The first time you meet with the Diamond Bath team, we all seem very inquisitive. We take the time to ask many questions to make absolutely sure that what we deliver a professionally remodeled bathroom that not only aligns with your stated goals, but also with ideas you have.  To make our initial design consultation queries a little easier on future clients, we want to share the following sequence of questions, as suggested by our partners at Houzz: 

1. How much time do you spend in your bathroom, include morning, afternoon and evening?

2. What is your daily routine and how does your current bathroom space hinder or slow that time spent? 

3. How many people actually use the bathroom being remodeled? 

4. How many more years do you plan to live in this home, or is a future resale likely? 

5. Do the people most likely to use the new bathroom have any health challenges, like vision problems, balance issues or arthritis, that should be considered in our new bathroom design? 

6. How important is it to have a new bathroom that is easy to clean and keep well-organized?

7. What special amenities does your new bathroom need to include?  We've spent a lot of time on this subject, and suggest reading our "2019 Remodeling Resolutions" post for the top five most common requests from Illinois homeowners. 

We suggest printing this post out and discussing each question with family members so that when you contact the Diamond Bath team or visit our Client Selection Center in Crystal Lake, our questions can be addressed confidently and make our mission of achieving your dream bathroom a reality in 2019! 
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When it comes to remodeling bathrooms, the more space you have to work with the easier it becomes to create something amazing.  Master Bathrooms seem to get the most attention from homeowners since that's the bathroom they utilize most frequently.  Yet, your powder room is likely to be seen by more of your friends and family, more often! 

Our partners at Houzz created this wonderful gallery of "50 Picture Perfect Powder Rooms" that really should be enjoyed by anyone considering a renovation of this tiniest room in your home.  This new photo gallery encouraged us to share the photos below of our recently completed Powder Room project in Johnsburg, IL.  The client was thrilled with the final results and left some nice compliments for our team on our new Reviews page. 

If you are now taking a second look at your powder room, be sure to ask for our complimentary "Top 10 Small Bathroom Ideas" guide from our Contact page! 

Those first few days of a brand new year have us all looking forward to changes and improvements that will make our families lives better. While many new year resolutions focus on diets and exercise, we see an influx of calls from local homeowners early in January asking about meeting with us in our Crystal Lake office.  Some come prepared with printed "dream Bathroom" photos or a wish list of features they want their new bathroom to include. Below we've detailed the FIVE most frequently requested improvements when remodeling a master bathroom:

1. Heated Floors: While the custom tiled bathroom trend shows no signs of stopping in 2019, one great feature for soon-to-be-tiled floors that may be overlooked is laying down a floor heating element. New systems can be controlled with a dedicated wall panel or even with your favorite smarthome hub. Take a look at this photo series from our recent heated flooring project in Campton Hills, IL - just outside of Saint Charles. 

2. Shower Benches & Shower Niches: Going hand-in-hand with that new custom tiled shower is also the request for built-in shower niches and a shower bench as well.  New shower niches are not only beautiful visual accent points for design, they are also functional by keeping soap, shampoo and shavers within easy reach. Be sure to read our "Shower Niche Necessity" article from 2017 and see the start of a new shower bench being constructed for a Wonder Lake, IL client earlier this month, below. 

3. Expanding Bathroom Storage Space: Organizing your bathroom space can mean the difference between having a bathroom that looks like a magazine picture or having something that looks like chaos. Unlike ten or twenty years ago, in 2019 we have "appliance trays" and "divider drawers" and even old medicine cabinets have new features compared to the century past.  Be sure to read our blog post from this past August to learn more about "Four Organizational Ideas for Your New Master Bathroom"!

4. Sounds Smart: We are certain that a few of you reading this early in 2019 likely received or gave a smart home hub during the holidays. Regardless of what brand or model of hub you have, odds are good we can integrate it within your new bathroom.  With control of lights and towel warming racks being pretty common, probably the most poplar discussions are about smart speakers for great music, podcast listening or just getting the latest news and weather reports as you prepare for a new day.  One of our favorite devices is a combination low-noise exhaust fan that has a bluetooth speaker built-in that can easily connect with your Alexa or Google home hub - details available within this past blog post. 

