Little Bathroom Updates

There have been several little things going on in the back bathroom and not one was worthy of an entire post devoted to it, so I thought I'd toss them all into one.

First up, we decided not to build a medicine cabinet. I know, I was disappointed with the idea at first, but with Cashew coming we just decided to make things easier on ourselves. And with a long list of items we still  really want to finish and build (hello sports ticket dining room table), taking one of them off the list will make it a lot easier on us. Of course, that still meant I wasn't going to pay $200+ for a fucking 2 ft. x 3 ft. cabinet, so I trolled the internet and found a really awesome recessed cabinet on craigslist. Woo-hoo! I may have sent a really excited email to the lady in hopes that it was still available and drove over to SF the next morning and picked it up, hooray!

It was $85, so not cheap, but also waaaaay better than $250, so Chris and I were pleased. We thought about staining it, but it wasn't really built stain grade because you could see several joints of wood

So we opted to paint it glossy white. It got a nice coat of primer one night while we were watching football

And we continued by putting 3 coats of glossy white oil/water hybrid paint. I may have been watching the world's strongest man competition during coat #3. And then it got put up (I promise the cabinet is level and it's just me that's crooked)

I think it looks pretty damn good! Of course the door still needs to go on, but the hinges weren't great and the door is heavy (it's got a mirror on the front and the back) so Chris bought some new ones. I'm also planning to get a small glass knob for the door instead of the plain one it's got now. So it'll look even snazzier :)

We also decided against having a niche in the shower area. You may remember that I planned out where one large one will go, but then was corrected by Chris that duh, it wouldn't fit because of the studs. So we tried to place where one might go, but because the studs on the wall I wanted it to be on were closer than normal (to accommodate the window and wall separating the bathroom and laundry room during framing) the niche would only be about 4" wide after being tiled

Even if we did two small ones on top of each other, that's still just too tiny that I think it would look ridiculous. Then we thought about having them on either side of the shower valve on the other wall

But obviously they would need to be centered equidistant from the valve and because of framing that would mean that the one on the left would basically be against the wall and that would just look ridiculous. There could be two on top of each other on the right, but we're going to put a teak bench there and having the niche right above it I think would just be a little too weird and full looking. Oh well, no niche. I'm not that broken up about it. We have a tension pole in the other bathroom that works great (I am very anti anything hanging from the shower head), so we'll have a tension pole in here too. Like this

 

(found here)

Next up, tile trim. In this bathroom we needed 2 kinds of trim: quarter round to go on the curb and transition from tile to the inside of the cubby (about 30 linear feet) and trim to go around the top of the tile all the way around the room (about 22 linear feet). And jesus the beveled tile we got is apparently SUPER WHITE and we could not find a matching white anywhere. First up was obviously looking on the same site we got the tile, but of course they didn't have any. Of course. So that meant I went on a very big adventure last week in search of OH MY GOD AMAZINGLY BRIGHT PURE WHITE tile trim. I went to 9 tile places and had 3 more on the list when I finally found some. But the total for 30 linear feet of quarter round and 22 linear feet of cap trim came in over $600. I just about threw up. That's not happening.

Instead, I went back to Dal-tile yesterday and ordered 30 linear feet of quarter round in their brightest white (they have 5 different shades). It's not a complete match, but for $80 instead of $260 for quarter round, I'm not complaining. It's amazing apparently how white our tile is. Every other tile was just slightly more gray, or pink, or beige, or something that made it not nearly as white.

For the trim on the top we eventually landed on purchasing wood trim and painting it bright white. I figure you won't really be able to tell too much, and it might be kind of cool that the tile and trim are different materials. I went over to our favorite local mill, White Brothers (seriously, they're awesome. A tad pricey, but really knowledgeable and friendly and they've been in business since 1872). I picked up 6 that I liked

Chris whittled it down to 4 that he thought would work well based on how they were milled and then together we brought it down to our two favorites

The top one is about 1" tall and the bottom one is about 2" tall. We haven't placed them with the subway tile to see which size looks better, but I like both options.

And lastly, now that tiling is just around the corner (in fact we started on Tuesday, but we'll share next week when the floor is all done) Chris started getting the room prepped for it.

First up was beginning the curb that will separate the bathroom floor from the shower area

It was pretty easy going because we had the shape mapped out so Chris just measured, cut and screwed in for 3 PT 2x4's high

There's still work that needs to be done before the curb is finished, but it's started, so that's good :)

After that he painted on Redgard to help protect the floor as a waterproofing layer and also to help prevent cracks in the grout

It got painted all over the floor and went on bubblegum pink

And dried fuchsia

And then, we were ready to start tiling! We still need to waterproof the shower area properly, but here's a sneak peak at the floor tile!

If you follow us on facebook, you would have seen this same photo I posted yesterday morning while also complaining about what a bitch this tile was to deal with. We've done basketweave before (in the main bathroom) but this tile was a royal fucking headache. Each sheet was not interlocking, pieces were broken, the glue they used was fucking super glue, and it tended to break very easily if there was any veining in it. Oy vey. We're nearly halfway done laying it, so at least half the madness is over with.