Good for you going with what makes you smile. My bathroom remodel begins tomorrow morning. I hope that I can maintain a sense of humor equal to just half of yours. Your posts are so entertaining that I think we will all be selfishly sorry when your project is over. However, for your sake I hope that it goes quickly. Please post frequently!

Sally,

I'm enjoying your posts. Tell you what though, to keep a bit of flow to the story, it might help to keep all of your future posts in one thread instead of starting a new thread for each post.

Keep em coming.

Wonderbread or a basic white bread works well for stopping water when soldering. It's still a good idea to remove the aerator on the faucet then run the water for a few minutes when the plumbing is turned back on. It helps flush out any debris instead of the debris clogging the aerator. Not just bread, but excess solder, etc, can gum things up.

Day 7 -(4&5 being weekend hiatus)
"Tasteful friend" pumped herself with antihistamines to brave the country air & 4 legged farmhouse occupants to come out and offer design assistance. She agreed with my makes-me-smile tile and proceeded to give me good advice on how to arrange tile/accent tiles and painted wall. I don't have a very good eye for that so was willing and grateful to accept her suggestions. We then looked to handyman Dave to make sure he was technically comfortable with the suggestions. Yup, so design decisions are made. I still don't see why I would have to pay $27/sq ft for an indifferent tile for the shower floor so I am going to tiptoe to Lowes to see if they have any porcelain neutral 2x2's to go with the fancy wall tile. The more I look at the accent tile, the more pleased I am.
The tub is now anchored to the floor, and backer board and gyprock is going up on their respective walls. Faucets etc arrive tomorrow.

Sigh. The faucets were supposed to arrive today...but didn't. Like the watched pot not boiling, checking Fedex on line every 10 minutes does not make the truck appear.
Handyman Dave installed the sub flooring today. The way that room is sucking in the raw materials, I am beginning to wonder if Dave isn't an illusionist in his spare time. How can so much stuff go into one small room???? Then again it took 3 trips to the dump to get rid of the tear down... so I suppose the physics works. I am starting to whimper when I check the credit card on line. Toilet bowl, tank, sink, metal beading, bags of thinset, are sprawled in the hallway, thermasol parts spread out on the bed in the spare bedroom, specification sheets piled on the ironing board, and 2x4's, backer board, plywood and Kerdi bits piled in the garage. DH returns on Thursday. Oh dear.

Day 9 - Whoooohoooo plumbing Christmas! All the faucet bits and pieces arrived (well almost all - missing is the bit between the shower head and the plumbing ). Boxes for the shower are piled on the bed with the steam shower stuff, sink faucets & guts in one corner; tub spout, faucet, handles, handshower and corresponding guts in another. I assume there is a more technical term for rough-in valves and corresponding bits and pieces, but guts works for me. There will hardly be room for me in the shower, what with thermostatic valve, volume valve, handshower valve, diverter valve steam shower do-daddies and controls. Who knew you had to be a teckkie to get wet. The porcelain handles do like nice - I am so glad I took the time to track them down (American Standard Hampton with porcelain) I guess they are to much yesterday's look to be readily available, but they sure suit the old farmhouse.
The accent tile also arrived and it looks beauuuutiful. The mosaic bits are 1" instead of the 1/2 inch in the sample I had, but the colours are the same and actually I like the bigger format. I will be able to enjoy them without putting on my glasses.
Picked out an oval Kohler mirrored medicine cabinet (designer friend said that shape would look better with the curves of the sink) and trotted over to the vanity lights. I saw something that echoed porcelain and chrome. I picked out the fussiest looking sales person I could find (oh the joys of shopping at Lowes where the sales personnel are plentiful as well as knowledgable) and asked if they thought the light from that set would angle properly on that cabinet, and if the two would go together, as I really cannot properly visualize how things go together until they are actually installed by which time it is too late. After some measuring and thoughtful examination, they pronounced my choices compatible and off I went, smoking credit card in hand. Handyman Dave, meanwhile, with much sawing and hammering, was progressing with cement board and drywall - in the appropriate places of course. His eyes bugged when he saw the number of boxes I hauled in. "Keep the instructions in the right box" was his only comment, but I think his sympathy for my DH is growing. After this job he will be ready for the big time .. or the looney bin.
On to the main tile!!! Charge!!!! (in more ways than one)
Sally

