The Bathroom

Bathroom, you say? Thought you were doing a kitchen remodel?

Yes, but as tends to happen in remodel, we had a bit of project creep and now we are extending some fixes into the bathroom.  We had always intended to replace all our galvanized piping in the basement as part of this remodel. Well, when the plumber was looking at the piping into the first floor shower/tub from the basement, we noticed a slow dripping from up above.....we only hadn't noticed it before because it happened to be dripping directly into our utility sink. A closer look at the shower/tub fixtures revealed a leak and an old part that needed to be replaced - but because of the age of our house and plumbing, we would not be able to replace it with a similar part and would have to bring it up to code.

Honestly, I don't remember exactly the whats & whys of what we had to do - just that we had to select a new tub/shower fixture AND figure out a way to cover the old fixture openings in the (nearly 80 yo) tile.

The PLAN: get an inexpensive fixture, as we don't use this tub and shower heavily, and do the simplest tile repair possible.

For the tile, we originally were just going to make a large black rectangle around the fixture holes, but the tile guy says the less the amount of old, fragile tile we remove or disturb, the better. Therefore, instead of a large rectangle, we're going to try 4 smaller decorative black diamonds to cover the holes. 3x3s would be best - but they are hard to find. In a stroke of luck (and generosity) our salesperson at Kate-lo tile, offered up some samples of some grey 3x3s that was discontinued for free. Then we asked about using 2x2, 4 at a time for a diamond shape instead, and again, she just handed over some samples of the glossy black porcelain tiles to cover all 4 holes - for free!

Still waiting to hear back from our project manager if the increased size is ok - but you can't beat the price!