A Garden District Primary Bath

The double-gallery Victorian on Prytania Street had seen careful stewardship over its 130-year life — original heart pine floors throughout, plaster ceiling medallions in every room, and the kind of tall ceilings that give a space room to breathe. The primary bathroom, though, had been "updated" sometime in the 1980s in a way that the owners described, diplomatically, as character-neutral. Our scope was to restore the room to something worthy of the house without pretending it was still 1894. We took the space down to framing, corrected a longstanding slope in the original subfloor, and reworked the plumbing for a generous walk-in shower along the side wall. The dated tub-and-tile combination came out by day two. In its place: a clean rectangular shower behind a frameless glass enclosure, finished in pale stone tile that catches the morning light from the existing transom window. We built a floating double vanity in limed white oak — a finish chosen deliberately for how it lets the wood grain read without competing with the marble counter above. Honed white marble on top, matte black plumbing and hardware throughout, and a pair of brass sconces between the mirrors to bring back a little of the room's historic warmth. Tall rectangular mirrors in thin black frames echo the proportions of the doorway and the original window trim. A project like this is about listening to what a house already is. Our job was to give this bathroom the same care and confidence the rest of the house had carried for over a century.