HI-END CUSTOM INTERIOR DESIGN FOR RESIDENTIAL, COMMERCIAL, REMODELS, & HISTORIC PRESERVATION IN DENVER, COLORADO

Inner space

By Elana Ashanti Jefferson Denver Post Staff Writer

In the beginning, there was geometry: Enough odd angles in a tight, confined space to make architects and designers squeal.

This is the master bathroom inside the energy-efficient custom home where Jim and Susan Biestek intend to live out their retirement. Twelve years ago, the foothills couple communed with a "green" architect to get their house. "He ate with us and lived with us and got to know everything we liked," recalls Jim Biestek, a former commercial jet pilot.

The result is bright and spacious without being ostentatious — a quiet, two-story home set off from the main drag in a placid mountain meadow. And so the Biesteks lived, almost happily ever after — until it became apparent that their high-tech, energy-efficient home featured a few design quirks. One of the biggest was the master bathroom.

“Designers and architects often come to a difference of opinion about (unusual) angles,” says Joyce Clegg of Littleton's Daydream Designs LLC. “When you're looking down on them, they're cool. But when you're living with them, it's hard.”


Her challenge: Conceive an updated look that would invite the gorgeous setting outside of the Biestek's home in, and do it all without moving any significant fixtures including the vanity, toilet, tub or shower. Also, this remodel was done without making the room larger because doing that would have sacrificed the architectural integrity of the original "green" design.

Soothing the naysayers
The Biesteks' house was constructed with Structural Integrated Panels - six-inch insulation sandwiched between two pieces of plywood for maximum energy efficiency. So instead of punching a whole through that frame, Clegg conceived a design in which the tub was shifted from its original angle to square off with four tall windows. This allows the user to sit in the tub and gaze directly into the surrounding woods and brush.

Under-mounting that tub and then surrounding it with frame of smoothed river rock and granite helped create the "infinity" effect Clegg intended. It was fortunate that she recently took a CAPS (Certified Aging-in-place Specialist) course through the Home Builders Association.

“These modifications are universal in design (and) advantageous to people of all ages. Examples include low-maintenance exteriors, single-story living, and extra space for rolling traffic (like) wheelchairs, baby carriages, storage carts, power chairs and other mobility aids,” says Cynthia Leibrock, the author of “Beautiful Barrier Free: A Visual Guide to Accessibility” and the longtime designer who taught Clegg's class.

Liebrock concedes that the CAPS philosophy serves as more of an inspiration than a point-by-point design guideline. But it helped Clegg tremendously in adapting the Biestek's bathroom. “We were going for this indoor nature thing, so it helped to have a free moving space,” she says of the new tub and shower space.

Yet another hurdle entailed getting under the original tub space to run new plumbing, and to do it in such a way that wouldn't disrupt the home's energy-efficient shell. “That was the hardest thing to work out,” says Jim Biestek. Far from employing a do-it-for-me attitude, Biestek pitched in with the bathroom remodel whenever he could. That helped.

“The best design happens when everybody works together,” says the designer. “There were times when we had three or four people on the phone, trying to work out an issue.”

Then there was the challenge of figuring out exactly how to set an “infinity tub” and cut an exact piece of granite for its frame. “Since I wanted the infinity look, we have this trough,” Clegg says with a glance toward a small, hardly-noticeable space between the tub and the wall. It was another noodled solution that now provides drainage for the occasional splashes.

Another problem arose when the remodel team realized the floor was an inch and a half out of level. Once that was handled, the next challenge entailed installing a frameless, trackless, curb-less shower. “There were doubters in the remodeling team” that it could be done, Clegg says.

Her team noodled a way to reduce the size of one of the bathroom door frames to accommodate the new shower's door, which opens in both directions. They also shifted the water source inside the shower to allow for more shower-head slack, and moved the knobs closer to the shower door.

Clegg selected the smoothed and rounded river rock to frame the new tub. She enlisted Kevin Fugiel of StarTile in Denver to lay out a “stream” of rock on the shower floors and walls with a trickle effect inside the shower that gives the space the feel of a miniature waterfall. And to help tie the room together, the team used that same smoothed rock for matching tiles around the vanity mirror.

Nature's inspiration
Not everything changed. The Biesteks kept their original cabinetry while Clegg softened the overhead lighting with lodge- themed fixtures. Susan Biestek is in love: “How many people can sit in their bathtub and look outside like that?”

Ditto for the curb-less shower, which creates such a strong standing-in-the-woods illusion that curiosity got the better of Susan Biestek before she gave her new shower for a test drive: She felt compelled to hike up to the hill in front of her house to make sure passers-by can't see in to the shower as well as she can see out, and they can't. “It's almost like an optical illusion,” Clegg says of the way the shower is positioned at the corner of the home, set away from the road.

The final design touch — the jewelry in the new bathroom — includes a flashy spray of silk orchids at the edge of the tub to help draw the eye outside, and a swath of sheer, earth-toned fabric wrapped in willow branches and neatly fixed above the windows.

"It's lovely," Susan Biestek says of her new loo. "Just so bright and cheery."