Bathroom (almost) done!

First off, we apologize for a lack of Christmas cards to many of you. Getting the bathroom done (okay, working since we're still not done) took longer than we expected - in fact right up to when Megan's family got here. Since without that bathroom working, we'd only have one shower for 6 people, we spent most of our awake time working on it and not on prepping for Christmas. We got out cards for immediate family, but even those were pretty impersonal! So, while you may not have gotten a card (or you got a lame one), we were thinking of you and hope you had a good day!

Now to the bathroom. First, if you plan on doing a bathroom consider not using hard ceramic tile on the walls. Seriously. Or be willing to pay big $$ for a diamond-coated hole saw. We went with carbide-coated (since it was much cheaper - I mean we're only cutting 5 holes total for the faucets and spouts right?). Ugh. I spent literally most of a day trying to cut 4 holes for the tub spout and faucets. I got 2 done and then broke the tile on the 3rd hole. Nope - not doing that anymore. We went with a slate mosaic around the faucets and the spacing was just right - all I had to do was pop a few squares off. If we ever do any of this again (still have the upstairs shower in principle) we'll either use something softer (like slate or marble or ....) or buy a diamond-coated hole saw on eBay where they're much cheaper than at Lowe's. The slate was a joy to work with (easy to cut when I had to do so) - I'm pretty sure you could gnaw through it if necessary.

Second - seriously consider slate. I like it and when it's sealed properly it's gorgeous. And, let me mention again, it's really easy to cut and work with. Honey, are you listening? I'll pay the extra cost to decrease my frustration levels!!!

So what's left? Well, we need to caulk around the toilet yet (we had a leak problem with it which is a huge other story). We also need to put up the towel bars and TP holder. I've tried mounting these using, again, masonry bits to drill the holes in the tile and given up. I've ordered some 1/4" diamond-coated hole saws to put these up - hopefully get here soon. I could always hang them in the drywall above the tile, but then they'd be over 4' above the floor which might be awkward for TP. :-) We need to change out the chrome faucet flanges with the brushed nickel ones we just bought to match the rest of the hardware (we couldn't find the nickel ones orignally and time was running short). We have some epoxy/paint to primp up the tub to a "new" white finish - much cheaper and easier than replacing the tub, especially since the tub is built into the wall! Finally, we also have some almond caulk (~ wall color) to seal up the top edge of the slate on the walls and the top and vertical portions of the shower stall edges.

Here's a picture of the shower in its "we're cleaning this up" state - note the sponge and wet paper towel, along with the grout and mortar in the tub still. Click on the photo for a medium-sized version or click here for a large (3 MB) version which really shows up the slate.

Master Bath Progress report

Just a quick master bath progress update. The lovely avacado green tile came off remarkably easily in most places. It was a bit terrifying. We confirmed what we'd suspected before - that we have a real professional layered "mud" surface on all of our walls which is ideal for laying the new tile. Unfortunately, in the bath, they'd had some water damage that they "fixed" by putting drywall in as a patch and then a vinyl tub surround. We went in and ripped out all the drywall and were again surprised to see the outside of the old house (the fake brick siding that was on some point in the distant past). Our bedroom was an addition and it buts up against the outside of the original house. We assumed that would be water barrier enough and patched the large holes with concrete backer board. We then used some thinset to fill in the gaps and some of the areas where the old tile was stubborn coming off. Here's a view of the bathroom at current.

The tile we're using in the bath (floor and walls) is a creme color with rough edges. We are capping the top with some small slate tiles. Megan also came up with the idea of doing something fun on the back wall of the shower. We'll again use the slate to set it off and some smaller tiles to fill the interior on the diagonal with a central square of the slate again. My current attempt at a design, obviously not centered (see the masking tape on the floor laying out the back wall) can be seen below.

Sorry for the bad lighting, but that was a rush take before Calvin ran in to play with all of the spacers. :-) The slate is really much prettier than it shows in this picture.