one method to properly prepare for tile, method for waterproofing, etc. You might have jumped the gun and gotten somebody less qualified. "Two layers of moisture barrier under the hardibacker on the floor" is a clue. Really? That's a new one. That stuff is supposed to be "glued and screwed", i.e bedded in thinset, etc. (I'm talking about outside the shower area. The shower floor is a whole different matter. BTW, what about pre-slope on the shower floor? Anybody doing anything about that? You might want to find a real tile guy. This post was edited by homebound on Fri, Apr 26, 13 at 8:38