Remodel Masterclass: Jess' Primary Bathroom

0:00Alice Lane:Hello everyone, welcome to Dear Alice. Today's going to be a really fun and personal episode. I know, I know. Jess gets to take us to her remodeled bathroom. Yes. Yeah, you guys, you've been seeing us, Sue and I sort of volley this back and forth throughout time. Sue bought a remodel, she bought a home that she needed to remodel. Desperately. Hers was built in the 70s and had never undergone a remodel. and I did a new build on my home in the year 2014-15 and so here we are 10-11 years later and I'm ready for some something new I'm feeling it I'm feeling the itch so in you know the 2000 aughts we were doing a lot of neutrals and my bathroom my primary bathroom which is the topic of today's episode was this really lovely light gray color that reads like primer to me today to my eye.

0:50Alice Lane:And actually we shot my bathroom. So we're like, you know what? The pictures of my house are just like all of the different eras and looks and feels and different furniture. We've shot it and it just looks like a garage sale to my eye on the portfolio. Please don't go look at the portfolio and look at my house. It's still a work in progress. It's just had so many different personalities over the years and the bathroom has never changed. And as we went to shoot it in January, because we were shooting the bedroom and a few products, I was like, oh my gosh, You guys, I am this, I'm being so vulnerable.

1:20Alice Lane:I'm going to put the before picture up right here so you can see. This was January of 2026. The walls are light gray and it was just white and it was just really, really sterile feeling and didn't feel designer to me at all. And we had just developed this brand new sconce for the bathroom called the Hollis Vanity Sconce. It's so beautiful and has this real vintage feel to it. Even the glass is a sort of diamond textured glass. And they almost feel old Hollywood to me. And I'm like, I cannot offend the new Hollis Vanity Sconce by hanging it on these gray walls. Mama's got to do something. and so I called up Tyler Hunsinger from iconography and I said Tyler I think I need to plaster my walls do you have any time like this is really desperate and we've used iconography before here in the showroom our brand is on this big blue plastered wall with our brass lettering on it and we've used him in every storefront we've had and we've used him on special projects I've just never had plaster in my own home yet.

2:23Alice Lane:And I thought this was the chance where I've got to do it. I know it's time. It takes time. And it's a lot of labor. And I thought maybe since it's such a small room, we could pull it off in time to do this launch. And sure enough, he had time. It was like the perfect timing. I can't believe that I'm living with plaster walls right now. We just barely shot it this morning. And now we're recording the episode on it. So anyway, we got plaster. I was talking with Tyler and I said, do you index a little bit lighter on the wall color or a little bit darker because there is so many layers of color. And he said go a little bit darker.

2:56Alice Lane:And I also knew with burnishing it that we were going to get some reflection going and being really vulnerable in my home office that I just painted. It went on quite a bit lighter than I thought it would. And I've been bummed that I didn't go a couple of shades darker. So I wanted to get it right in my bathroom. And my bathroom has north facing windows. This is really important, you guys. What way your windows are facing is kind of changes the light in the room. My room always looks really cold and gray. Something about north-facing light. And I had done a little bit of research. I don't know if I chat GPT did or I was listening to other experts talk about light.

3:33Alice Lane:And they said if you do have a north-facing window, you're going to want to index for warmer color in that room. And what's fun about using Tyler from Iconography is that he's an artist. artist and he even changed the color of my plaster midway through and he added more yellow to it to get it to be a little bit warmer because the color was feeling a little bit mauve. Yeah we've always talked to him like he's like a chemist. Yeah. Any project he's just like I'm gonna put some like butterfly dust and then we're gonna sprinkle this in. Yeah. And then it's gonna do this dance and then it'll sink. Yeah.

4:03You're like okay whatever you say.

4:05Alice Lane:Yeah. It's amazing. It's so fun to get to work with an artist and it's really fun to get to work in your own space on it. And I had Sue come over one night and she was like of course go with the darker color so i was thinking i just wanted my walls to to sort of just feel like cashmere you know hand touched really artisan warmer definitely for that north facing light and we ended up going quite a bit darker i'm going to hold up my paint color so tyler likes to work in shorewin williams colors he feels like it's true color chroma he talks about a lot true chroma yeah where i feel like you're been more colors you can get all of these really beautiful in between ambiguous colors, more muted, more tonal.

