The Bathroom Project
We've been looking for years to update our Master Bath. I had put if off for as long as I could and decided to start it last October. Unfortunately, the morning after I gutted it, I managed to slice my hand open on a shard of pottery (let me tell you, you have to work at doing something that stupid), and promptly lost the first week of work.
And it went down hill from there.
We had an idea about what we wanted to do with the cabinets. And that went pretty smooth. We wanted to run electricity into a cabinet to hide the toothbrush charger. No Problem. We wanted to get ride of the medicine cabinet and replaced it with a couple of pull out spice wracks. Had to fabricate a couple of things but we got that done.
Then came the shower/tub. We had a leak behind the wall and it was blowing out the tile (That is really what started the whole project). We were just going to fix the leak and replace the tile. Then we realized that I had never taken a bath in the tub and Kathy had only used it once. So we decided to turn a small 3' X 4' shower into a huge 4' X 8' shower. And lets add some wall sprayers and a deluge shower head that can all be selected from one place. And get ride of the door. Just have a wall.
I had a working knowledge of how to do all this stuff but had never really done it before. So like the idiot I am, decided to do it anyway.
And this is the result.
Our "Before" Pictures.
I really should have cleaned up before taking these.
Notice the never used bathtub.
And the dinky little shower.
Yeah. I really should have cleaned up a bit.
After we've gutted the cabinets and re-ran the plumbing and electrical.
This is a rough fit with a temporary sink. We had to have everything almost done before we could have the granite guys come in.
I had to fabricate some stuff around the spice racks. The side cabinets are only 21" deep and the sink/spice are 24" deep. We wanted to have some depth.
Our medicine cabinet.
The real fun begins.
We didn't even realized this rot was there.
I have to say that deconstruction is much funner that construction.
I don't miss that shower.
Unfortunately, the water ran from the sink under the foundation and up to the tub before going back down to come up by the shower.
My garbage men were not happy with me for a couple of weeks.
And Kathy wasn't happy with me leaving this pile of tools in the bathroom.
I had to cut into the cinderblock to make room for the fixtures and also the nitche. Diamond blade saws and air chisels.
Here is the wall sprayers and the selector. Notice the whole under the selector. That was where I was going to put the faucet. After hanging it, I mentioned to Kathy that we were going to have to be quick when turning on the water. You see there was going to be no door. This area was enclosed by a glass wall that comes out 5 feet. I was then informed there was going to be a design change. The faucet needed to be moved closer to the opening. Did I mention this whole thing was a work in progress.
I had to manifold the water here by the drain to keep the water going to the shower. Thank god for Shark Bites.
I had never put in a shower pan before and doing one this big was a hell of a job. Thank god for youtube and the internet. Sometimes it's good for things other that porn. Who knew.
Plumbing by Dr. Seuss.
Something over 80 copper joints to be sweated. It was a record for me.
Notice where we put the faucet. I only had to run the water around a corner to the middle of the wall, and then back again. And I only had 3/4 of an inch to work with. So it had to hug the wall at all times.
The worst part of the whole thing is we had to take our showers in the kids bathroom. But my toilet was never out of commission so I could still meditate without having people slamming on the door to get in.
Kathy wanted a seat under the window so I built this thing out of cinderblock. Talk about manual labor.
Just getting the niche right took me one full day. It was a pain in the ass but it came out pretty good.
And a little seat made out of matching granite.
It was starting to look like a bathroom again.
And then I realized I had a bunch of electical to do. We ran an extra line thru the attic and installed 5 more lights than we had. It was always a dark place. Not any more.
We ran a couple of lights for next to the mirror and a couple of outlets below it.
Those little tiles are a pain in the ass to work with.
The marble tile was a challenge to work with. We wanted a highlight tile for contrast so we took some 1" glass block for looks and then took a 3" strip of the marble to use as a cap.
The only thing we did around the toilet was replace the cabinet.
Here is the finished look of the sink.
We love the vase sink.
This is actually 9 different cabinets made to look like one. We like it.
The only bad thing now is that Kathy makes us squeegee off the water after our showers. Jake now takes his shower in here and considers having to take a shower in the other bathroom as below him. "You mean in the minion Shower?"
We trimmed everything in quarter-round oak. The only problem was that I can't get it in the right size. So I made it. A table saw and router. Then stained it to match. Since we had to make the cap tiles, they didn't have a finished edge and the quarter-round trimmed it off well.