The old vanity now removed--new tile on floor and for border--no grout yet.
No toilet either--note white tiles still above tub--death to white tiles.
Note pattern, which helps show the humanity of the tile arrangement--that is, it ain't perfect.
3 tile colors and styles all coming together--I hope they come together!
Tools and supplies resting on crappy linoleum in hall and all of lower level that will have to go, eventually.
Floor before I finished the adobe tile transom
That ugly hole is from the previous owner, and leads to the 6th or 7th rung of hell, I can't remember for sure.
Note the old dressing room style lights--soon to be replaced. Ok, this is the stylish working man's radio and CD player. When I start on projects I pick one great CD and listen to it over and over and over. This time around it's Dylan's new Modern Times http://www.bobdylan.com/moderntimes/home/main.html
The old window. We've ordered a new one and are waiting on delivery and installation. I've installed windows before, but I thought I'd leave this one to someone else since I'm plenty busy.
Not that pretty--lots of water damage.
What happens to particle board after years of water seepage through the old tile.
Becky and Graham were home from college for Thanksgiving and helped with one of our endless runs to the home improvement store. The big 3 (Home Depot; Lowes; Menards) will all be happy as we have frequented all of them.
After tearing out the old sheetrock here I also had to get rid of some of the water-damaged timber and put in new boards.
Ok, and I had to attach wood to concrete blocks. So, I used the Winchester hand activated tool that uses 22 cartridges to explode nails into the wall, which worked ok on some boards. Then, I also used some adhesive powder mixed with water that is supposed to be able to hold anything together.
Sean, under dad's forced labor initiative, helped out. Here he is trying to figure out where to cut the holes in the green board to fit around the bath faucets and knobs.
more tile going up above the tub.
Ok, the best is saved for last. Here is our mosaic. The frame breaks out into 2 shelves, one inspired by a river, the other inspired by the night.
Note the fish, Greek ruin, bird, stars, and sun and moon.
Our sun/moon is made in Haiti out of oil drums. We bought it recently and will actually fix it the front of our mosaic, where the sun and moon are supposed to be.
After about a month of looking around for a vanity we finally bought this one. We don't have a lot of room, and we wanted something that would go with our slightly mediteranian/mexican natual style.
the river runs through it
Ok, now we are moving forward. I don't know if it was the right decison, but I stained my wood first, just a few hours before this shot. Probably should have done this even before I attached the frame to the wall. Yes, the frame and the tiles are directly attached to the wall and can't come off without pulling them off.
Almost finished project. Going to go ahead and buff the tiles, repaint and restain the frame, but this is pretty close to the final.
Shelves are basically plywood on 2X4s. Had to cut the rounded edges with a hand-held jig saw.
Long shot of the entire project. The bottom shelf is a river, the top shelf is the night.
Having the shelves be staggered lengths worked out nicely. I'd thought about 3 shelves, but that seemed too crowded.
As Jim Morrison sang: "You know the day destroys the night, the night divides the day, try to run, try to hide, break on through to the otherside."
When you wish upon a star. Technically, three stars, the little ones were manufactured, the white one is a unique creation, an assemblage based on what the hammer blow on tile gives you. Hitting the back of a tile with a hammer gives you more triangle shapes than any other type.
Close up of our Haitain oil drum piece. We got a much better deal than these folks are offering: http://www.art-ickles.com/store/0-HAITIAN-STEEL-DRUM-ART.asp
I did the big fish (a whale?) and Becky did the little fish (reminds me of little boy, the first A-bomb--or maybe it's a fat tuna).
Nice detail of one of my fish, all from shapes the hammer created.
Worked out pretty good for our very first mosaic.
Our Greek temple, a last-minute additon when we realized that a cave painting buffalo or deer would be a bit more difficult with tile.
Probably my favorite bit of all due to its simplicity and the way that only 6 pieces, and the viewer's mind, create a pretty dynamic looking fish.
Maybe we could do this for restaurants and bars and such.
I still need to finishg painting the wall, but it's clear that the new light and mirror are going to work. 3 100 watt bulbs were a bit too bright as they are shining right in the face of anyone looking into the mirror. Went down to 60 watts and all is well.
The mirror is hung like a picture frame, so in order to make it a bit more stable I want to add some wide velcro to the bottom of the back side of the mirror.
The big job was grouting, which turned out even better than I hoped.
The side tiles were the most difficult to grout. I pretty much used my hands, clad in rubber gloves, to grout those.
Good view of the floor, side tiles, and transom at the door. The adobe-colored tiles are slightly taller than the white and blues, and, so, the only place on the floor I wanted to lay them was the transom, where a little bit extra height seemed appropriate.
I chose the alternating pattern because I thought it would be more interesting and would also hide the fact that I can't lay tiles perfectly symmetrically. I think only small tiles placed in a grid in a modernist style should strive for perfection.
We wanted a bit of a jump in color from the white to the adobe to the high gloss blue that surround the tub.
The center line looks straight.
Excellent tile work around the vortex to potty land.
Resalvaged the American Standard toilet, cleaned up nicely. New toilet seat.
The toilet seat locks in and unlocks for quick removal and cleaning.
In order to seat the vanity against the wall I had to cut out the lower back in the shape of our spanish style tile.
Vanity was attached to the wall with screws and Hard as Nails glue.
The old water pipe was cleaned with steel wool and polished up, good as new.
Vanity with cutout flush up against the wall.
Vanity before seating the top, also seated with Hard as Nails.
backsplash tiles before grouting.
I went with a staggered pattern to avoid the regularity of stacking two rows on top of each other.
Ceiling vent--looks very nice and heavy, but it's just plastic.
Toilet, fully operational.
Wall mosaic in need of second stain coat on the frame. Notice that we decided to move the oil drum art to it's own location and went with a funky sun/moon kinda abstract depiction for the mosaic. That's how the artist says that he isn't skilled enough, or have the tiles for, a very skillful treatment of a half Moon and half Sun.
We ended up changing this around.
Vanity top installed.
Since the old bath faucet valves were leaking I had to go to Ace Hardware, where Jack Harrington helped me find the exact model. There are dozens of different faucet valves to identify.
The old bathtub faucet backstop, the one on the left before polishing with steel wool.
New shower head, with 7 adjustments!
We went a long time trying to find a rug. For the moment, this will have to do. Note the shower curtain and new towels, and toilet paper holder.
Becky's design style. Those are rose stones from Oklahoma, a gift to Becky Rose Baird.
Becky's favorite Picasso picture back on the wall.
New blue soap holder, toothbrush holder, and tea candle holder.
New darker cherry stain for the mosaic, return of the moon to replace the Haitian drum of sun and moon. Becky felt that we needed a full moon to offset the fact that the sun took over our mosaic and we didn't do a half moon, half sun. Kharma restored.
The moon, the stars, the mirror, and fire.
just after the window has been installed by the window folks.
I decided to add a small lip or ledge to the window, width of my blue tiles.
I was trying to maximize the amount of water-proof tile area since the window is in the shower. The window frame is vinyl, but I still wanted to get as much tile and grout up as possible.
Of course the blue tiles tie-in with the same blue tiles that frame the shower and the faucet and shower head.
Note the thin strip of white/blue ceramic tile on the side, which then goes flush to the vinyl window frame.