4:44Yeah.

4:44Alice Lane:So this was true color. These are some of the concepts that I really loved. Different shades of like sort of nudes, if you will, some darker, some lighter, but just almost time warm, really soft. And I knew getting ready in the mirror, my skin color would look, I think, pretty and true and in light like this. So I was sort of trying to identify what would feel like this. And so I went to my closet and I even found a sweater that I like to wear and I put that against my countertops because I was keeping my same countertops. I was keeping the same stone on my floor. I even had a YSL wallet that was a really beautiful nude tone that I put up there with the paint.

5:24Alice Lane:I knew the new sconces were brass so I put a brass object up there. You guys whatever you can do in your home to help you identify the feeling for the color do it and let me also say if you're living with a gray bathroom like I was, or if you're living with a white bathroom, you can really change everything by just changing the wall color. You can just do it with color or you can do it with plaster. Plaster is going to give you that movement and that feeling. And I cannot speak enough about how this room feels now. I feel so luxurious in this space. Another thing that we did that changed the game was we included the ceiling in the paint color.

6:04Alice Lane:I had white ceilings before and plastering the ceiling. Tyler said, if you can only do one thing, he said, always do the ceiling because the way that light will rake across the ceiling, you're going to get so much credit for it. We experienced this in a project we did in Texas. We just plastered the ceiling blue in the pantry and so much credit for it. Yeah, Mike, we knew it was going to be plaster and it was going to be like a lighter plaster. And then last minute we pulled an audible and put a little bit more chroma in there and gave it something in like, he's right like there's a raking of light that hits it like through this whole hallway and you're just like you don't see anything else like you could be like cooking a giant wedding cake in there and be like how about those ceilings yeah like they're stunning yeah so stunning the way light reflects on them oh so magical that's such great feedback well and tyler said we should do it because you have skylights he calls it architectural piercing where you have this light that comes down through it into the room and the skylights are quite deep and tall and this was going to be so much more labor for them.

7:05Alice Lane:Also, my ceilings weren't smooth, which meant they had to be floated smooth. You love doing that. To get the plaster. You guys, if there's one thing I can tell you if you're building right now, do not do a textured ceiling. It's, yeah, you're going to have to go back and smooth them out to do anything fun with them. Wallpaper, plaster, even just painting them the same color of the wall. Your builder's always going to want to put a texture on it because it covers up any flaws or anything like that. But I'd rather even see like natural waves on a smooth surface than see texture on the ceiling. I'm learning that lesson over and over again in 2025 and 2026.

7:37Alice Lane:So if you're building, do not do a textured ceiling. Float those puppies smooth because you're going to want to put color on them or you're going to want to put plaster on them, paint, plaster, paper. Yeah. The world is your oyster, a mural, whatever it be. If you have a smooth ceiling to begin with. Even light reflecting off it looks better because if not, then you're seeing the shadow of all of the texture when it's on there. Yes. So you can take it from me. It's not great. And then they're going to say put flat paint on it. Anyway, I just can't. Builders, come on. Yeah. Catch up. Get with the game.

8:08Alice Lane:Back to this color. I didn't even tell you what color it was. So what I went with was Sherwin-Williams Familiar Beige. Sounds so boring, but let me tell you, it's color 6093. It is the perfect shade of nude. It's got enough pink in it. It's just a really beautiful, sophisticated, deep note. It's neutral, but there's enough pink and salmon in it that it feels like a really beautiful vintage space living there's a living there's a life to it I and you know what I look so much better in this room than I did in my old bathroom it's so much fun to get ready in a space that like you feel pretty yeah I'm like this feels like your makeup honestly like put it up against your face if you have a white bathroom you've got to choose a shade and honestly a shade of nude is a really perfect neutral we know right now all of the neutrals are more beautiful that are warm.

