Lake House 2nd Floor Interior Project

[3RRL]

Boy, it's really coming together for you Paul.
Those bathroom pictures look terrific. I like the color you chose. How will that work out with the oval tub raised above the tile like that? If I'm seeing it right, looks like your shower curtain follows the oval contour of the tub, right? So it should be perfect.
You know, I still can't get over that you're doing all that work yourself. You have my admiration and respect.
Great progress!
Rob-

[linus69]

Thankyou Rob, coming from that is high praise, you are a great morale booster. Yes you are right the raised lip of the whirlpool is what made me adapt a rectangular freestanding claw foot tub shower rod. When one showers the shower curtain completely suppounds you so no water leaves the tub.
The extra wide shower curtains are hard to find in stores but like the rod itself I found some for sale on Ebay. Actually with the exception of the commode which I got at Home Depot, everything else fixture and accessory wise came off Ebay for pennies on the dollar.
We are very happy with the tile color, it is a classic stone look that should not get dated. I found when shopping for tile that like clothes there are style changes that are apparently encouraged by the industry.
What is fad now could be like Avacado colored appliances in a few years, so we went fairly "Old School" which hopefully won`t go out of date. I guess it would be considered a Roman or Greek style of tile, very old world looking. In fact the name of the tile was Roma and of course it was made in China.

Paul

[3RRL]

Paul,
We our tile in a similar tone for the same reason. Although it looks like ours is a shade lighter, it is very close to what you have chosen. You may have seen these before, but here a couple shots of our Whirpool tub and shower. In our case, they are separate from each other, but you can see the tile. This is the master bath, but the upstairs has the same tile. We chose a black beaded accent band to break up the tile a little. The floors have corners of the black beads about every other tile as accent, and the entire shower floor has the individual beads with the light brown tile as an accent stripe ... reversed it in there so our feet would get "massaged". Wish I had photos of the floor with the corner accents, dang...

[linus69]

Boy Rob we sure have similar taste in tile, they look like cousins, very nice work too. The plumbing fixtures are great, I especially like the waterfall tub faucet. Did you apply grout sealant yet, I`m letting my grout cure a little longer but will apply it soon. I saw a wheeled applicator at Home Depot that I`m gonna try out, at $20 a pint the sealant is not something I wanna slather around with a brush.

Paul

[jimmyt]

Great minds think alike, or some such rot. I got my tub surround tile at a discount house in Las Vegas because I ran out of the stuff I bought for the rest of the house--one of the disadvantages of buying close-outs, I guess. It kept my build costs to below $60 a square foot, but in some areas, it really shows...

[linus69]

Hot stuff Jimmy, apparently there is a common thread between Chinese tractor owners and this color of tile, personally I think both you and Rob have exceptional taste.

Paul

[jimmyt]

Looks like you used the same Moen valve I did, too. Works great, but I already had to replace the cartridge once when it was less than 2 months old. Lifetime warranty, at least.

Keep posting your progress, Paul--it's inspirational and educational!

[linus69]

Thanks Jimmy, I had a bad cartridge in my faucet right out of the box, I called Moen customer service and they overnight Fed Exed me a new one. That had to cost them close to $30, I was more than impressed with that. My buddy who is a plumber has nothing but good things to say about Moen and their service. I wound up using all Moen faucets in this bathroom, not by plan but Ebay had a boatload of them for sale and I got the best deals on them.

Paul

[linus69]

This is the 2nd creme colored marble threshold finally in place, I broke the 1st one by setting it on the floor on top of a lump of hard spackle and then stepping on it. It made a loud rifle crack sound and broke in two, much cursing on my part.



This medicine chest was 31ins high, it did not fit my space. I had to cut it down by 4 1/2ins to make it work. I hadn`t cut a mirror in years and now I had to cut three of them, the two outer ones have a beveled side to boot.
It was like riding a bicycle, a flat table, metal straight edge, a glass cutter and a little kerosene, they cut beautifully, it turned out fine.





Paul

[linus69]

I did the black granite backsplash, cutting out the outlet was interesting. I did it from the backside with the same small angle grinder and 4in diamond blade I have been using to cut the cement backer board.





Paul

[3RRL]

Now that looks real majestic.
Plus it's something I would never undertake myself. I'm more of the school like what happened to your first threshold ... I'm sure I would be buying spares for the backslpash if I attempted to do what you did.
As usual, fine work there Paul, and it looks great!

I did get some photos of the bathroom tile after all. They are not very good, but they show the little black corners I was talking about. I thought to share with you because IMHO, they break up the similar color scheme we all got and looks pretty good for the long haul. They are made up of the same individual little squares that are in the shower accent band and floor.

[linus69]

Thanks Rob, yeah breaking that marble threshold really got me to howl, it was done at the end of a long day. I really like those accent tiles in your floor, a very classy touch.

Paul

[affordable]

Linus
Looks to me like your light fixture is installed upside down ? But What do I know I'm just a plumber

Tommy
Affordable Tractor Sales
www.affordabletractorsalesco.com

[linus69]

Hey Tom, long time since we spoke, hope you are doing well. You are the third person that has said that about the light, as a 30yr electrician I`ve hung more than a few light fixtures.
This type of light is a reproduction of a gas light from the olden days, when Edision did his thing houses got changed from gas lights to electric lights.
The gas lines were used to run wires and Edision sockets were installed in the existing gas fixtures with incandescent bulbs. Using gas the frosted tulip light defusers were upright and open at top for the gas flame.
When these lights were being retrofitted to electric someone got the idea of mounting it upside down since there was no longer a flame, and with the poor early incandescent bulbs it worked out very well to give more light.
Nowadays most folks don`t even remember gas light, and have only seen these lights mounted the way you have seen them. Anyway here is a picture of the box showing how the manufacturer wants it mounted, though some makers of this style say it can be mounted either way.
Thanks for your input.
i8.ebayimg.com/04/i/000/f2/ae/de9d_1.JPG

Paul

[affordable]

Great job you are doing there, I was just giving you a little grief about it.My daughters haouse has a light similier to that one mounted the other way.As long as it works I guess it does not matter which way it's installed .

Tommy
Affordable Tractor Sales