Welland Rd. — Brookline

Welland Rd. is a 1914 Brookline center-entrance with a primary bath tacked onto the second floor in the 1970s. The owners wanted a real curbless shower, a proper vanity, and a floor that held heat on January mornings. We gutted to studs, re-poured the shower pan with a proper slope, and dropped the subfloor an inch and a quarter to get the curbless line to meet the bedroom hardwood.

The shower is a Schluter Kerdi membrane over a mud-bed, flood-tested for twenty-four hours before the tile went down. Tile is a twelve-by-twenty-four honed limestone-look porcelain on the floor and walls, with a three-by-twelve accent in the niche. The niche came out half an inch off plumb on the first pass and the tile setter pulled it and re-laid it the next morning. The owners did not catch it — we did.

Heated floor is a Warmly Yours electric mat under an uncoupling membrane, wired to a programmable thermostat. Vanity is a walnut shaker with a quartz slab top and a Kohler Purist trim set in brushed nickel. Glass is a half-inch frameless panel with a square support. The whole scope ran six weeks.