Bathroom done - finally

It’s a bright sunny day here in Vegas. On Monday we had a record high for that date, a whole 23c (74f), and it’s been up around there all week. At night the temp drops down to around 6c (42f) but the weather report for the next week shows sunshine every day. It’s why I’m here, but I still like the summer highs better. Sorry about you guys back in the next storm path.

We finally finished our bathroom remodel, just in time for our holiday guests. This all started because of rust in the water: when our granddaughter came she takes baths, and in filling the tub the water was rusty for the first few seconds. In order to look at the pipes I had to take off some tiles to get into the wall, this is the original tiles put up when the house was built in the ‘70s.

I had installed a small plastic shower stall when we first moved in, there was only a shower head over the tub, and my mother couldn’t lift her legs up to get into the tub so a walk in shower was a requirement. The original bath redo was only supposed to be new tile around the bath, but then in a phone conversation my wife had with our daughter she suggested we dump the plain white shower and tile it all. Well, lots of work later:


The area around the tub is what was supposed to be done. The only thing original left in here now is the tub; it’s an old cast iron one, and still looks fine so it’s still here. For a break B thought we should put some decorations, so we went with the small colored stripes around eye level, and also put them on the shower floor. The field tiles were 24” x 24”, left that size on the floor but cut in half to 12” x 24” and put on the walls vertically. That was a lot of work, especially with the rental saws not cutting nice straight lines. Oh well, next time we buy the right size (they weren’t available for this tile, which B really liked)


Yup, I figured out how to put in those niches to hold shampoo and stuff; another pain to do. We were going to leave in the sink cabinet, and when starting on the floor B asked if I had enough extra tile to go under the cabinet if we ever tore it out and went with a hanging one. Well, that lead to ‘might as well do that now too’ and so a cabinet was ordered, another wall torn out to put in supports for the hanging cabinet, and a fancy sink and faucet also on the order list. That all showed up and after the floor went in was installed. We finally found a countertop that B liked, which showed up just before Christmas, so here is the end result on that side.


It’s a small bath, just 2m wide by about 5m long (6’ x 16’), fairly normal for a ‘60s bathroom. New energy efficient fluorescent spots over the shower and tub, and a fancy fixture over the sink to light it all up, and there we are. Next project will probably be the kitchen. But that will come after I recover from the no job for a year salary hit, so don’t hold your breath.