Projects › Lower Manhattan › 17 Thompson Street
Completed project · Lower Manhattan, New York, NY
A guest bathroom in Lower Manhattan taken back to the studs and rebuilt as a shower, with the bench and the partition wall removed to open it up. The job started with a live leak into the apartment below, so the water stayed off until the branch lines had been replaced back to the building risers.
Job record
- Location
- Lower Manhattan, New York, NY 10013
- Building
- 17 Thompson Street
- Scope
- Guest bathroom, rebuilt shower to shower
- Brands
- Brizo, Toto, Kohler, DreamLine, Ann Sacks, Porcelanosa, Lacava, Lutron, Infinity Drain, Restoration Hardware
- Stone
- Carrara marble vanity top, curb and saddle
- Completed
- 2026
The bathroom before the work
Cherry paneling floor to ceiling, a travertine floor, a pedestal sink and a marble shower divided from the toilet by a partition wall with a built-in bench. The room worked, but it was closed in, and there was a more pressing problem: water was getting into the apartment below.
The shower was the suspected source. Rather than open the walls speculatively, the job was sequenced so the water stayed off in that bathroom until the plumber had replaced the branch lines, with the client given at least 48 hours notice so the neighbor could be told before anything was turned back on.
What the crew did, in order
Protect what stays, then strip the room
The door, its jambs and hardware, the ceiling extract vent, the wall-mounted radiator and the recessed ceiling lights were all protected and kept. Everything else came out: floor tile and saddle, the wood paneling, wall tile, the shower curb, lead pan, glass enclosure, the partition wall and its bench, the toilet, the pedestal sink, the recess-mounted medicine cabinet, the sconce, the outlets and switches, and the shut-off valves.
Find out where the water was going
With the room stripped, MyHome inspected the risers themselves for cracks and checked for a cracked joist under the floor. Both were written into the scope as inspections to carry out after demolition rather than assumptions made before it, because probing a neighbor’s ceiling is not something to do speculatively.
Replace the plumbing back to the risers
New hot and cold water lines and new waste and vent lines, run as branch replacements all the way back to the building risers, with new shut-off valves, check valves and water hammer arrestors. If the leak was in the branch lines, this ends it. A pressure-balancing valve went in for the shower.
Rebuild the shower without the bench
A new lead pan and a cement curb in the same footprint, then a water test on the pan before anything went over it. The bench and the partition wall between the shower and the toilet were not rebuilt, which is what makes the finished room read as one space rather than two.
Waterproof, soundproof, then tile
Cement board through the shower enclosure, Laticrete 9235 waterproof membrane on the floor turned six inches up the walls and a membrane on the shower walls. A glued soundproofing underlayment went down under the floor tile, which is the kind of thing only the neighbor below ever notices.
One niche, two sconces, one bidet outlet
A single recessed shampoo niche was framed into the shower wall. The existing sconce was moved and a second was added and spliced onto the same switch. A new outlet was run for the bidet seat, and the switches, dimmer and GFCI outlets were all replaced in their new positions.
The finished room
The walls are a single 47 inch Porcelanosa porcelain in Glem White, run to ceiling height on the sink wall and through the shower. The floor and the shower floor are the same Ann Sacks Bianca Helena marble in a two inch honed hexagon, with the 12 by 24 version of the same stone cut down for the tile baseboards.
The sink is the detail worth knowing about. The wall-mounted radiator had to stay, which ruled out anything floor-standing, so the console is cleated to the wall and carries a polished Carrara top over a Lacava undermount basin. The same Carrara was used for the shower curb and the room saddle, so the three pieces of stone match.
Fittings are Brizo throughout in Brilliance Luxe Nickel: a Litze widespread faucet with notch lever handles at 1.5 gallons per minute, a pressure-balancing shower valve, a fixed head and a handshower on a slide bar. The enclosure is a DreamLine Unidoor-X frameless hinged door, and the shower drain is an Infinity Drain with a five inch tile-in cover so the mosaic runs across it.
Storage was the other thing the paneling had been hiding. There was a recess to the right of the sink concealed behind the cherry boards, and the wall opening for the medicine cabinet had to be re-framed to take the new Kohler Catalan unit, which is deeper than what came out and carries a triple mirror. Grab bars were offered as an option and, like the recessed cabinet, needed blocking cleated into the wall before tiling rather than after.
