Boy has THIS been controversial on TikTok, Gentle Readers. We are finally (finally!) getting around to renovating our daughters’ bathroom, and we came to the realization that the clawfoot tub — aged 110 — must go.
It simply wasn’t salvageable. AND we had absolutely no way of getting it out of the house in tact. I know, I know: it must have gotten IN somehow…but the contractors (Gilday; amazing) and we just couldn’t manage it. It is HEAVY. And it’s on the 3rd floor.
The clawfoot tub served us well for 17 years. The girls were little when we moved in, so there was no need for a shower at first.
A previous owner had actually stencilled the shell pattern of the wall tile onto the outside tub when we first moved in. It was well intentioned, but unfortunate. About 5 years later, we tried painting the tub a darker blue.
Several years after that, we painted the tub a light blue with gold metallic feet to match the brass fittings already in place.
Ultimately, though, the bathroom was far more charming than functional. The real challenges started when the girls, then in middle school, wanted to take showers, not baths.
We rigged up a shower apparatus at great expense and less-than-great quality.
And we tried to make the whole bathroom cute by adding a shower curtain from Etsy, a corner wall cabinet, a rug from Anthropologie, and a hanging light fixture from I don’t know where. (Previously, there was a large oak medicine cabinet to the R of the sink and a wall sconce.)
But all the cuteness in the world couldn’t make up for the fact that the tub-shower-rig was kind of…well…gross. You couldn’t help but bump up against the 360-degree shower curtain liners, so they’d stick to your elbows as you were trying to shampoo. And exiting the tub…yeesh. There as nothing to hold onto as you stepped out, and the floor was a good 7″ from the tub floor. It was downright hazardous.
So we made the difficult decision to replace the clawfoot tub with a walk-in shower — and move the toilet to make way for a long vanity with two sinks. The sink/toilet wall was this:
And it will become this, although this wall tile will be in a herringbone pattern. And, spoiler alert, it won’t be white ;)
As for the other wall:
It will house the relocated toilet and the new shower:
I know: it all looks a little cold in the drawings. But we’re really trying to honor the spirit and style of the house by using tile in traditional shapes/sizes and classic looking fittings from Waterworks.
After saying a solemn and heartfelt goodbye…there’s just no delicate way to say this next part: the clawfoot tub was sledgehammered and and carried down two flights of stairs in buckets.
Look. I wish we had the luxury of a bathroom with a clawfoot tub that could just sit there looking fabulous and didn’t need to be used on a daily basis. We would have had this tub reglazed and redesigned a new bathroom around it.
But we have neither the space nor the resources. We needed a shower.
RIP, clawfoot tub, 1910 – 2021. You meant a lot to us, and we’ll never forget you.
Annie Elliott Design is based in Washington, DC, with satellite offices in St. Michaels, Maryland and in Middlebury, Vermont. Annie’s design work and insights have appeared in numerous local and national publications, including HGTV Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Washingtonian Magazine.