5. Universal Design: We simply could not write a post talking about the bathroom remodeling resolutions for 2019 without talking about Universal Design. This post about a Grayslake, IL client of ours, and the before and after photo shared again below, was clearly one of our most read and shared blog posts for 2018.  We sincerely hope that everyone thinking about bathroom remodeling or even renovations in the new year will spend just a few minutes considering these cost-effective facility improvements that can increase functionality for so many. 

Today we added a new page to the Diamond Bath website that we are very proud of.  While we've begged and pleaded with past customers to leave feedback for us on Google, or Angie's List or the Better Business Bureau of Chicago, we believe we have discovered a more ideal solution.  A solution that not only helps us get feedback from our customers, but also makes their words and star ratings completely transparent on our website!

Our new Reviews page is actually directly connected to the remodeling management software our entire team uses, called BuilderTrend. While some people on our Facebook page or Google might claim we remodeled their bathroom, only this system ensures that current Diamond Bath customers and future clients have the option to leave feedback using this online tool. This system empowers our true clients, who want to provide feedback, the ability to do so, and whatever they write, is passed directly to this new public page. 

While this is a good thing for visitors to our website, it by no means replaces people who are looking at our company on outside review sources.  We still encourage all of our customers to leave feedback there as well and hold us accountable to the highest standards we've set for ourselves and proven over the years.  Our teams will work even harder knowing that we now have complete transparency between our clients and the other Northern Illinois homeowners who may visit the Diamond Bath website!

With the launch of this new web page, we want to thank everyone - especially all past Diamond Bath clients - who have taken a little time to leave their ratings, rankings and feedback, on whatever platform they prefer. Your opinions matter to every member of our team! 
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Our blog post from earlier this month, an Introduction to Universal Design, has received lots of visits, shares and time spent online.  We've also received a few inquiries specific to the idea of designing new bathroom spaces so that they accessible and usable to as many people as possible.  Just to recap our definition of Universal Design, outlined previously:  Developing a bathroom so it can be accessed and used to the greatest extent possible by all people, regardless of their age, size or abilities.

Today we want to share a good example from a project we just completed this month in Grayslake, IL. The image below shows the tub/shower before on the left and our completed custom tile shower on the right.  Here are a few of the more important Universal Design elements to note:

1. Low Threshold Shower:  The old tub/shower combination on the left has a significant step-up to actually get into the tub.  This client already had hip troubles (as you'll read in her testimonial below) so by lowering the shower threshold to just a few inches (on the right) it will be easier to access the shower by all. 

2. Grab Bars Installed: Look at the tub/shower on the left and imagine loosing your balance.  It's happened to all of us before, but what will you grab to keep from falling - wet glass doors?  Now the new shower on the right has grab bars at the shower entry point, and a massive grab bar directly under the shower head angled down toward the new shower bench. Speaking of shower bench... 

3. Customer Shower Bench: Clearly one of our most requested items when designing new showers is a fixed bench. Take a look, under our Diamond Bath logo to see a great example of a customer shower bench.  Shaving legs becomes easier and less dangerous, and it also works perfectly for those who may not be able to stand for prolonged periods of time. 

4. Handheld Shower Head with Lever Handles:  Their new Diamond Bath shower not only came equipped with a massive waterfall shower head, but it was complimented with a handheld shower head as well - a common request for Universal Design installations.  We also maintained the lever style faucetry for greater temperature control versus round knobs that are more difficult to turn, especially when wet. 

5. Shower Niche Height: If you look carefully at the photo on the left you may see a challenging situation; razors, shampoos and conditioner bottles sit on the lip of the old tub.  This would require you to bend over a few times during your shower versus the tiled niche we installed in the new shower.  It contains shelves so products can be placed at the height ideal to the client; whether they stand or sit, there will not be any bending over to grab soaps, shampoos or razors.  And the likelihood of those products slipping into the shower or tub, potentially causing another fall issue, is also dramatically reduced. 

But we hope you'll also look beyond all these amazing design features in the "after" photo and can see how much more beautiful this bathroom will be for our client for so many years to come.  She was so excited about the finished project that she left a wonderful review for us.  We've copied it in it's entirety below, but in part it says: 

"I am so pleased with the result and the consultant they provided to help me pick out colors and tiles. A very professional result that all my friends and family exclaim over."
  -- Diamond Bath Client, Kathleen H. from Grayslake, IL 
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When YOU are ready for professional bathroom remodeling results that excite your friends and family and that you will appreciate every morning for years to come, make an appointment to visit our Diamond Bath Client Selection Center in Crystal Lake!