Bathroom

[dancerjodi]

Brian met with the plumber today. They said they'd be ready to start if we were in 2 weeks (eek) and told him the order of things. I guess its time to go buy a tub (once the snow is gone). The fancy tile has to be ordered, but that's for the outside of the shower, so it shouldn't hold us up from doing things.

We picked up a vintage-styled showerhead/faucet kit tonight at Home Depot. Its based on 1922 hardware - here's a not so great pic I found online:
http://marmontianderson.com/photos/displayimage.php?album=5&pos=3

What's cool, is that Home Depot has subway tile! I brought the sample that Roma Tile had given us and we compared to the stuff at the Depot. One tile at Home Depot costs $.19 compared to around $1.20 at Roma Tile. We'll be using the Home Depot subway style tiles in white for the bulk of the work. At the bottom we'll have a tile baseboard ordered from Roma (we didn't like the ones at the Depot, and they didn't have them in black anyway). At about a bit higher than chair rail height we'll have a row of the special order decorative stuff, and a thin border tile from Home Depot on top of that. We'll paint above, color tbd (I'm leaning in the direction of using the stuff we had in our bedroom while Brian is leaning in a gray direction - we'll need to see the tile before actually deciding though).

So in the short time frame we need to buy a tub, plan when we'll be working on this stuff, rent a dumpster and after that make a huge mess and get our hands dirty. I'm not looking forward to having to shower at my parent's house for a week, but I'm looking forward to the end result. :)

Comments

[trixie.livejournal.com]

and you can walk down the street from there to be fed dinner! =)

[silentq.livejournal.com]

I am so envious of your future bathroom. :)
Did you see the post on saucydwellings where the woman mentioned stuffing insulation in the tub walls? Apparently her bathwater stays hot for *hours*.

Warm tubs

[dancer.livejournal.com]

I haven't been watching saucy dwellings for a bit - thanks for the tub wall insulation tip! Its an outside wall, so I'm sure that will help a big deal :)

[lsl.livejournal.com]

Do you know what tub you are getting yet?

When we had our second floor added, we added a master bath with a big tub and spent a lot of time looking at whirlpool spa type tubs. We ended up getting a air tub instead of a whirlpool tub for the ease of upkeep factor. Apparently it's a pain in the butt to keep the jets in a whirlpool tub clean and mold free. I can't comment on use of the air tub as we haven't finished that bathroom, so it's not hooked up. :( We were told that you have to be careful what you put in your bath water with a water jet tub and they want you to use special stuff to clean it. The general feeling we got is that water jets are a lot of upkeep. The brand we ended up buying is called "Bain Ultra" and I know they make a 5 foot air tub. We looked at them at Splash (in Natick?) if you are interested in checking them out in person.

Tub

[dancer.livejournal.com]

"Do you know what tub you are getting yet?"

We picked up a simple Kohler one from Home Depot. Given that our space is small and we can only get a 5' foot tub that's really narrow and not too high (since it sits under a window, it has to fit under a sill) our options were really limited. A lot of the 5' tubs we looked at online were actually still too big either due to height or width. Kohler is generally a decent brand and the price was right so we figured we'd go with one of theirs that we saw at Home Depot.

"We ended up getting a air tub instead of a whirlpool tub for the ease of upkeep factor. Apparently it's a pain in the butt to keep the jets in a whirlpool tub clean and mold free . . . We were told that you have to be careful what you put in your bath water with a water jet tub and they want you to use special stuff to clean it."

I did read that, which kind of bums me out because it means no lush bath bombs with large things floating in them anymore! :)

I'm going to do some more research on what's OK and what's not OK. I'm also assuming (hoping) that we can buy some kind of cleaner to run through the bath to prevent mold in the jets. Honestly, I don't imagine we'd be using the jets all that often (or the tub as a tub even - maybe a few times a month). We needed to put some kind of new tub in there anyway and the small whirlpools weren't that more expensive than the same size plain tubs, so we figured we'd go this route. I guess, time will tell and all.

I'm constantly amazed at how cheap building materials are for tubs nowadays. In the past I've been used to the old porcelain coated cast iron ones and to find those now you need to go to a more high end store and pay 'retro' designer prices. Given how tiny the bathroom is and how it doesn't add more function (if anything, it complicates things - I'm not sure about our floor holding up the weight of something like that) we're going the cheaper route. I was having a big issue with this and was really dragging my feet on making a decision on what kind of tub to get but after looking at what's out there and realizing that what I was thinking of as "the normal tub" just isn't normal anymore, I'm starting to feel more comfortable about it. :)