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.

A Bit of Comparison

Sometimes when you get in the middle of a project its easy to forget the reason why you decided to tackle it in the first place. Thats why it's important to always document the before.

It's not hard to run out of steam sometimes doing renovation especially when things seem to always end up being more expensive than you had planned for.

Taking a step back and looking at the transformation is sometimes needed in case your focus seems to be wandering a bit.

Bath Update

Before RedGard

All of the backerboard and sheetrock is installed and it is time to waterproof the surround. The stuff called RedGard is what is available near me so I used it. It is really noxious.

It rolls on with a regular roller but its the consistency of, say, jelly. It's pretty thick. It looks like Pepto Bismol when you apply it and after it dries it turns red.

The hardest part was getting the old caulk off of the tub and it still isn't completely clean. Mineral spirits doesn't work, caulk remover doesn't work, WD-40 doesn't work. Really the only thing that takes it off is a scraper.

With the World Cup going on I haven't made very good progress on this project. It should have been done by now.

After RedGard

Shower Valve

Kohler Rite Temp pressure balancing valve rough-in for the new shower. Since this valve is pressure balanced it won't scald anyone if a toilet is flushed while someone is in the shower. So when it senses a drop in pressure from the cold water it will balance the hot side to match the cold and therefore the water temperature doesn't change.

The dual knobs for hot and cold are out and now we are in the 21st century with just the single handle valve. It came from the factory pre-set to 105 degrees. I dialed it up slightly to 110.

$100 (valve only, trim is extra)

Shower stall and flooring

Most of the backerboard for the shower is up. Wonderboard is the stuff Home Depot sells. There are other brands as well.

The shower valve is on it's way. I need to plumb it in before I can finish installing all of the backerboard.

I had not used it before but it's fairly easy to work with alone since it's only 5' x 3' sheets. To cut it you simply score it like drywall.

There are screws made specifically for it and you don't have to worry about pops the way you would for drywall. I had to put a sheet of drywall behind the board on the back wall (back of tub) because there was a gap that needed to be filled in so that the rockboard would be over the tub flange.

The side against the wall was okay and I only needed to mount the board without any sheetrock. The only difference between the two is that the backer board needs more screws so the spacing is closer together than sheetrock. The joints get taped and mudded with mortar. After that there is a waterproofing product that is painted on over the board. After that the tile is set.

Cement backer board in place

The floor is done with the same product but the area gets covered with mortar first then screwed to the subfloor. The mfg recommended 1/4" for the floor and 7/16" for the walls. It's a small bath and two sheets covered the floor. The walls will require five sheets. It's around eleven dollars per sheet so not too expensive.

The amount of mortar that was on the original floor was much thicker than the new material and that leaves the toilet flange sitting too high. That will need to be adjusted lower soon. It turns out that the pipe is what's known as a lead bend. In other words, the pipe through the floor down to the cast iron is lead. It is "wiped" with lead solder to the brass toilet ring. I'm not looking forward to installing a new ring. Not too many people know how to work with lead anymore but I did find one guy on Youtube who has a video on it.

Bare sub-floor

The old subfloor was in fairly decent shape so the original tile job was very good keeping the floor pretty much dry for the last forty years! These new products haven't even been around that long to find out if they hold up that long hopefully this floor and shower stall will hold up for the next twenty years.