Christina Hall Reveals One of Her Favorite Home Features as a Kid on ‘Christina on the Coast’

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Designer Christina Hall has many satisfied clients under her belt, and on the latest “Christina on the Coast,” she returns to a home she’s worked her magic on already.

In the episode “More of the Warm Hug Home,” Hall revisits Mark and Michelle, who previously hired Hall to redo their kitchen and great room. This time, they want her to remodel two bathrooms.

Hall gets some help from her contractor and friend Mike Rose, then she returns the favor by swinging by his place next to add a swimming pool.

Along the way, she reveals some great design tips that you might be tempted to apply to your own abode, both inside and out. She also reveals a hidden home feature that costs a ton of money to move, just in case you’ve got one in your home, too.

Shear walls can stall renovation plans

The bones of a shear wall

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Mark and Michelle have $100,000 budgeted to renovate those two small bathrooms. Hall says that’s very generous, but they’ll need every penny once they encounter unforeseen problems.

These bathrooms, you see, are back to back. Hall believes she can expand both of them by reducing the size of the large storage closet behind them both.

But when Rose removes the walls, he runs into a major holdup. Everyone knows that a load-bearing wall is a pain to move, but he encounters another kind of wall that’s just as difficult: a shear wall.

“So when we open up the wall, we saw that the wall is a load-bearing wall as well as a shear wall,” he says. “A load-bearing wall is something that actually holds up the structure of the home, and a shear wall is something that keeps it moving from side to side.”

And it’s not easy or inexpensive to fix.

“Unfortunately they’re going to need both, which is going to mean more money, but that’s the only way we’re going to make this bathroom work,” he explains. “The whole vent stack is going to have to move over to the new shower location.” That will cost about $2,000 extra.

But Michelle doesn’t bat an eyelash.

“I’d hate to be in that shower a year from now knowing that it’s 2 more feet we could have gotten and we decided to not spend $2,000,” she says. They decide to move the wall.

Run the backsplash up to the ceiling

The bathroom backsplash goes up to the ceiling.

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The main bath in Mark and Michelle’s house is big enough for only one vanity and sink, so they’re going to try to make that as elegant and expansive as possible.

The trick, according to Hall, is to take the tile backsplash all the way up to the ceiling.

“It will carry your eye up,” she says, and make the room seem taller and more spacious.

“I’m so glad they went with doing the tile backsplash all the way up,” says Michelle when she sees it. “Because it just takes your eye up, it creates a transition and is just another dimension added to the bathroom.”

Center knobs can make a cabinet look special

Center knob on a cabinet

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One of the bathrooms that Hall is doing is long and very narrow, so she needs to use all the optical illusions of expansiveness that she can come up with.

Among them is placing the knobs in the center of the lower cabinets, which adds interest and a perception of larger surfaces.

Michelle is game when shown the sample.

“I really like the knob in the center,” she says, “because on the other ones [in her kitchen], we have them on the side, but I think this one gives it a little bit more of that European spa feel. It’s really beautiful.”

Once the bathrooms are done, Mike and Michelle are so thrilled that they invite Hall back for round three: a total redo of the exterior, both front and back.

Add a shallow and deep end to a pool

New pool with a deep end and a shallow end

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Once Rose and Hall are done with those bathrooms, Rose mentions that he and his wife have been talking about adding a pool to their large, grassy backyard for a long time. Hall finally pushes them in, saying a pool was one of her favorite things as a kid.

“I had a pool growing up, and we went in it, like, literally every single day,” she says. “It keeps the kids at home, it keeps them entertained, and it wears them out.”

The Roses give in, but say they’ll do it only if Hall designs it. She happily obliges, designing one end with a Baja shelf for adult relaxing, and the other, deeper end for diving and splashing.

Give a pool interest with varied surfaces

All the different materials to be used on the new pool

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“When designing a pool, tile in the water and outside of the water can look totally different,” says Hall as she considers the different tile and coping options.

She selects a number of different materials and colors, which complement one another and also look good wet and dry. Virtual mockups help.

“So I think we have a plan, right? We have the waterfall, we have the coping, we have the pebble, and then we have the waterline tile that’s going to be similar, and another tile for the spa,” she says.

It sounds really busy, but it ends up looking quite elegant, and the family couldn’t be happier.

“The pool is beautiful, the backyard looks amazing,” Rose says. “Christina did such a good job!”

Then the kids give Hall a whole new meaning to the word “flipping” when they jump head over heels from the waterfall into the pool.

Flipping for a new pool

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