As a little mental break between real work and house work and addition work, I’ve been tinkering away on the house model in sketchup – this time working on some wainscoting layouts in the master bathroom. (Here are two previous posts on initial design ideas.) I have the whole house modeled in rough form in sketchup, but some areas where we’ve done projects over the last few years are much more detailed. I took some precise measurements of the master bathroom and tweaked the model to make it match because it’s essential to get the layout just right before starting on a wainscoting design – especially when you have vertical boards with generous spacing in between them. There are eight wall segments in the room and each one is a different length, so laying out the verticals isn’t as easy as it looks.
You might remember that we were considering this piece below for storage in the room – we went to look at the actual piece at West Elm recently and really liked it. Behind the swing door you have the option for adjustable shelves or a hanging rod – the shelves will be perfect for storing toiletries and bathroom supplies, and the drawers can hold more of the same, plus towels.
And it’s just a coincidence that they are showing it in front of a blue wall – but hey! I think it looks great. I recently brought home a lot of different blue samples from work and pinned them up on the wall. I took this picture at night with my phone, so the colors look really bright and purplish, but they were all really pretty in person. I just got a sample of the blue in the largest sample below. It’s much less purple and more indigo – and much more muted than it reads there. In fact – it’s a little like the blue in that photo above!
So here are a few closer views of the wainscoting. Because it’s a small room, it’s sort of hard to get good views inside the model without really distorting the camera view angle. It’s no different than trying to get a good photograph in a small room. That’s why there are so many views below – feel free to click on any of them to see them larger. I also modeled the actual size of the wardrobe to make sure it would fit in the space. It’s exactly eight inches wider than our current cabinet which means we could still use the rolling hamper in the room as well, but I honestly think the wardrobe will look better if it’s not so crowded in there. We don’t really need the hamper in there – the room is right next door to the laundry room, so maybe that’s a non issue.
I’m not showing a mirror in the room yet – but we’ll obviously need to pick one before we finalize the details of the wainscoting because there will not be pegs behind it and we may need to modify the upper ledge to accommodate it. I’ll probably model a few options to scale before we make a decision.
The verticals are evenly spaced, and I finally found a spacing that looks good on all the walls. It’s important to focus on the most visible corners of the room and work from there – in our case it’s the corner across from the door and the two big walls in the room. The corner behind the door and the corner next to the window are less important – remember the tub has an exposed shower ring with curtains, so even when those are pulled back they still completely block that back corner from view. The panels also need to center on the existing sink and toilet locations – so the placement and spacing had to take a lot of things into consideration.
M saw a wainscoting detail that he liked a few months ago – it was in a dining room, and he thought it might look good in this room. It’s almost a reversed idea from this one. I tried it out in the model (see below), but it looked too busy in this space and it’s a lot of material – wood, fasteners, caulk, plus time and labor.
So this is where I think we’re headed. Time to measure and mark it out on the walls to test it out in the real world, and also time to get some indigo-go on the walls. Oh, and we need to find the perfect wood peg too – if you see one, let me know!
Love the indigo and that storage piece!
Oh this is going to look so classy! Out of curiousiry, what sort of program do you use to do these designs? Is it tedious creating them?
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I use SketchUp, the free version on my home computer. It’s easy to install and fairly easy to learn. It’s a really helpful planning tool, for sure. I’ve modeled everything from the laundry room redo to the bookshelves in the living room.
I like where this is heading! Indigo makes everything better (in my book). Cheers – CT
How does the WE storage piece look along the wall with the door? Just curious. I’d hate to “hide” it though…it’s really lovely.
I’m wondering if our addition would still be in progress if we used sketch-up. 😉
You’re funny! The addition drawings are actually in Revit, but I did work in Sketchup initially. And they are progressing (slowly but surely). We’re close to having enough to go to the building department for a preliminary review – we’ve got some variance action in our future, for sure, with our skinny lot and required setbacks.
The cabinet does fit on either wall, but I like it best opposite the door. That’s a big driver here – having a good looking piece of furniture with hidden storage. When you come up the stair that view is what you see – we always have the doors open (unless we’re actually using the bathroom) because we like the light to come into the center of the house. And since it’s an old house that had no plumbing originally, the master bathroom isn’t exactly tucked away in the back of a suite. What is nice about the layout though, is that you don’t see any plumbing fixtures unless you walk into the room.