Before & After: Bath Fit for a Queen Anne
This Old House Magazine|Fall 2023
Classic meets modern in this primary-suite retreat
NINA MALKIN
Before & After: Bath Fit for a Queen Anne

While open-plan layouts often work well, having a primary bath share space with the bedroom's closets isn't necessarily a home run. But that was the setup in Stamford, CT, homeowners Claudia and Chuck Jepsen's 1887 Queen Anne. "We never showered in that bath-the steam would have saturated our clothes," says Claudia, pointing out that the bath had no vent fans. The pink fixtures, green tile, and linoleum flooring also postdated the period of their house by decades. "We wanted to maintain the aesthetic integrity of our house while creating a bath that felt fresh and timeless," she says.

To get there, the couple put up a wall to section off the existing closets, placing the sink and a new shower along its length. They kept stacked cabinets that sat near the bedroom door, and added curvaceous fixtures and marble surfaces for an updated Victorian look. In the new clothes-storage space, the DIYsavvy duo's clever solution was to fill in around the existing closets by adding wood fronts to cabinet components from IKEA and reusing the old doors.

This story is from the Fall 2023 edition of This Old House Magazine.

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This story is from the Fall 2023 edition of This Old House Magazine.

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