Lower-Level Bath, Haymarket

The lower level had rough-ins for a bathroom but had never been more than storage. With the home being prepared to rent, the brief was simple: turn that roughed-in space into a finished bathroom worth keeping.

There was a catch below the surface. Earlier DIY plumbing had left the drains in the wrong place. Rather than design around the mistake, Flavio opened the slab, relocated the drains, and poured new concrete to put the fixtures exactly where they belonged, the kind of unglamorous groundwork that decides whether the finished room ever reads right.

From there it was framing, moisture-resistant board, and a finish package chosen for a room that would actually get looked at: book-matched, stone-look porcelain running floor-to-ceiling in the shower, a backlit niche, a fluted white-oak vanity beneath a quartz top, a framed mirror between two linear sconces, and matte-black fixtures throughout. Flavio did much of the work himself and brought in master tile setters where the work demanded them.

The homeowner's involvement was kept to what mattered, including choosing the Delorean Grey grout. Flavio then used it in a different, and far better, place than originally intended. That is a fair summary of how the whole project went: design sense and flexibility applied at exactly the right moments, and a builder who was as pragmatic and value-minded as he was exacting.