649 6th

hidey ho, everybody

Got a question about the Kohler Greek Tub t'other day, and since the response was sooooo long and sooooo informative, I thought to myself "share the wealth." Plus I took a couple pix, and nothing goes together better than pix and posts.

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Glad to share more info regarding our experience with Kohler's Greek tub. For us, the dimensions are great. As you already know, it's short; when sitting bolt upright I can just barely extend my legs full length. Some people have questioned the comfort of a short tub -- but when's the last time anyone sat so rigidly while soaking in the tub? If I want to extend my legs, I prefer slouching down and propping my heels on the edge.

And the depth more than compensates for length. In fact, its depth is the more important factor for installation considerations because it results in more volume than standard tubs, so there's more water weight. We considered consulting a structural engineer to calculate the load, but since bathroom was a gut reno we just sistered the floor joists before putting in new subfloor.

Water weight was also a factor when I caulked between wall and tub. I'd read a trick about filling tub with water before caulking and draining it only after caulk has cured, but for whatever reason I ignored that advice -- and had to rip out the caulk a few days later when gaps formed at both of the surrounding walls. For the re-caulk, I filled tub and seal held, though after several months I noticed a small gap and will need to pull the caulk on that edge again. I'm guessing the new gap has to do with structural settling, ie not much I can do but monitor the situation. Small price for a great tub.

Our decision to side-mount the fixtures was based on rain-type shower head. In my experience, shower heads are end-mounted because of the angled spray and the accommodation of tub length to adjust location of spray on the body; with rain-type shower head that's not a factor. I also feel like the end-mount orientation is contrary to the body's orientation while showering. By that I mean my wider dimension (side-to-side) spends most of the time while showering in the tub's narrower dimension (also side-to-side). Placing the rain shower head on side wall means I can stand "sideways" in the tub, which gives me more sense of room.

And it made a lot more sense to run the supply lines on same wall as shower fixture, rather than running at least one line around the corner. Could have end-mounted the shower and run a longer arm, perhaps with a ceiling support -- but I didn't. And I really am happy with the side mount. We've made several unorthodox decisions in the design/renovation of our house; some people questioned the wisdom, but I've been happy with outcome in every case.

One more tip: insulate the tub! We wrapped some spare fiberglass insulation around as much of the tub as we could reach after it was installed but before we closed up the deck. I can only compare to all the other tubs I've used that seemed to lose heat faster than I wanted; definitely not a problem with this tub. Insulating tub body is probably a good idea no matter what tub you get. I think I got the idea while reading about building a deck for a hot tub installation and made sense to apply same wisdom to standard tub.

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'K, that's all for now. Oh, and I quit my job a month AND didn't do a lick of work on the house besides wash dishes, do laundry, tidy, and make meals. What WILL it take to kick this project back into gear? I'm thinking warmer weather.

what color is offwhite?

Three different tints in there. Can you tell the difference? I've convinced myself the right side and left side aren't the same. And the middle's neither one. Not much less subtle in person, especially in natural light. Hadn't seen the point of offwhites until now: separate but unified spaces in a big ballooning room.

The painted 3rd floor walls. Toby did a crackerjack job picking the colors and selecting which wall got what.

And last night we finished assembling and mounting the handrail. Was a tight fit, and all the more stable for it. Not that I was worried about our floating rail once both flanges were mounted. There's zero bounce vertically and only a bit of hum horizontally. Funny how quickly the hand goes to it when there's something to grab.

pipeworks

Third floor walls are painted! So where's the picture? Shades of off white will be tough to capture so remote viewers may need to be satisfied with statement of fact for now.

What's much easier to see (and feel!) is the stair railing that had to wait for wall finish before it could go in. The vertical rail and short horizontal run provide a good handle around the stair winder. In design I planned to use black iron to synch with raw metal of the radiators I stripped last year; however, the fittings and pipe have such different finishes that I switched to galvanized.

So far the assembly's been fairly easy in that I've had to make only a couple tweaks to fittings estimates, eg replacing close nipples with 2" nipples in the wall bracket assembly so that rake rail runs parallel to wall. (Pun alert) But real test is right around the corner. Feel like I'm so outside intended use of threaded pipe that I can't even articulate the challenge, though it's possible the challenge is all in desire to pre-assemble as much as possible. To counter this, I'm taking a one-piece-at-a-time approach and hoping for the best.