8:59Alice Lane:I'll have, I'll put a little video up here where I had to have it get along with my existing limestone floors. This looks great with everything. I even wanted to make sure it looked good for my existing bedroom and you're not going to go wrong with nude. It's like the perfect purse color is the perfect color, like heel color. Like it's just so lovely and it pairs with everything really well. Yeah. What I was so like amazed and you're probably going to get into this is just like what it did, what your previous color paint did with your tile, that Tobi gray. Cause you were just like, I'm so it's really it's such a beautiful color is it a limestone or marble I think it's a limestone it's kind of like again it's kind of that ambiguous like it could go gray it could go brown it could go taupe kind of that Weimaraner color and like it looked gray all throughout you know since for the last 10 years with the other pink color but what happened to it when you put this plaster it almost is like this woody beautiful brownish gray note but it's got more brown in it and it pulls out the nude tones in it.

9:55Alice Lane:And because it's darker than all of it, it grounds the space really beautifully. And I was like, I'm really not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'm keeping my shower. I'm keeping my slabs. I'm keeping the floor. Let's just pray that this color will fix everything. And it did. Like it really brought it into today. And then we mounted that Hollis light fixture to this. It just made it sing. Yeah. I mean, everything sings in there now. I even love getting ready in there even more. It's funny how you quit seeing your own space. Until you're about to photograph it for everyone to see.

10:27Exactly.

10:28Alice Lane:Well, I wanted to say, especially if you're a designer, because you're working on so many people's spaces. And you're fulfilling all of your dreams through other people. And then you come home at night and you're just going through your routine of taking off your makeup. And you just stop seeing it. And so I just wanted to give everybody permission today to just see your space. It might just be wall color. It might just be that you work with a really talented artisan like I got to and really create something special. You don't have to do much more. I did in the end give a mouse a cookie and I did replace my hardware just to bring it also up to speed.

11:04Alice Lane:I could replace my faucets, but I still love the architecture of them. I did something by Calista, by Kohler. They're in brush nickel. they all they just kind of go away into the mirror and it's kind of all about the hardware and the sconces right now I'm really really loving the update and I can't say enough good about plaster and to that note I want to talk a little bit about plaster like what is it I know there's a lot of products on the market but we are dealing with a real product from Italy so it is made up of lime also crushed limestone crushed marble to be able to get this product And then Tyler himself just puts the color into it and then adjusted it on site as he watched the light play with it.

11:47Alice Lane:Was that magical? You guys, it's so magical. I feel so lucky that I got to work with him on my own. It's different. Like working for a client feels a little bit different than working for yourself. Yeah. You just have so many times where you second guess yourself in your own space. And it's nice to have somebody with great taste that's done this forever that can just make those audibles for you and make it even better. Yeah. In the process. I love that. That's so cool. We have a few process photos we'll show you. They first start by applying the paint color on your walls in matte. And so we got to get a feeling of what the color would look like on.

12:23Alice Lane:And that was such a game changer. And I guess the matte paint helps the plaster adhere to it, almost like a chalkboard. And then they go in with this. It looks like mud. going on and they are putting it on with these trowels they just put it on layer by layer by layer and then then they work it on to the ceiling and once they had enough of a base coat and once the walls had dried enough then Tyler came in and then he started to touch it and he's he's the owner of iconography and a real artist and the way that he you know moved it onto the walls and and whatnot and the more they move over the trowel the more it burnishes and gets this sort of glossy finish.

13:02Alice Lane:They finished the skylights first. So that gave me a sort of a first look at what the final project would be. And that was so fun because lights cascading through this and you got a real feel for it. I've got to say when the first layer was on to go check out the color, I knew you had skylights probably like from like when you started your plans, there were skylights in the plan. Anyway, I forgot that they were there. I got to be completely honest. I forgot that they were there until like we were starting to study the colors. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm like looking at really analyzing the room i'm like we know that paint reacts so much differently on the ceiling plane but then like to be able to call attention and highlight just those shafts going all the way up to your roof to let light interact with that whole dance like i was like and he had started i think he'd started to like put that on there i was like oh my gosh these are incredible you bought a new house yeah you bought a totally new house because i'm like i've never experienced your bathroom the way I did like at that after just a round one.

14:00Alice Lane:There's something about a white ceiling where you don't feel it. It's like not part of the room. If the rest of the room is wall color and that's a white ceiling, it's like somebody took an eraser and erased that part of the room. You know, it didn't exist. And the only way I can think to describe what it feels like now is do you remember when you're a little kid and you put a blankie over your head and you'd make a fort and you're just completely cocooned and covered in one thing. It's like that. Kind of like that scene in the holiday when he puts on the twinkle lights and he's tented with those little girls.

