Covering the floor in villaboard!
And before we coated all of the walls (and new timber framing) in villaboard, we had to sort out the plumbing and electrical connections that we wanted concealed behind the walls.
It's amazing how long it takes just to decide at exactly what latitude and longitude a light fitting should go at, so multiply that by three for this room, and then add two power points and a light switch, and we've got a reasonably complicated electrical plan. We definitely had to call in the professionals for this part of the process (fortunately we used a different electrician than the one that has helped oh so much with getting our power reconnected, so we were very impressed with the work). Whew!
A light point coming off the previous door post
A power point a little further down.
And then it was time for the plumbing plans. Our biggest problem here was deciding exactly what plumbing fittings we needed where. See the type of fitting you choose to have has an enormous impact on what actual plumbing is required. Meanwhile we'd been thinking we didn't have to make too many hardware decisions yet.
So time to fast-track tap shopping! Originally we were thinking of having a wall-mounted spout and taps above the vanity sink (on top of our fancy schmancy vanity unit), and a fairly standard tap, spout, shower-head arrangement for the bath/shower. But then we hit a snag.
I couldn't find any tap/spouts that I really loved! They were either really modern, or really boring! And I had to make a decision, because the entire plumbing plan relied on me saying whether I wanted an all-in-one spout and mixer, or whether I wanted a separate spout and two taps, etc etc etc.
And then I found this.
And I was in love. But guess what? They usually retail at over $1,000. Ouch.And then we realised that when we bought our second hand claw foot bath, the seller actually threw in the existing 'telephone' bath tap set. You should have seen our faces. We immediately dashed out of the house and straight to the little junk pile next to the shed where we'd stacked a whole bunch of miscellaneous items that we weren't planning on using again. And it was there!
The poor darling had been sitting out in the elements for months, but here she is:
The ceramic handle is cracked and an unfortunate shade of pink, the pewter faucet bit needs a proper shine, and the hose and shower head are a little dated and also in need of shine, but considering it was F.R.E.E. we're certainly willing to work with it! We even asked a plumbing store and they said we could get a brand new hose and shower head attachment for $170. Not a bad option, although we might see what we can do with this one first.
Allie's pretty pleased with the idea.
Tom is certainly enjoying the whole 'telephone' reference.
He's supposed to be simply gesturing with his hands while on the phone in the bath here, apologies that this isn't obvious. I wasn't the photographer.
He enjoyed that so much he decided to make a real phone call.
Once we'd decided what spout we were using for the bath and shower, Tom could work out the placement of the plumbing. Fortunately, the fact that the spout itself is separate from the taps means we could buy a pre-welded bath plumbing set, which makes things a LOT easier. Tom drilled a few holes in the frame he'd built to fit it through, and it's now nice and snug.
Here's Tom demonstrating how the shower head will actually work (i.e. not as a telephone handset).
The taps that came with the 'telephone' section were not particularly impressive.
And then Tom found these on a trip to Bunnings:
Done! They were $80, which is not exactly cheap cheap, but it appears to be hard to find lever-handled taps (as opposed to the full cross-handled ones like the old ones we already have) at a price under $100. These looked like an excellent option.
For the vanity, we decided that instead of having a spout and taps coming off the wall (which would have required plumbing inside the wall instead of simply from within the vanity), we would have a traditional-looking kind of mixer. Something ike this one, that will go with the traditional look of our bath tap.
Here's the trial run of the old telephone bath spout with the new Bunnings taps beside it, above the bath. Looks good, huh?
So we're very very very happy that we've managed to get ourselves a bath and shower set plus taps for a big...fat...zero...dollars that will actually match the look of the claw foot bath and be pretty and not too modern. Hooray!
Much more to come of course! This bathroom is a big project!
Awesome post about your experience yesterday where you were caught up. thanks for sharing!
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