Bringing national awards home Better Homes & Gardens’ annual bathroom competition winner hails from Vancouver   By Jennifer Dirks For The Columbian   What does it take to win Better Homes & Garden magazine’s top Bathroom Remodeling award? For Vancouver-residents Brad and Peggy Goodwin, it took four rolls of film and a trip to the 1997 Portland show home “Street of Dreams.”             “We knew that we wanted to improve the look of this house, and we knew we wanted it to keep with the wooded setting around our home,” said Peggy Goodwin, 36. “We saw a preview of the ‘Street of Dreams’ home [a lodge-style home nicknamed ‘The Alder House’] in a magazine, and my husband said, ‘Let’s go check it out.’”             They made a few practical changes: changing the slate counters in the photos to a more durable limestone and darkening the wood stain color to lend a Mission-style air. Still, “if you didn’t know the difference, you almost couldn’t tell some of the photos apart from the real thing,” said Brad Goodwin, a 40-year-old technical sales consultant for software-maker Oracle in Tigard, Ore. “It’s almost identical.”             The couple -- who added the bathroom as part of a complete remodel of their 1960s ranch-style home -- also pulled inspiration from a long-torn-out magazine photo. “The idea for the limestone and offsetting colors in the floor and bath[-surround] came from that,” Brad said. The end result is 238 new square feet of master bathroom, featured in a one-page article in Better Homes & Garden’s February edition (page 148). Decked in limestone, mahogany-stained quarter-sawn oak and lots of glass, the room is serene and with views of nature in every direction. It’s also flooded with light, thanks to 17 squares of window, raised ceilings, 14 recessed and sconce lights, and a glass-block shower. “We always liked the idea of a glass-block shower because it just lends more light to the room,” Brad said. The square blocks also mimic the custom-made squares of the corner windows. These windows reveal backyard evergreens and a little creek, punctuated only by the back of a neighboring house 200 yards away. “Privacy isn’t really a concern,” Peggy said, “because even though you can see the other house, they don’t have windows on that side, and everywhere else we look we only see our property. “Besides,” she continued, “we can’t figure out any way to cover it that would not take away from the beauty of this bathroom. The outside beauty ends up being our window covering.” To the right of the view, past the shower and a built-in window seat, is the former bathroom. Once cramped and painted mint-green, the 55-square-foot room was gutted to create what is now a walk-in closet.             “A lot of people were skeptical about having to go all the way through the bathroom to get to the closet,” Brad said. “But it works out great.”                       He’s a frequent traveler, up at 4:30 a.m. to head out of town for sales calls. “I can get it all done -- showering, dressing, packing -- without having to go in and out of the bedroom and turning on and off the lights.”   Applying yourself In the end, this was enough to convince the editors of Better Homes & Garden magazine to give the Goodwins their top bathroom-remodeling prize. It’s a prize some consider as the highest award in consumer-prompted home design.             “We actually entered the whole house in the contest,” Peggy said, “but Better Homes & Gardens felt that if they narrowed it just down to the master bathroom that it would win the national contest in that category.”             Based on the architect’s plans, and the pictures the Goodwin’s had drawn and shown the architect, the couple decided to enter the magazine’s annual contest in January 2001. “It’s a lot of paperwork, and I think there was a small packet fee, but it was less than $30,” Peggy said. They found out six months later that they had won.      The first photo shoot was set in August. “It was so exciting,” Peggy said, “but it was just so much pressure that the whole family spent the month before cleaning up the house to get ready.” Raining and overcast that day of the shoot, the magazine photographer and styling crew decided to reschedule to capture better light. It was rescheduled for Sept. 10, and the shoot went without a hitch: “And they were here for most of the day,” Peggy said. “They were very personable that day. We even have personal notes that they sent afterwards; they made us feel like we made a personal contribution.”      Done differently In all, the bathroom turned out as good, or better, than planned. “There’s a lot I really like about it, and very little I would have done differently,” Brad said.             What would he have done differently? Two things: “I wish we would have used smoked or frosted glass (to lessen light and add privacy to the French doors going into the master bedroom),” he said, “and I wish we would have put heat elements into the floor.”             Still, this bathroom remains Brad and Peggy Goodwin’s favorite part of the remodel. “I start the day early -- we have four kids -- and it’s my favorite place to start the day,” Peggy said. “It’s so quiet, and I can look out and see what the weather is before getting the kids ready for school.” And at night, “it’s quite again, and is never completely dark.” Thanks to subdued earth-toned colors and clean-lined décor, “it’s just a really peaceful room,” Peggy said.