Waterworks: Inventing Bath Style [Hardcover]

Barbara Sallick (Author), Lisa Light (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2001

The perfect bathroom is a stylish, inviting space that is both functional and appealing. It is a place of tranquillity, refreshment, and renewal -- a refuge from the busy world.

Waterworks: Inventing Bath Style offers all the inspiration and practical advice needed to create this perfect bathroom, no matter what the budget or space.

Drawing upon more than twenty years of experience in bath design, author Barbara Sallick explores the essential requirements of every bathroom -- its fixtures, fittings, and surfaces -- and provides hands-on advice in selecting tile;  placing fixtures; introducing lighting; choosing faucets; finding storage space; working with ceramic, stone, glass, metal, and mosaic; adding accessories; and creating a beautiful space that meets your needs. Stunning color photographs showcase a number of exquisite bathrooms that range in style from romantic to streamlined,
utilitarian to indulgent.

Waterworks: Inventing Bath Style explains and celebrates the simple luxuries of a well-designed bathroom, from the floor on up. Filled with tips for working successfully with designers, architects, and suppliers, this invaluable guide ensures that a new or renovated bathroom adds comfort, style, and value to any home.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Waterworks is not a guide for the do-it-yourselfer. Rather, Waterworks is a love letter to what is presumably the author's favorite room--a justification of that peculiar but widespread obsession that provokes the purchase of fancy lotions and potions, rich terry-cloth towels, and scented candles, and that stimulates dreams of oversized bathtubs and vintage-tile back splashes. According to Barbara Sallick, the mechanics of the bathroom are best left in the hands of experienced contractors--and, herself a professional bath designer and supplier, that approach is only to be expected. In no other room in the house, to be sure, is one in such close physical contact with permanent, immovable, functional fixtures and fittings: sink (called lavatory here), toilet (water closet), and bath (well, just bath). While those elements must be chosen with great care by the people who are to use them every day, they must be installed flawlessly, and professionals are the ones to do that.

Sallick's book won't help you lay out a bathroom floor plan, install a shower, or choose tiles (though her brief glossary of terms provides the language one might need in order to communicate with a subcontractor). It will, however, help you figure out exactly what you want, organizing those grandiose dreams into something a contractor will understand. Here are some things you'll want, after reading the Waterworks bath supplier co-owner's book: handcrafted (most definitely handcrafted) faucet handles, an antique enameled medicine cabinet, creamy bone hair comb and blond-wood shaving brush, glass canisters for cotton balls and swabs, marble and lots of it, exposed plumbing under a vintage lavatory basin, and perhaps a towel warmer. The bathrooms featured here, whether that be the large ones or the small, glorious, luxurious, or austere, are not for the faint of budget. --Liana Fredley

From the Inside Flap

The perfect bathroom is a stylish, inviting space that is both functional and appealing. It is a place of tranquillity, refreshment, and renewal -- a refuge from the busy world.

Waterworks: Inventing Bath Style offers all the inspiration and practical advice needed to create this perfect bathroom, no matter what the budget or space.

Drawing upon more than twenty years of experience in bath design, author Barbara Sallick explores the essential requirements of every bathroom -- its fixtures, fittings, and surfaces -- and provides hands-on advice in selecting tile;  placing fixtures; introducing lighting; choosing faucets; finding storage space; working with ceramic, stone, glass, metal, and mosaic; adding accessories; and creating a beautiful space that meets your needs. Stunning color photographs showcase a number of exquisite bathrooms that range in style from romantic to streamlined,
utilitarian to indulgent.

Waterworks: Inventing Bath Style explains and celebrates the simple luxuries of a well-designed bathroom, from the floor on up. Filled with tips for working successfully with designers, architects, and suppliers, this invaluable guide ensures that a new or renovated bathroom adds comfort, style, and value to any home.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Clarkson Potter; illustrated edition edition (May 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 060960421X
• ISBN-13: 978-0609604212
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 8.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,204,947 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #51 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > How-to & Home Improvements > Remodeling & Renovation > Bathrooms

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best bath book, June 5, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Waterworks: Inventing Bath Style (Hardcover)

Waterworks is one of the best bath books I have ever seen from a teaching standpoint. The book offers great advice about selecting fixtures, a variety of surfaces and adding accessories among others. Every aspect of designing the perfect bathroom is covered in the right amount of detail. I especially loved the section, "finding creative storage solutions" in a bathroom and the images complement each section to truly bring the bathroom descriptions alive. A must have for anyone trying to remodel a bathroom. Also makes for a great "coffee table" book, sure to start an evening of fun conversations.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great addition to your decorating library, April 26, 2002

By 

secrethalo (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Waterworks: Inventing Bath Style (Hardcover)

This book gets into the nooks and crannies of bathroom decorating. Details are abound and you end up learning more than you ever thought you would about the bathroom. From tiles to apothecary, nothing is overlooked. The rooms pictured are flawless. This will not disappoint! A+++

4.0 out of 5 stars Great help if you're doing a vintage bath, February 5, 2008

By 

Deborah S. Hall (Rochester, New York United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Waterworks: Inventing Bath Style (Hardcover)

If you live outside of a major metro, and you're planning a Victorian/Edwardian/thirties period kind of bath, you're pretty much relegated to choosing things online out of Restoration Hardware and other "period" purveyors. Local showrooms focus mostly on newer-build kinds of installations. A book like this is really helpful in that it lets you get a good look at some lovely period bathrooms. There are several groups of multiple photos of the same bathroom so you can see a material like the tile in all the areas of the installation. I admit to really having been grateful to having had this book when the floor tile I had ordered turned out not to be available and I was caught having to quickly choose something else. The author has a strong bias which I mostly agree with, but sometimes questioned. (She says acrylic bathtubs have it all over cast iron -- the one area where new materials have superseded the lovely old authentic ones).