Ha, ha... I remember "Plumbing Christmas"!! Mine actually WAS just a week or so before Christmas, and it was sooooo exciting. Were yours packaged just beautifully? I had Kohler and Jado parts and each box looked like it had been designed by someone who wished they were working for Apple's packaging department.... very elegant and pretty. The gigantic stack of them looked very impressive, and if you sliced through the thick silver metallic seal on a box and peeked inside, you saw shiny, immaculate "bathroom jewelry". Very exciting!

I cannot believe how quick this is going for you. Cannot wait to see pics!

Did you find some 2x2s at Lowes? You can DEFINITELY find them for less than $22/sf!! Sheesh, just plain neutral glazed ceramic 2x2s???

I may have done something foolish...or shrewd - time will tell. I realized to my horror that I had priced the bathroom tile 12x24 by the each instead of by the square foot, so suddenly the potential tile expenditure was enough to cause every horse in the barn to choke. On to the internet. I found porcelain tile that looked very similar, and indeed had the same colour name - travertino romano walnut - which I suspect is a specific colour for actual travertine. What the heck, if I were moving into a house would I be obsessing about the exact shade of tile on the wall???? I think not. The basics are to get water when you turn a tap, and get rid of water when you push the flush, everything else .... Besides this tile also had matching 3x3 mosaics for the shower floor so I do not have to chase all over to get "almost matching" mosaic. Furthermore I still have my jewel of an accent tile. Given enough time I can justify most of my actions. I telephoned the fellow at Value Flooring who assured me I would get rapid delivery, so I did the deed. Other than the slight hitch that the wall tiles were 18x18 (I detected a slight tic in Handyman Dave's face when I told him, but he didn't quit on the spot.) things are progressing. Tile should arrive Monday or Tuesday. Even with that 40% saving the bank account is still draining with a thunderous whoosh, but the shower door is the only major hardware expenditure left (she said with unfounded optimism).
I just hope that the UPS office that accepts parcels for us cross border shoppers won't howl when 800 pounds of tile arrive.
Handyman Dave has a dentist appointment so he may or may not come today. It is starting to snow so I had better head out to pick up DH.

Day 13
Handyman Dave devoted his Saturday to the project, and plumbing lines are being soldered into place. First tiny hiccup - the wrong receptacle was sent with the steam generator, and no one noticed before it was wired into place. Profuse apologies from the supplier, and a replacement will be sent out Monday. HD (as opposed to DH) was on his hands and knees puffing into a pipe like a cross eyed bagpipe novice while across the bathroom another protruding pipe spouted like a beluga whale. Mongoct was right of course - we should have used white bread instead of whole wheat to plug the pipe, as it hadn't quite all dissolved. HD armed me with some piece so I could go to the Home Hardware and ask for 4 "thingies like this". Soldering continued.
DH ( who is beginning to regret returning home when he did) flinched as he wiped the plaster dust off his computer, but managed not to say anything. He did, however, query what "is that honking great thing at the bottom of my end of the clothes closet???" Well, it was the best place to put the steam generator - my end was farther away. We are still speaking to each other.
By end of day, water is in all of the pipes it is supposed to be in, and no leaks, so I guess this can be considered a successful day. HD said that the slow part where no progress is evident is nearly over, and soon we will be able to see things come together. I sure hope so.

well, I am breathlessly waiting to hear how your tiles arrived!

mine, when ordered in the same fashion, via UPS - came, I am sorry to tell, broken! all 14 boxes of them! the only good set of tiles were the ones crated and specially delivered by Lowes's themselves, due to a complaint of short order. The delivery truck was a huge 12+wheeler with its own fork-lift truck and it took the truck driver/forklift operator/delivery man a full 1 hour of carefully choreographed, geometrically orchestrated and perfected steps to set the 2 crates one atop the other on the 6-inch line just behind my garage door in the exact mid-center. This should be a patented process for tile-delivery. The UPS method of the uniform grab-and-fling on front porch does not work as well for tiles as it does for the daily newspaper, if it does that.

