Gig Harbor · Bathroom remodel

The Solberg Bathroom

A long beige builder bath becomes a warm plaster sanctuary — limestone, brushed brass, and a single olive tree.

Location: Gig Harbor, WA
Project: Bathroom remodel
Delivery: Design–build, in-house crews
Designed in: Photorealistic 3D, before the build

The Solberg family at home in Gig Harbor, WA — The Solberg family, at home in Gig Harbor.

The family

Erik and Kara Solberg are both nurses on opposite shifts, which means they've spent twenty years passing each other in the same long, beige hallway of a bathroom — an oak vanity under a six-bulb strip light, a fiberglass tub-and-shower combo behind a curtain, and a toilet sitting out in the open right beside it. What they asked us for wasn't more room. It was somewhere calm to land at the end of a twelve-hour shift, without waking the other one up.

The footprint barely moved. We closed the toilet into its own compartment, put a curbless walk-in shower where the fiberglass combo had been, and gave the long blank wall opposite the vanity to a freestanding tub and an olive tree. Then we wrapped all of it — walls, floor, shower — in warm limewash plaster and honed limestone, so there isn't a cold or hard surface left in the room. The real design work was the lighting: backlit mirrors, lit niches, and cove strips on separate dimmers, so the whole room can run on a soft glow at 4:30 in the morning.

No glare, no sharp edges, nothing that reads like a hotel. Just a quiet, warm room for two people who needed one. The olive tree was Kara's idea.

The transformation

Before & after

Where the Solbergs started, and where they ended up.

The Solberg bathroom in Gig Harbor, WA — before the remodel — Before

The Solberg bathroom in Gig Harbor, WA — after the remodel — After

The design

Every finish chosen before a single tile was ordered.

We render the room in photorealistic 3D and build the material palette first, so the Solbergs approved the finished bathroom before demolition started.