The Manity and Big Blue

As you all know, we’ve had the toilet and most fixtures in the shop bathroom since January. Sam installed the faucets and finished caulking around the tub and shower surround, so it was ready for use. We just needed a shower curtain. I spent hours searching for a manly shower curtain. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Maybe a simple dark green pattern? … And then I saw this!

When did Buster sneak out to go model with a trident? Is that Mt. Hood at the bottom?

I must also mention that I’ve been enjoying the urinal almost as much as Sam. Ladies, you don’t have to bend over to clean it, the toilet seat NEVER gets left up, and the toilet seat stays sparkling clean.

Sticking with the cat theme, I had to buy these hand towels. How could I not!

We got a light for Sam’s manity. We placed it at eye level, so the lighting will be ideal for getting things out of our eyes when we forget to wear safety glasses.

Equipped with a shower curtain and better lighting, we moved some toiletries over and started showering at the shop! (I won’t show a picture of that.) The only unfinished items in the shop bath are baseboards and door trim.

The master bathroom is coming along too. That bathroom design began over two years ago. Since the drain location on every single bathtub is slightly different, we purchased the bathtubs before we poured concrete to ensure the plumbing under the concrete would fit our specific tubs. Sam modeled bathtubs for me at Home Depot until we found one that was appropriately sized for an adult.

Shortly after we had a foundation, Sam designed the above-ground plumbing and I had to provide the master bathroom layout. The main design constraints were a steel column in the room, a window, and Sam’s request to have minimal plumbing on the exterior wall. These ended up being a lot of requests. I decided the steel column wasn’t adding anything, so we hid it inside a wall and added some wood to support plumbing lines for the shower.

I designed the bathroom around a 72″ double sink vanity. In fear of not being able to get the big blue vanity of my dreams later, we went ahead and ordered it. Luckily the crane was running by the time Big Blue arrived, so we were able to lift it onto dollies.

It was quite a large box to be storing when we weren’t even done framing the building, but it provided insurance for putting the outlets and sconce boxes in the right locations.

Finally the day came when I got to unpack Big Blue. We had never fully unpacked it, so it was a nice surprise to discover the countertop was real marble! Two sinks are great by the way. Sam and I struggle to share one sink now.

Sam helped me mount the sconces and mirrors over the vanity. Buster helped calculate where to put the drywall anchors for the mirrors, but he kept getting distracted by these words of wisdom on the box…

Everything lined up perfectly! Look at all those outlets! Gone are the days of unplugging my toothbrush when I dry my hair.

Sam set the bathtub with plaster, and we hired someone to tile the wall. I chose a porcelain tile for easy maintance. Carlos, our tile guy, used Wedi backboard which is a little lighter than cement board. It’s some sort of waterproof foam material with a crumbly cement coating, so it still makes a mess when you cut it.

Then he prepped the board and started tiling.

I found a countertop fabricator to cut some shower shelves with leftover quartz scraps.

I thought about closing off the toilet zone with walls and a door; however, the window was by the toilet and I wanted to maximize the amount of natural light in the bathroom. So, we built a pony wall as a partition and set a frosted glass panel on it for a little privacy.

Ordering the glass turned into a big saga due to our incompetent local glass store. They eventually produced a glass panel which was cut a little short on both sides. Steve was in town to help install it. Buster supervised, of course.

We had to make our own shower curtain rod because the little fitting for the glass was too small to fit a standard curtain rod. A local machine shop cut us a nice deal on brushed stainless tube.

I couldn’t help myself and ordered another cat-themed shower curtain, only this one is a more sophisticated jaguar pattern. I need to add some jungle plants and colorful artwork to the room.

Next, Sam installed the Kholer “Highline”. The throne was the only fixture with plumbing on an exterior wall. (I would have liked to center the window over the toilet, but the window couldn’t budge an inch due to the exterior siding layout. It will look better once it’s finished and trimmed.) The toilet was of course outfitted with a bidet from Amazon. This one has a sleek control knob and a self-cleaning feature.

If you don’t already have a bidet, I highly recommend one. It will change your life. As our friend Mike Rooks once told us, “not using a bidet is like trying to get peanut butter out of a shag carpet with a paper towel.” Plus, you won’t have to stress during the next toilet paper shortage. Now both of our toilets are equipped with a bidet.

My last shout-out is to the Philips “Whisper Fan”, which we also put in both bathrooms. It’s as quiet as advertised, and it works. You can install it with a switch or have it turn on automatically when it senses motion or moisture.

The wall concealing the steel column doesn’t even look too funky. You’d never know.

We still need to do all the trim in the master bath and finish decorating but it’s pretty luxurious already. We don’t have to don shoes and a headlamp to walk to the shop bath in the middle of the night.