And while I'm on it, not entirely sure how the online stores make their money! Of the five packages delivered, the tiles, as noted above, were broken and duly returned for 100% credit, to the local store; the vanity suffered a broken leg and is still waiting on my porch for UPS pick-up, credit immediately given; the sink was given a shipment date a month later after the booking site claim of "shipped within 24 hours" and so was cancelled being too late for our project, credit/return in process... Either they save way too much without brick and mortar distribution centers and their just-in-time shipping from the factory, and their markups even after all this double shipment and crediting are still fatter than their bubble-wraps, or they're streaking red ink! Not sure I want to know - wake me up when its over!

Aak!!! These are not words of comfort. Hopefully my next posting will be of a more satisfactory sort!!!
Sally

Sally,

I have been enjoying your clever postings of your progress; sorry to see your words of dismay(?) today. Keep us posted--we are anxiously awaiting your next update!

Sally -
sorry for that - didn't mean to make a dent in that pioneering spirit of yours :), but keep on going, we're all rooting for your success!!

Day 15 Mixed feelings this evening. The tiles arrived - a day earlier than promised, securely packaged, and no breakage...just not exactly what I had envisioned. Close, but not exact. Close enough that I will keep them. They are just a shade darker than the one I was trying to match. MY problem, not the company's as I was going by a small computer image, and didn't have time to order an exact sample. I knew it was a bit of a gamble, as the manufacturer names were not the same. Still, they go with my beloved accent tiles, but instead of blending with the lightest tone in the accent, they blend with the middle tone. I just might have to re-think my paint.
Dave has boxed in the tub, leaving places for 2 grills to allow access to the bubble motor and the plumbing. We re-angled the hot air duct so that the air will exit through one of the grills too. The cats are now tracking sawdust as well as gyprock dust through the house.

absolutely great to hear the tiles arrived intact - so my problem was the supplier's choice of packaging/delivery options - (I dont believe I was offered any other type of options, package/delivery-wise )..anyway all's well that ends well.

Sally, nice to see things progressing and that you are going with the flow. Or flowing with the go?

Good ole white bread has two uses in my book...bacon lettuce and tomato sandwiches, and for the occasional stuffing or a drippy pipe.

Mongo

Hi greenfingernail. I got the tiles from Value Floors Direct and was just delighted with their service. Their home page highlights their shipping, so I guess breakage can be an issue with some suppliers. The way the pallet was set up, someone would have to drop a grand piano on it to break things.
I am a patriotic Canadian, but I have done a lot of cross border shopping on this project, not for price (although shopping on line has savings I cannot afford to sneeze at) but the service is soooo much better. For example when I got my tub locally at the local Home Depot, I bagged a sales person - which is as difficult as hunting an endangered species I might add - and told him which model I wanted. He grunted and pointed. I looked at him...hard. At 57 years of age I find it a tad difficult to tuck a bathtub under my arm to take it to the cash. After a thoughtful pause he noted that I would have to get a cart. Where are the carts? By the front door. So off I trot to the front door. No carts. Where are the carts? You might try the parking lot. So off I trot again. I finally found one and struggled with the ice encrusted wheels and went back to the sales man. Now he did put the tub on the cart for me, but when he noted that I should stick to the wide aisles as I wrestled the beast into submission en route to the cash I thought I showed admirable restrain not to belt him in the nose. Even at the cash I had to ask for someone to help me load it onto my pick-up. Compare that to the Lowes in Ogdensburg NY where the sales people were numerous, knowledgeable and so helpful I wondered if they were crossed with Golden Retrievers.
So far I have purchased the steam shower guts, faucets & valves for shower, tub and sink, wall and accent tile all on line. My online experience to date has been wonderful. Floor tile, sink, toilet and tub were purchased in Ottawa with snarly indifferent service in 3 out of the 4 places. My rural construction hardware store, on the other hand, has friendly service.

