Edina Country Club Tudor Bathroom Remodeling

The Country Club District in Edina is one of the most concentrated stretches of Tudor Revival housing in the Upper Midwest. We've worked in homes from Browndale up through Wooddale, around Sunnyside, and on the streets that feed into 50th & France, and the bathrooms in these houses tell a pretty consistent story. Most were built between the mid-1920s and the late 1930s, most still have at least one original tiled bath with hex floor mosaic and a cast-iron tub, and most owners eventually want to keep the character on the main level while bringing the primary suite bath into something that actually functions for a 2026 household. That tension between period-correct and modern luxe is the whole conversation, and it's the one we have on almost every Country Club walkthrough.

What Country Club Tudor bathrooms usually look like before we start

The original bath layout in a Country Club Tudor is almost always small by current standards. Five by eight feet is common, sometimes a little larger if the house was upper-bracket when it was built. You'll see a recessed cast-iron tub against the back wall, a wall-hung sink or a small console lav, a toilet tucked beside the tub, and a tile wainscot capped with a pencil liner. Floors are almost always one-inch hex in white with a black border or a pinwheel pattern. Walls are typically 4x4 or 3x6 subway tile to about chair-rail height, painted plaster above. If a previous owner remodeled in the 1980s or 1990s, you usually find a fiberglass surround, a builder-grade vanity, and vinyl over the original hex. The original tile is often still under there, which matters when we're scoping the demo and the substrate.

Upstairs primary suites are the other piece. A lot of these homes have had a dormer addition or a second-floor reconfiguration at some point in the last forty years, and the primary bath is usually where the budget conversation gets real. People want a curbless shower, a freestanding tub, a double vanity, heated floors, and they want it to feel like it belongs in a 1928 Tudor. That's doable, but it takes planning, and it takes finish selections that don't fight the rest of the house.

Period-correct finishes that actually hold up

When clients ask us for "period-correct," what they usually mean is finishes that feel like they could have been original to the house, even if they're brand new. That's a different target than historic restoration, and it's a much more practical one. Here's the palette we keep coming back to in Country Club:

• Subway tile, but the right subway tile. 3x6 in a true white or a soft off-white, with a slight handmade variation in the glaze. American Olean and Daltile both make versions that work. We avoid the dead-flat machine-perfect subway because it reads contemporary, not 1928.
• Hex floor mosaic. One-inch hex in white with a black accent, or a pinwheel with a small black dot, is the default. Two-inch hex works in larger primary baths. Sheets from Daltile or American Olean are the workhorse, and zellige hex is an option if a client wants more texture and is willing to pay for it.
• Polished nickel fixtures.Polished nickel is the sweet spot for Tudor baths. It's warmer than chrome, it has the right period reference, and it doesn't go orange like some unlacquered brass options do over time. We'll use brass as an accent on a sconce or a mirror frame, but we usually keep the plumbing in nickel.
• Wainscoting and beadboard. Painted wood wainscot to about 42 inches, capped with a simple chair rail, is a clean way to add period texture without leaning into anything theme-y. We use it more often in powder baths and secondary baths than in wet zones.
• Zellige and handmade tile as a feature.When a client wants something a little more layered, a zellige field in a soft white or a warm bone gives the wall some life. It's not technically period to a 1928 Tudor, but it reads handmade in the same way the original tile did, and it ages well.

The modern luxe additions clients actually use

Period-correct finishes don't mean period-correct function. Nobody wants to bathe in a 60-inch cast-iron tub with a shower curtain anymore. The upgrades we install over and over in Country Club primary baths are pretty consistent, and most of them are invisible once the tile goes back on.

• Curbless Schluter showers. We're a Schluter certified shower installer, which matters in old houses because the substrate is rarely flat and the floor structure is rarely ready for a zero-threshold pan without some framing work. A linear drain at the back wall, a Kerdi-Board surround, and a properly sloped pre-slope is the assembly we default to. Full walkthrough is in our curbless shower design guide.
• Freestanding tubs.A cast-iron or acrylic slipper tub on the long wall, with a floor-mount filler in polished nickel, is the look most Country Club clients want. The plumbing rough for a floor-mount filler is a real consideration in a second-floor bath because we're almost always cutting into joists, and that needs to be designed before demo.
• Double vanities with custom millwork.Stock vanities almost never fit the dimensions of these spaces, and they don't hold the trim profiles that match the rest of the house. We do most of our Country Club vanities through our custom cabinetry shop with inset doors, a simple shaker or recessed-panel face, and bun feet or a furniture toe.
• Heated tile floors. Schluter Ditra-Heat under hex mosaic is the assembly we use almost every time. It adds about a quarter inch to the finished floor height and it makes a surprisingly large difference on a January morning in a north-facing bath.
• Wet room layouts.A handful of clients want the tub inside the shower enclosure as a single wet zone. It's a great look in the right footprint. We covered the design decisions in our wet room design guide.

