Plumbing Essentials

Step by step guide to being a designer on a new construction project in Santa Fe

This is Step 3- Plumbing is Essential

Plumbing: the toilets, the sinks, the tubs, and the showers, is one of the essentials of course, and a place to blow the budget, or compromise the budget to the point of needless and endless repairs before the useful life of the project is spent. 

This couple wants quality, but not at any price, and has a definite clean and modern aesthetic. A desire that can be more costly, we’ve found over the years, than one that is more decorative. Those frills, in both plaster wall styles and plumbing fixtures, can hide a lot of glitches.Here is the aesthetic, and following, the items we are sourcing to play with in this first go around.

We’re needing a tub with clean lines, but don’t necessarily want to pay over five figures for it. We also need a different set-up for the tub-filler and controls. The clients do not want to have to lean over a wide tub to start filling it. So we are settling on this floor mounted option which will be at the end of the tub, near the entry to the shower room.

And this tub, more in line with this budget, and delivering just about the same look.

Now, the all important toilet decisions. No one likes to clean around a toilet, especially one with lots of curves in the base. So how about no base at all? Wall hung toilets deliver on all fronts: easy to clean around, and sleek looking. The guts have to go in the wall, and the operator on that wall. So, do we have a location where we can get into that wall, and have an access to it on the other side? Yes and yes. So it will go at least into the powder room.

Also in the powder room, something of stone that is warm and earthy, and goes with very simple clean tile that is definitely not stone and so offers easy upkeep. This travertine bowl, carved out of one piece of stone, has an eccentric offbeat shape that we like, and marries up with a simple man made tile—no sealing, easy to maintain.