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Jeph got the heater cover on (a chore) just in time for cold weather to kick in. It’s nice to have a little heat in a consistently cold room (no one likes a cold bathroom.)

The Vermont green slate floors are nice and subtle and go well with the earth tones of the tumbled stone shower tiles and the gray-blue of the walls. The floor guys ended up doing all the shower tiling, too, which was great because it looked like a lot of measuring and cutting. We had a bunch of extra tiles, though, so Jeph put them along the wall under the window and I grouted them. That’s some messy work. My treat for digging out pounds of soggy rock wool from around the old tub (cringing with every grab at the expectation of feeling a dead varmint) was a jacuzzi tub. Rich installed everything for us and the electricians (for a couple hundred extra) put in power for the motor and the heater. That first bath, after 4 weeks of wearing the same grubby paint-stained jeans, sweatshirt, and multiple other layers and doing dirty, tiring work all day every day, was pure heaven. It was the only method of getting clean (much to 6′3” Jeph’s dismay) for about a week, while we cleaned multiple layers of grout film, then sealed the grout and let that set, and caulked the edges and let that cure (the other shower still needed covers over the old fixture holes.)

Sister Sue took the lead on chiseling out all the old tile and we hauled it out to the junk pile (unfortunately the building salvage places don’t take used tile because the dried thinset/mortar on the back makes it tricky to re-use.) The sink fixture dripped and there’s no real way to replace a 50 year old faucet, so, we got a new sink/cabinet/fixture. Nice toilets are insanely expensive. We shopped around and found a total piece of vanishing Americana in Circle Supply, a plumbing supply shop off the beaten path in Watertown; full of real characters who were very helpful. They mostly sell to the trade but were happy for our business and only sell the best, which in the case of toilets is apparently Toto (Japanese.) We got the low back model with the silent self-closing seat/lid; sharp, as far as toilets go.

Pros:
Built-in shelves. Window in shower area.

Cons:
Major water damage to walls. Shower tiles loose from water damage (and ugly.) Only two high east windows so no light at all and not much of a view. Insanely bright and shiny red and orange vinyl floor tiles. Owl inside toilet lid (and tracks on outside) are adorable but toilet has got to go.

The scope for this is to remove the walls around the tub, take the tub out, find where the water is coming in and put an end to that, then build it all back.