Waiting for Hardware

We ordered new doorknobs and hardware for the bathroom from Rejuvenation.com, and we are waiting for them to arrive. They should come on Tuesday. Everything is in brushed nickel.

Moving to www.lifeshouldbebeautiful.com

This blog now has a new and improved internet address. For your easy access, you may now type in www.lifeshouldbebeautiful.com. Because life should be beautiful. Enjoy!

Coming soon: New Bathroom

Many Days of Tiling

The floor goes in

The tile has arrived! The house is covered from dust from all the drywall sanding, but no use in cleaning until we are done with everything, since it will just get messier. Chad has a poker game on Feb 21 so this is the working deadline to have an operational bathroom. However he notes that guys will not mind using the skanky bathroom downstairs, and so perhaps it is not much a deadline afterall. A girl can dream. Meanwhile it is -40 outside and showering downstairs with no heat is quite the adventure. BRRR.

We are adding heated floors to the bathroom since there is not a heat vent in there. For such a small space, the heated floors are pretty affordable -- about $500 for the bathroom, and most of this is for the thermostat unit. The heat is electric and is provided via a mat on the floor.

Laying down the electrical mat for the heat.

Then, you mortar over the wires and then lay tile over that. Now, the wires are all hidden in the mortar:

And we can lay the tiles down! I love the little floor tiles. They are .6 inches. If tiles could be cute, these are! We were thinking of going with a hexagon tile to have more of a period style, but I really like these little square guys. I believe that it is a honed marble, so it's not shiny. The color is an off-white with some variation.

Tomorrow, the grout goes in. For now, the tiles need to set.

Work in progress

Chad is kicking ass on this project so that we have a working bathroom up and running soon. He is taking time off from working at the furniture shop, which is his winter job, so that this project gets done before landscaping starts off.

Bringing in the new tub:


The new tub resting on it's legs:



The new built in shelves behind the tub for shampoo, etc. You can also see the new glass block window. Can you believe that Chad did all this so fast?

Framing in the tub:


After a long day of drywalling.
The cut out for the medicine cabinet:
The built in shelves all drywalled:
The built in tub:
The view from the hallway:

Whew! That was a lot of work!

The tub has arrived

We had a hard time finding a tub that would fit in a 30 x 66 inch opening. Most tubs today are 32 inches wide atleast. Our old tub was 30 x 60 x 14, which is very shallow. The new tub is roughly 30 x 66 x 18 -- giving us 24 more cubic inches of soaking room. It is a European tub made by Duravit and designed by Phillipe Stark, which we bought from tubz.com. Luckily it was in stock somewhere in the U.S. so it did not have to be shipped from Germany, where it is made.

Rrrrr! Sassy! Hold on there!
Here is our old tub, for comparison. Of course, there was not usually a toilet in it, but you get the gist. It's hard to tell from the photos, but the new tub is a lot more roomy.

This is actually the thing I am most excited to have with the new bathroom. The old tub was so small, we never took baths in it. The new tub will afford us bathing luxuries!

We were considering going with a jacuzzi tub.. but I read that on average, people use them 4 times a year. And all and all, it was not worth the extra cost for me. I am however ecstatic over our newly acquired 24 cubic inches.

But Emily, you have a one bathroom house. What are you doing while you remodel the bathroom?

Luckily, the original residents of our house installed very makeshift plumbing facilities in the unfinished basement. We think that a teenager lived in the basement at one point. We never had any reason to use said facilities until the day we accidentily began remodeling the bathroom. All it took was about $30 worth of plumbing to get it up and running.

It is not pretty. And it is cold. But if we didn't have it, I would be living with my parents while Chad could just step out into the backyard. Entertaining at our house is now limited to events where minimal beverages are served, and which last two hours or less. See what I mean?




Another hazard of remodeling is that you might kick your foot on a toolbox that is accidentily left in the hallway, and then have to hobble around and bail out on cross country skiing because your toe hurts. Right third toe, the bruise is halfway down my foot:

We are accidentily remodeling the bathroom

One little leaky faucet led to all this...