Avoiding the big sleep

Wow, almost two years since the last post. I'll try to make sure that doesn't happen again so this blog doesn't die.

It's been a good year and I'm going to need to start somewhere so I'll finish off the last post to close the loop.

We chose Marmoleum as the floor material as it is a natural product and readily available in our neighbourhood for a reasonable price. It is reasonably easy to work with (we did the install ourselves) and is very durable. Tearing up the old floor tile wasn't too bad and we put another layer of 1/4" plywood down to level the floor and compensate for the lower profile of the new flooring. We luckily could complete the entire bathroom in one sheet with a hole cut out for the toilet pumbing and so should not have any issues with waterproofing. The sink did come from Ikea as I'm a splashy shaver and wanted the wide basin. The tap was a great find on a discounted closeout model from Canadian Tire that we're very pleased with. The city of Toronto subsidized almost the entire purchase price of the low volume toilet we installed. The wall tile we left in place and painted white with a dark chocolate (Mink) stripe circling the room. The Melamine re-inforced paint seems to be holding up well one year later with only a couple chips that do not detract from the overall effect. I am pleasantly surprised with the effect produced by this paint on the embossed tiles--subtle texture like a pressed tin roof. Making up for the low flow toilet is the luxury item: a rain shower head. It's enormous and can produce a wide range of output, from a high efficiency massage to the full flow gentle rain. I admit that it spends most of the time on this setting. New value cores everywhere to stop any leaks (required for the sink re-plumbing).

The item that required the most research is the under sink heater. I don't like waiting for hot water as it is not very luxurious and very wasteful of both water and energy. Installing a 2 gallon hot water tank at the point of use reduces the wait for hot water to about a second and reduces the lost heat energy and wasted water flow immensely. It was a pretty specific scenario that made this work. If this was not a frequently used sink it would make less sense as you need to keep this tank warm and it's electric heat. If it there were higher volume requirements then this couldn't keep up. Both of these issues are solveable by larger, optionally gas powered units and even better by intant on heaters but they were more expensive than required for this installation. The one we chose also came from Canadian Tire and was somewhere around $200. This single item is probably the best part about the new bathroom.

More posts to come.