14:28We all want to like be in that moment.

14:30Alice Lane:And Jude Law is in there with me. Exactly. Getting ready every morning. You know the one. It's so satisfying to be in this space and to have it plastered and see the movement. And I think the color feels so natural and yet still original in my house. I don't know. It's just the bathroom. I did have them include the potty closet it in it but it just feels so all-encompassing and cohesive and just really truly magical expensive in there it does look a lot more expensive yes definitely really quick I've had a few people ask on the hardware where I got it from this is the Joan cabinet knob from rejuvenation yeah I got it from rejuvenation I had to go get something quickly yeah and I got the it's only available in polished nickel or unlacquered brass so I did the unlacquered brass I thought it'd be beautiful with the new Hollis bathroom vanity that we just did, the vanity lights, but they're so yellow.

15:22Alice Lane:Suze has made this comment on the podcast again and again, and that is that the brasses are so inconsistent across lines. It's really hard to get the right thing. So I just looked up on chat GPT, is there a way to speed up the aging process of unlacquered brass? Because they show you on the website what it looks like this year and what it will look like four years from now. And I was like, well, I need the four year solution tomorrow for the photo shoot on Wednesday. Exactly. And so they say what you do is you get a container, fill it up with maybe like an inch or two of vinegar. They said white distilled vinegar.

15:56Alice Lane:I didn't have those things. I needed to do it now. I did have apple cider vinegar, which they said you could do. And so I put two cups down inside this big Tupperware of vinegar and inside the cups, I put my hardware. Empty cups. Empty cups. They cannot touch the vinegar. I'm so fascinated. Keep going. And then you snap the lid on. So basically the vapor of the vinegar will age the antique, the antique, the brass. I'm amazed. I know so much chemistry going on between Tyler tweaking the color and all of the mud. Playing beakers. Yeah. So then I was like, well, I've got to make it so that all of these are the same color.

16:33Alice Lane:So I'm setting timers. I'm trying to keep track of this because you could only, what I started doing was I just sort of dumped a bunch of knobs in the cup. The vapor didn't hit it regularly. So then there was darker spots than others. So what you want to do is you want to stand them up regularly. So it's only, I can only fit two knobs per cup per vat of snapped on lid of vinegar. So I had two of those going. And then I'm just setting timers. And I think probably what I ended up doing was about three hours was sort of the magic number to knock the yellow off these things. It almost was starting to move into polished nickel.

17:05Alice Lane:It took the yellow out. and almost rosed it as a hair. If they went a little bit longer, they'd start to go bronze, which I wasn't going for an oil-repped bronze look. So I kind of hung out in that rosy sort of area. Definitely not yellow. Definitely wasn't silver. But anyway, they turned out really pretty. I love the shape. They feel so vintage. I did the large ones on my doors and I did the small ones on all my drawers. They remind me of toggle buttons, like on a great coat. Like on your grandma's coat or something. I love that. How many rounds of three hours did it take if you're just doing four at a time?

17:39Alice Lane:Let's see. I have 22 knobs. So you do the math. Yeah, all weekend. It was all weekend. It was my special project for sure. You guys, it's so funny. I like opened up Instagram on Monday morning and you posted. I was just like, what craft project did you just do? I thought the same exact thing. I knew her. That's so much fun. It's amazing what ChatGPT will teach you. And Jane's like, it's not going to work. I have a 21-year-old that's very cynical. I was like, you shouldn't be using ChatGPT anyway. And also don't say that you're using it. say you're using Gemini or something. Is chat GPT like the AI for old people or something?

18:12Alice Lane:I guess. 100 % it is. I guess. It is. It's perfect for me. And my knobs. It worked out great. So anyway, we got the knobs tightened on, got the old mirrors put back up, which was really great. Another thing that I just absolutely love is the orientation. Because the fun thing is that you, again, you kept your tile, you kept your mirrors. Like this all started with a sconce. Yes. It all starts with a sconce. Yes. And then it just snowballed, right? but the length like let's talk about the Hollis sconce. Are we ready to go there? Let's do it. Let's talk about the Hollis sconce because like I'm obsessed with them.

