A primary bath built around one long soak

The before photograph gets a laugh at every consultation we show it in: builder-grade oak laminate, a fiberglass tub-shower combo, and — the detail that always lands — carpet, installed sometime in the early 1990s, six feet from a shower.

We reclaimed four square feet from an oversized closet to make room for a curbless shower with a linear drain, finished in a large-format porcelain that reads like poured concrete but never needs sealing. Heated floors run on a schedule tied to the house's thermostat, so they're warm by the time anyone's feet hit them.

The vanity is a single floating slab of White Macaubas quartzite over a navy-lacquered base, chosen specifically to read as furniture rather than a fixture. The plumbing — a genuine complaint on the original bath, audible through the shared wall to the bedroom — was rerun to isolate it from the framing.

The original transom window above the tub, painted shut for as long as anyone could remember, was restored to open. It is now the only bathroom in the house anyone lingers in.