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H y d e R e s i d e n c e : A Japanese-Style Bathroom (Albany, CA 2001) 
Jamie Hyde needed peace and quiet. Between her baby, her job, an
ailing parent and her husband she never had a moment to herself. And
her small house in Albany, California, didn't promote privacy.
There was no place to hide, except in her second bathroom, the one
behind the master bedroom.
That space was old, though - ugly to begin with because of its pink 1950s tile and worn out. All it had going for it was potential - with new windows and a Jacuzzi style tub looking out onto the back yard, the small room could be the retreat she needed.
The bathroom was just finished and the yard as yet undeveloped when this picture was taken. What I like best about the room is how the morning light plays on the fixtures and flowing water in the tub. The handles are on the outside of the tub for convenient filling. Both a standard faucet for soaking and hand shower for washing are provided. 
A privacy wall separates the wall-mounted toilet from the Mangaris vanity with it's tile top. Note how the side window and large mirror brightens the area around the sink. STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION Although the job was small, it was complex. Building bathrooms always involves several cross coordinated trades - carpentry, wiring, plumbing, cabinets, tiling and a lot of design. This particular bathroom also involved some structural remodeling. Large windows over the tub were needed to bring the outdoors in. Since the new window openings would be close to the corner of the house, they would weaken its seismic resistance. Structural compensations included installing new shearwall adjacent to the bathroom and spanning both windows with a large header attached to the shear wall top. The header goes all the way to the corner, and "drags" the lateral load of the roof, if it were to move in an earthquake, back into the new shear wall. None of this was visible, of course, and the added expense of the structural work would not be appreciated by the average client. Unless she happened to be in the bathtub right next the large windows when an earthquake struck. (The windows are safety glass as required by code.) 
Jamie selected the cabinet wood, a sustainably-harvested tropical
species known as Mangaris. Although I hadn't done much hands-on
cabinet work in decades, I tackled this job myself and enjoyed
working with the newcomer material. The entire bathroom from the
vanity to the tub surround, wall cabinets, mirror frames and trim was
hand built, from scratch with planks of clean-cutting, hard,
beautiful Mangaris.
WORTH THE TIME The project took a while. Because they are so labor intensive, hand built cabinets from solid stock (not plywood) are a rare these days. A typical bathroom is equipped with a vanity selected at Home Depot. But that just wouldn't do for Jamie's special retreat and her vision of tying a beautiful bathroom to a beautiful yard, creating a place for soaking and soothing. Was it worth all this effort for a small bathroom in a small house? Jamie thinks so. 
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