Seen here: rough assembly out of spare fittings so I can measure for horizontal railing. Plan on using a union fitting in short horizontal rail to join 3rd floor section to what's already installed. I wanted to avoid this "cheat" but I can't see any other way to draw the whole thing tight.

ten days without a crapper

Lot of people have asked how we did it. You think DIY only applies to home renovation? Well for this do-it-yourself, the simple truth is I made good use of office facilities. Not sure why but this causes nervous laughter in some. And it's not like there aren't any functioning drains on the property.

But I gladly trade all the potty jokes and water conservation to regain the ease and comfort of my very own commode. Seen here in demure mode.

What's that beside it? Oh, that would be the new tub. Not a trick of the camera; tub is both shorter and deeper than standard.  Haven't given it the  68 gallon test yet, but if shallow soaks are any indicaton then full depth will be an immersive experience.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some business to attend to.

on the bathroom floor

what a dump

Good demo. No injuries, no unintended property damage, and didn't find much in the way of problems. Reframing tomorrow would be pretty simple, if we hadn't just agreed to pull about half the floor to sister the joists where our 68 gallon tub's about to go. And so the plumber has full access for all the new pipe we're gonna need (yeah, we're ditching the PVC). And while he's at: pull and rerun the steam line to 2nd floor.

Plus we took down the privacy palisade in the back yard. Yep, we're double-timing the job site. Tomorrow while we're decommissioning the toilet, we've arranged to have chain link installed. Everyone's very excited about extended sight lines, collateral gardening, and increased sunlight. Like the man said: good fences make good neighbors.

Shout out to Charles and Douglas for their awesome help today, and to Conor and Nina for the drop in. House feels more like a home every time we get to share it with friends.

deliverance

10 cubic yard card container: check.
White Kohler fixtures: check.
Rough valves for lavatory and tub: check.

I even scheduled an electrician to come next Monday and wire a dedicated circuit for the radiant heat mat we're going to lay under tile floor.

Estimated delivery on the custom finish faucets and trim: July 17. What could have been a disaster for our schedule has been down-graded to a mere inconvenience. Stay tuned for news on how well we manage to rig an outdoor shower.

the bathroom design

Talking to plumber the other day was an eye opener. Seems obvious now, but to hear him say he'd need the faucets to do the rough plumbing made target date for this seem suddenly much further away. We'd been a bit picky with the faucet selection and hadn't quite gotten around to actually placing an order -- for the white custom finish trim plumbing that had quickly become something of a lynch pin in our plan.

That's when I threw myself on the mercy of Catherine at Faucet.com. She'd been incredibly helpful when we placed the fixture order and had given us several suggestions regarding faucets. I found what I was looking for on Newport Brass's online catalog, but was jammed against a looming deadline and the aforementioned white finish. Then it occured to me that the plumber only needs the rough valves right now and that Catherine might be able to fill my order in sections. Sure enough -- the stocked, rough valves are on their way by express delivery and the order for custom finished trim pieces is being filed with Newport Brass. It'll be about 6 weeks before I know how well the design plan holds up to reality.

Fortunately, the toilet won't be out of commission for nearly that long.

triple threat

Here's the line-up for bathroom fixtures -- ours will all be white. Tub is a short soaker, only 4' long and almost 2' deep. Sink has a drop-in installation option, which we'll be using in conjunction with a slatted cedar vanity. I was keen to have a dual-flush toilet, but the online sales-point we used didn't carry any. Shame to see my green leanings so easily flushed down the toilet of convenience.

The terrazzo we liked at tile store were for full counters only so we switched to a 4" translucent, gray glass tile. One of the nice features of these tiles is that they don't need to be bullnosed for edge treatments. Other nice thing is that we got them at cost because they'd been special ordered and then not collected so store is eager to unload them.

start our engines

Had forgotten how much I enjoy sketching a design. We're in the middle of supply purchasing for the bathroom renovation. Fixtures are on order -- we'll post details tomorrow -- and narrowed our sights on slate tile. Sales person at our local tile shop steered us toward a porcelin tile with appearnce and texture of slate over the real thing. Spent much of remaining day mulling an optimized fit for large tiles (12"x12" and 12"x24"), which refined the design plan, particularly the dimensions of tub deck and placement of shower faucets. 

Also realized we're going to need a tile with bullnose pieces to finish external corners of tub deck. Tenative plan is for a white terrazzo with black and gray chips.

Note the floating ceiling. It'll be finished with cedar closet liners as will the wall you're looking through and a portion of the side walls. Full specturm flourescent light will wash down near and far walls and spots will highlight the adjacent walls. Oh and vanity lights on either side of mirror over lavatory. Anything worth lighting is worth over-lighting, but this is also the only fully enclosed room in the entire house.

Demo can't be too far around the corner. We've got a contingency plan for loss of toilet, but further suggestions are welcome.