Thursday, February 28, 2013

Shiny and New

These beautiful fixtures... are shiny and new. I want to rub them like a genie lamp.


The tub fixtures were actually pretty easy. Our tub came with a regular stopper, but we purchased a toe-touch stopper instead. It was cheap and makes life easy, so why not? The wall was already prepped for fixtures with the cuts in the tile and pipes sticking out. Tim just had to screw these new fixtures in place and caulk around it.




Much like our downstairs bathroom, we purchased a Delta replacement kit for the hot/cold knob (does that have a name? On/off valve? I forget; you get the point). This was pretty easy for me to install since I've done it once before!



Ultimately, we opted for the hanging shower caddy. It just corrals everything so that you don't have products sitting on your bathroom ledge. The corner tension rods are bad too because they attract mold. If this gets rusty, we just recycle it and buy a new one.

This new shower head is very nice. I love it. In hindsight, we should have put in a longer arm for the shower head. This is the pipe that extends from the wall and it comes in varying lengths. This would have extended the water further from the wall. It's not overly problematic since we fit under it just fine, but it would be nicer to be a little further from the wall than we currently are. It's very easy to change, we just keep forgetting when we're at the home improvement store. We'll replace it with a longer one eventually. 


Here's a close up shot of our finishes including toilet paper holder, wainscoting and chair rail, wall color, tile, and trim tile. A lot of details in one little snapshot! I love the way it turned out. The color choices are warm and earthy, yet bright and modern.




Sorry this picture is overexposed, but it does show you the toilet paper holder. We very seriously considered installing this on the side of the vanity so that it would be next to the toilet. I was thinking about the little arms that will be reaching for it in the future. It's a bit of a stretch for child-sized arms to reach across the bathroom for toilet paper. Ultimately, we opted for the wall for 3 reasons 1) those children will grow and have longer arms, so by the time they are 6-7 this won't be an issue anyway 2) it was a little too close to the toilet when it was on the side of the vanity 3) I was so worried that we would ruin our $500 vanity by drilling holes in the side.

We ended up drilling through the wainscoting to hang it. We felt like putting it above the wainscoting was just way too high. We put it snug against the tile because the towels (later in this post) would have obstructed the holder if we put it over further. Plus, it seems well placed now. We extended the shower tile by at least 6 inches when we retiled the bathroom, so there's never a worry that the toilet paper will get wet with the current placement (hasn't happened so far and we've been using this since May).



Of course we bought luxurious new hand towels. I didn't replace all of the shower towels because let's face it, I'm cheap! Do you know how much towels cost? We did replace the downstairs towels since they were exposed on our over the toilet organizer. I'm still recovering from that expense. haha!


Here's Tim hanging our towel hooks. It was really sad to drill into our pretty walls, but it was necessary and looked great when it was complete.


Initially, Tim purchased two of these. We thought that we might hand towels on one and my robe on the other. When we held both on the wall, it ate up too much space visually, so we opted for one. Instead, we just installed a removable 3M hook (like the one shown in the last photo) on the back of the bathroom door for my robe. These hooks do hold our shower towels though conveniently next to the shower, duh!

Sadly I don't have any pictures of Tim hanging the curved shower curtain. He had to drill into the tile to hang the curved rod. A straight rod could have been supported by tension, but when you go with the hotel style curved rod, you're faced with drilling into the wall or tile. I think we were both scared so we didn't take any pictures. He had to buy two diamond drill bits to finally make it through the tile. They were small holes but the ceramic tile is pretty mighty! Luckily it turned out great. The brackets for the rod cover the holes of course so you can't tell. We hung our shower curtain higher than normal too. The curved rod plus the extra height make for a very spacious shower. I don't think you realize it looking at the area until you're inside the shower. Then it feels pretty vast and open.






These are just 3M hooks that we hung in the shower. I couldn't stand the thought of drilling into the tile any more than we had to. We really needed a solution for bathing suits since we have a pool and always have wet suits lying around. We always hung them inside the shower before, but we had a towel bar there previously. Unfortunately, the steam caused the 3M hooks to fall. I did purchase suction hooks that worked okay though. If you have a better, non-drilling solution that doesn't involve suction hooks (I bought the power suction kind) or 3M hooks, please let me know.



2 comments:

  1. Does your tile go all the way up to the ceiling in the shower part? I think I can see that there is wall there? I have a command hook on the wall portion of my shower where I actually hang my loofah in the shower portion (there just isn't anywhere else for it to go) and it sticks just fine, but won't stick to the tile due to steam). You could try that? Hanging it higher? Love all the fixtures though! Looks great!

    ReplyDelete
  2. No, the tile stops about 12-18 inches from the ceiling. When my mom renovated her bathroom, she put floor to ceiling tile up. That's a good idea to put the command hook on the wall. I think we'll try that (or maybe even installing a hook if the 3M hook fails in the wall since that's pretty easy to repair with spackle and paint). Thanks for the idea Dana!

    ReplyDelete