Materials and finishes
Shower
| Element | Specification |
|---|---|
| Shower enclosure | DreamLine Unidoor-X E3280634L-04, brushed nickel, 58 x 34.375 x 72 in, frameless hinged |
| Shower valve | Brizo R75000 pressure-balancing rough |
| Shower trim | Brizo T75P535-NKLHP, Brilliance Luxe Nickel |
| Trim handle kit | Brizo HL75P39-NK, Brilliance Luxe Nickel |
| Showerhead | Brizo 81392-NK-2.5, Brilliance Luxe Nickel |
| Shower arm and flange | Brizo RP71648NK, Brilliance Luxe Nickel |
| Handshower | Brizo 85735-NK, Brilliance Luxe Nickel, with slider bar, hose and outlet |
| Shower drain | Infinity Drain UCP 42 clamping and CDIQ 42 floor drain, cast iron |
| Shower drain cover | Infinity Drain T 5-SS, satin stainless, 5 x 5 in, tile-in |
| Shower curb top | Carrara marble, polished |
Sink, toilet and cabinetry
| Element | Specification |
|---|---|
| Lavatory sink | Lacava 5485 001, white, 19 x 15.5 x 8 in, undermount |
| Undermount kit | Lacava 9003 |
| Console frame | Anzzi Ventura CS-FRGLPNL00BN, brushed nickel, 36 x 28 x 22 in |
| Vanity top | Carrara marble, polished |
| Lavatory faucet | Brizo Litze 65334LF-NKLHP, Brilliance Luxe Nickel, widespread, low spout, 1.5 GPM |
| Faucet handles | Brizo HL5339-NK notch lever, Brilliance Luxe Nickel |
| Lavatory drain | Brizo RP72414NK push-button pop-up with overflow |
| P-trap kit | Kingston Brass Concord KPK408, brushed nickel |
| Toilet | Toto Aquia IV Cube MW4363446CEMFGN#01, cotton, Washlet+ S5, 1.28 and 0.9 GPF |
| Medicine cabinet | Kohler Catalan K-2936-PG-SAA, 24.125 x 36.125 x 4.75 in, triple mirror |
Tile, stone and finishes
| Element | Specification |
|---|---|
| Wall tile | Porcelanosa Glem White Nature, 47 x 47 in |
| Floor and shower floor tile | Ann Sacks Bianca Helena 2 in hexagon mosaic, honed marble |
| Tile baseboards | Ann Sacks Bianca Helena 12 x 24 in field tile, honed |
| Room saddle | Carrara marble, polished |
| Wall and floor grout | Laticrete Permacolor Select NS 89, Smoke Grey |
| Shower floor grout | Laticrete Permacolor Select NS 60, Dusty Grey |
| Waterproofing | Laticrete 9235, floor turned 6 in up the walls, plus shower wall membrane |
| Soundproofing | SoundControl QTSCU 4005, 48 x 360 in, 5 mm, glued with Bostik EFA+ |
| Paint | Sherwin Williams walls, Benjamin Moore Regal Select ceiling and trim |
Lighting and electrical
| Element | Specification |
|---|---|
| Wall sconces | Restoration Hardware Ravelle Linear 10062407 PN, polished nickel, 4.5 x 4.75 x 23 in, two |
| Dimmer | Lutron Sunnata Pro ST-PRO-N-RW LED+, architectural white |
| Fan switch | Lutron Sunnata ST-6ANS-RW, architectural white |
| GFCI outlets | Lutron SCR-20-GFST-RW, 20A tamper-resistant, two |
| Cover plates | Lutron SC-1-RW and SC-2-RW, satin, architectural white |
The result
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Questions this project answers
Water is leaking into the apartment below mine. How does a renovation actually find the cause?
By stripping the room first and looking, rather than guessing. On this job the guest bathroom was the suspected source, so the crew left the water off in that room entirely until the plumbing was rebuilt. After demolition MyHome inspected the building risers for cracks and checked the floor for a cracked joist, both written into the scope as things to establish once the room was open. The new lead pan under the shower was water-tested before anything was laid over it. If the leak was in the branch lines, replacing them back to the risers ends it; if it was the joist or the riser, you now know before the tile goes on instead of after.
How do I protect my building’s hallways and keep my neighbors happy during a renovation?
Protection is written into the scope before anything comes out, and on a leak job it extends to the neighbor directly. Here the client was to be given at least 48 hours notice before water was turned back on, specifically so the apartment below could be warned. Inside the bathroom, the door and its hardware, the ceiling extract vent, the radiator and the recessed lights were all protected rather than replaced. A glued soundproofing underlayment also went down under the new floor, which only the neighbor below will ever notice.
Can you take a bench out of a shower, and is it worth it?
Yes, and on a small bathroom it usually is. This shower had a built-in marble bench and a partition wall dividing it from the toilet. Both were demolished and neither was rebuilt. What you lose is somewhere to sit; what you gain is a room that reads as one space, a full frameless L-shaped enclosure instead of a part-glazed one, and enough wall to frame a recessed niche, which is where everything that used to sit on the bench now lives.
My radiator is in the way of the vanity I want. What are the options?
Hang the vanity off the wall. On this job the wall-mounted radiator sits directly below the sink and had to stay, which ruled out any floor-standing or pedestal unit. The answer was a console cleated to the wall on a brushed nickel frame, with a polished Carrara top and an undermount basin, so the radiator keeps its air gap and stays accessible. It is worth deciding this at design stage: a wall-mount needs blocking in the wall behind it, and that has to happen before the tile.
What are change orders, and how do I avoid being overcharged by my contractor?
A change order is a written amendment to what was agreed. The protection against surprises is that everything is specified before work starts: this bathroom had a materials list naming every item down to the grout color and who was supplying it, MyHome or the client. Where genuine unknowns existed they were named as unknowns rather than priced as certainties. This job is a good example: the scope states plainly that if demolition revealed a cracked joist, probing and repairing it would be an additional charge. You want that sentence in your scope before you sign, not a change order explaining it afterwards.
