Day 11: Bathroom Remodel

I always am amazed at the dozens of details that need to be coordinated to put a room together.  We took another step today down the trail to a finished bathroom.

Rick does not know how to take a day off, so he was dressed in work clothes and in the garage mixing mud for the walls before I even had my teeth brushed!  Rather than using the pre-mixed buckets of mud for the walls, he decided to try the powered variety that we just mix with water.  Since we already had the big mixer that attaches to his drill from a previous job, this was worth a try. He felt that by mixing the mud himself, he got a much more spreadable result, and I think that the finished product looks better too.  Perhaps we will not have to do quite so much sanding with this mudding job.

A polka-dotted wall means that we have progress!

The corner by the two doors is always a challenge.

After he had the first coat of mud on the walls, Rick took time to stuff insulation in the dug out portion of the exterior wall that used to house the toilet paper holder.  The new holder will be mounted to the wall, so we have no need for the recess in the structure.  Once the hole was filled with insulation, Rick added boards in it to provide a backing onto which we can mount the new vertical toilet paper holder.  We have vertical holders in our house in the north, and we love them.  They have no parts to take out, nothing to roll across the wall, and the actual toilet paper can be put on the holder by simply dropping it onto the vertical post.  We have one in the master bathroom here, and I would never go back to the old-fashioned horizontal holder.

A board covers the alcove that used to house the
toilet paper holder.

A vertical toilet paper holder means I just
need to drop a new roll on when the old one
is gone.

As long as Rick was working with insulation, he also took the time to replace all of the insulation that fell from the ceiling when we removed the soffit.  We had saved five bags of insulation which I handed up to him as he stood on the ladder up to the attic.  I don't know how much more R-factor the replaced insulation will give to the house; I am just glad that I do not have to walk around the bags in the garage anymore.

After lunch we took a trip to Palm Harbor to visit a kitchen and design center.  They actually sell the Kohler Choreograph solid surface bathtub walls, and the woman I talked to said that they had samples.  We learned that we do still need to put hardi-board behind the walls, but they have a unique corner system which is waterproof and shows no visible signs of caulking.

The system is impressive.  We also learned that Kohler recommends that three men install their product since the walls are so heavy.  I like the system because the walls are very sturdy, but they still are in one piece, so they have no grout lines to scrub or caulk lines to mold.

Our bathtub is white, and we want to stay with white walls also.  We decided to get a quote for a wall with a gently wavy structure called Cord.  Since the walls are so heavy, we also will get a quote for installation.

Will the price be a heart-stopper?  Perhaps.  We did not intend to spend this much on bath tub walls, but we want something that is waterproof, easy to clean, and durable.  I guess if we want quality, we have to be willing to pay for it.