Bamboo Ceiling

Underlayment on ceiling

The old ceiling in the bathroom was stippled with a "crow's foot" pattern which looked like crap.

Without tearing out the ceiling, which I did not want to do, the only obvious choice was to cover it up. It's only 40 square feet so it isn't that big of a job so we decided to use bamboo flooring.

The first step is to install an underlayment over the stippled ceiling first to level it out. This is just a thin foam pad that is stapled in place. Cheap and simple fix.

The bamboo flooring is tongue and groove so it goes together fairly easy. The bamboo is pretty forgiving and not hard to work.

It was kind of an afterthought because it would have been easier to install it first, but it worked out okay and it looks very cool!

Grilles

The grilles for the vents in the floor finally arrived this week.

It took a long time to find a mfg. that could accommodate us. After a very long search I found Advanced Arch Grilles online and they have a terrific product.

It might not seem like much but having the grilles finally is huge.

For over a year I've had just store bought wooden grilles laying over the holes where the supply and returns are at just to keep stuff from falling down into them.  The problem with grilles is that they are generally sized to just a few standard sizes. The openings in the floor were not standard at all lengthwise. The width was.

Both of the returns are 37" long. It's a detail that most people won't even notice but what you will notice is a cheap looking faux wood grill lying on top of the floor. There are some ornamental grilles out there that are cheap as well that are slightly more appealing however they only come in standard sizes.

Advanced Arch Grilles were easy to work with. The online order was followed up with a callback soon afterward. With forty percent down payment they start the order. Their cad department sent me a drawing of the grilles and I was able to review and sign off on it before it went to the fab shop. They turned around the grilles in about three weeks.

Custom grilles - $575.

Bath Fixtures

Allmodern.com is a cool site that has tons of manufacturers from Europe that might not ordinarily come to mind when searching for fixtures. They typically offer free shipping on most of their items.

New wall mounted sink by Cermica Tecla about $300.

New one piece TOTO water closet from Noland, $550. Super quiet!



Noland is a showroom near spaghetti junction that carries a lot of nice fixtures for bathrooms. They carry lots of high end fixtures and there is rarely even anybody in there looking around. It's off the beaten path.

The wall mounted sink was fairly easy to install. The Hansgrohe faucet came with the pop up drain and tail piece, which is important because a lot of manufacturers don't include them. The instructions were pretty clear and not hard to follow. It took about 30 minutes to connect the tailpiece and the pop up drain.

Hansgrohe faucet $150.