18:43I don't know the linear nature of that with your existing mirrors. I'm just like it's always amazing how like working with some of the things that you had if they were done in good taste adapts to new things and completely reinvents it. Yeah. Like I love the orientation in which you hung your sconces to your mirrors. Talk about that for a second.

19:00Alice Lane:Yeah okay so my so in the previous photo when I had gray walls. If you look at the sconce placement, that was done for the height of the mirror, the overall mirror, and then we installed them and installed the mirrors. Well, what my mirrors do is they have a straight edge and then they start to have this beautiful arcuation and sort of make this sort of ripply, almost reminds me of like women's hair or something, this beautiful ripply effect toward the top. So the really only the straight sides happen at the bottom, sort of two-thirds of the mirror. And what I noticed was I really always hated my sconce placement for 11 years.

19:36Alice Lane:And I was like, by golly, you know what I'm going to get right? I'm going to paint the walls. I'm going to get the sconces in line with the straight portions of the mirror, which meant that the sconces were going to hang out in the bottom two-thirds of the mirror instead of the overall height. The architecture of your mirror, the design of your mirror really matters on where those sconces come in contact with the straight portions. And so I'm embarrassed to say I had my electrician come and I centered it on the straight portions and they look too low. And so what I needed to do, because the sconce sits so heavy and you can't really see even the bottom of it, that by cheating it up two inches beyond where the straight portions are, that ended up being the right place.

20:16Alice Lane:So we actually had to come in and replaster the holes in the wall on the bottom. and I felt so dumb. I'm like, I should know this. I'm a professional. But there really are these little nuances that when you are doing elevations, that you shouldn't just consider the overall height of the mirror, unless you have straight sides on all sides, you should really consider the design of the mirror and where those sconces come into contact, especially if you're a designer, because like me, it's going to bother you for 11 years before you get it right. So we got it right, which is really awesome. And the sconces are beautiful.

20:45Alice Lane:They're really long. They have three light bulbs on each side they feel like old hollywood glamour when they're turned on the light is right by my face where i get ready so it's even better than the placement before i love that one nice thing is you were talking about this like how much like there's like mistakes that were made 10 years ago because when you're building a new house yeah and you're having like your contractors asking you for all these decisions you have to make them right away yeah and you're just like i guess we'll do this we'll do this we'll do this you want to be thoughtful about it yeah if you have the time and the money to just you know just pray and ponder on every decision five you can like really concentrate on those decisions but so often you're having to make those decisions quick which doesn't allow for some of the thoughtfulness you know that like probably i know that you have and wanted in these spaces that is the nice thing about coming back and remodeling a space even if you do some things like a little bit if you're building a house you're just like i'm not ready to commit but i'm he needs a color and i'm gonna go acid green cold hold for a second live in the space understand what it does and how you want to feel i'm like i feel that's the nice thing about a remodel is to be able to kind of like take off a little bit of time and be thoughtful about it.

21:50Whether you're in a new build or old house, you can like go back and you can remodel these spaces to feel more like you.

21:56Alice Lane:Yeah. And also knowing the light in the room, right? Just learning that that room always felt cold and what is it? And looking that up online, what is it about north facing rooms? And that they're saying you need to index your paint colors to be warmer than you would in, you know, your normal east facing room on the front of your house. That even taught me from living with it what I needed to tweak moving forward besides my sconces being the wrong height and the room color not being warm enough. So it's fun to just finally fix it and get it right this time. I love that. I just wanted to get on here and say I wanted to share the images with you guys.

22:29Alice Lane:Obviously wanted to share the new product the Hollis Vanity sconce just launched and they're available now. These are so great. I can't wait for you guys to get these home. We have another sconce that we designed and is available now too. This is the Amelia sconce and it is a really darling white bubble with a waistline. And then we've got this brass bullnose. This is all brass, the whole fixture, wherever you see metal. We've got a bullnose sort of waistline that pinches these two bubbles. And then it's got a circular back plate with a bullnose edge. Really cute in a bathroom. So darling. Yeah.