Tile selection: where the budget actually lives

Tile is where Country Club bath budgets either stay reasonable or run away. The same hex floor can cost six dollars a square foot or thirty dollars a square foot depending on whether you're spec'ing American Olean Bright White or a hand-cut zellige hex from a boutique line. We try to steer clients toward a mix: workhorse tile from American Olean or Daltile in the high-volume applications, and a higher-end accent in the niche, the floor border, or the tub surround. That keeps the install timeline reasonable, keeps the budget honest, and still gives the room the layered look most Country Club owners are after.

A note on grout. Tudor baths look right with a warm gray or a soft sand grout, not bright white. White grout in a 1920s bath reads new in a way that fights everything else. We almost always sample two or three grout colors on a small board before committing.

Edina permits, valuation, and what the city actually charges

Edina runs its permit fees on a valuation-based schedule, which is structurally similar to Minneapolis but tends to run higher on the same scope. The building permit is a percentage of the declared valuation, with separate plumbing, mechanical, and electrical permits layered on top. For a primary bath remodel in Country Club, we're typically pulling a building permit, a plumbing permit, an electrical permit, and a mechanical permit if we're moving any ductwork or adding a bath fan with a new exterior penetration. There's also a plan review fee and a state surcharge.

Country Club itself is a designated Heritage Preservation district, which mostly affects the exterior of the home rather than interior bath work. If the project touches an exterior window, a new exterior vent location, or anything visible from the street, a Certificate of Appropriateness review can come into play, and that adds time. Interior-only bath remodels generally don't trigger it, but we always confirm with the city before we scope.

Practically, what this means for budget: Edina permit costs on a $60,000 primary bath remodel typically run noticeably higher than the same scope in Minneapolis, and the inspection cadence is tighter. We build that into the proposal so there are no surprises, and we handle the pulls and inspections as part of our general contractor scope.

What Country Club primary baths actually cost

Here's the range we see across the neighborhood. These are turnkey numbers including labor, materials, permits, and a reasonable allowance for the surprises that come with 1920s framing, plaster, and plumbing. They don't include structural work to expand the footprint or whole-suite reconfigurations.

Two things to flag on the cost side. First, plaster repair and lath work is a real line item in almost every Country Club bath. We almost never finish a primary bath remodel without patching plaster in the adjacent bedroom or hall, and we build that into the estimate up front. Second, plumbing risers in these houses are often galvanized or early copper, and we frequently find ourselves replacing more line than originally scoped once walls are open. Our bathroom remodel cost guide walks through the broader Twin Cities ranges if you want to compare across cities.

Timeline expectations

A Country Club primary bath typically runs 8 to 12 weeks on site once we mobilize, plus 4 to 8 weeks of design and selections before that, plus 2 to 4 weeks of permit and order lead time. The two biggest schedule variables are tile lead time and any custom millwork from our cabinet shop. Zellige and specialty tile can run 6 to 10 weeks. Custom inset vanities run 8 to 12 weeks from approved drawings. We build the schedule backward from those two items.

Common reconfigurations we see in Country Club

Most second-floor primary baths in these houses started as a smaller bath and a closet, or a bath and a sleeping porch, that got combined at some point. The reconfigurations that come up most often:

• Pulling in square footage from an adjacent closet to fit a double vanity and a freestanding tub.
• Borrowing a few feet from a hallway to get a 36-inch wide curbless shower opening.
• Relocating the toilet to a separate water closet within the bath.
• Adding a window in the shower wall, which gets into exterior review and is worth flagging early.
• Combining a small bath and a small bedroom into a true primary suite with walk-in closet.

When the project starts touching multiple rooms, it's usually worth talking about a broader whole house remodel conversation, even if the actual work stays focused on the second floor. The house tells you what it wants pretty quickly once walls are open.

How we approach the first conversation

On a Country Club walkthrough, we usually spend an hour in the house. We look at the existing bath, the framing above and below if accessible, the plumbing stack, the electrical panel, and the adjacent rooms. We talk through what the household actually needs versus what the listings make people think they need. We sketch a rough layout, ballpark a budget range, and follow up with a written scope and a finish allowance breakdown a few days later. We don't charge for the walkthrough.

If you're in Country Club, Sunnyside, Browndale, or the streets feeding into 50th & France and you're thinking through a primary bath remodel or a full second-floor reconfiguration, the easiest next step is to get in touchand we'll set up a walkthrough. You can also read more about our broader bathroom remodeling scope or our custom cabinetry work, both of which come up on almost every Tudor primary bath we do.