Dear Sally -
That you are canadian, explains some of the good humor with which you have gone at this job of redoing your bath and recounting the redoing of it - which as you can see is developing an avid readership across the border :)!!!

Day 17. Dave couldn't come yesterday. I sat in the tub, in a cloud of sawdust and gyprock dust, dolefully fantasizing water, and wondering what the tile will look like when it is actually fixed to the walls and floor. Sigh.
It is getting tiresome pattering down the stairs to use the one functional washroom, and rooting through the box of flotsam for the spare toothpaste. And, as I huddle under the nasty little hand shower, I remember vividly why I had switched to a rain head. The calcium has welded the handheld head into that position of 3 needle streams only. Uggggg. Oh well. When you are feeling bloody minded it is a good time to pitch out all those homeless, half empty cream and unguent jars, expired prescriptions, and non-functional razor blades that had multiplied in the medicine cabinet that is no more.

Day 21 - I'm so mellow tra la la tral la la whooohooo. Just took the bubble tub for a test drive. What bliss to sink into hot water. Mind you when I turned the bubbles on there was a roar of a jet engine. The cats came galloping in to see what was going on. It soon became white noise though, and it certainly can mask any outside noise from yodelling coyotes to ":have you seen my glasses", which has its merits. HD Dave wanted me to try it out for a final check for leaks before he fastens everything down. Earlier today he did a preliminary check for leaks. Unfortunately he had not read the operating manual closely so he didn't know about the feature of turning itself on twenty minutes after use to purge any water. Poor man nearly leaped out of his skin when it roared to life on its own. He wondered if it was possessed.
I invited DH (not HD) to test drive it too. After a bit of eye rolling he agreed, although he did make motorcycle noises when he saw all the taps (there is a hand shower and diverter in addition to the hot & cold and spout. The tub edge is a wee bit crowded.) However he slowly submerged with a smile on his face. His pronouncement "that"s a good tub" is the equivalent of hysterical praise.

Day 26 - DH and I are getting a bit short with each other. Plowing through dust and whacking toes on piles of tile will do that I suppose.
Yesterday Dave put in the fiddley bits of Kerdi. Having a shower niche seemed like such a modest request. I never thought of the 8 corners of Kerdi it would require. and I never knew that an outside Kerdi corner would cost $9.49 and an inside corner $4.50 EACH!!!! My squeaks could be heard throughout the hardware store. I subsequently made inside corners, but grudgingly bought the outside ones.
I had primed the to be painted walls which Dave had drywalled and/or patched. Dave went over them with a trouble light, peering closely and mumbling "bubbles". " tiny bubbles...in the walls,,," Out came the drywall compound again as he touched up what the priming had revealed.
The next morning I painted the walls and ceiling, one foot on the tub edge, the other on the window sill. Last night Dave inspected again. One patch on the ceiling still made him unhappy so I am off again to the hardware store for another container of drywall compound. he has promised faithfully that this weekend will see actual tile stalled. Dear lord I hope so.
I have finally learned how to post photos on Photobucket and as soon as I learn how to rotate and SAVE the rotated suckers, I shall post the link. We soldier on.
Sally

Oh, Sally, you really make it hard for me to feel for you, b/c you're so darn funny! :-D Honestly, though, as I'm sure you can attest, your choice in these situations is to either laugh or cry, so you just have to make the best of it. You WILL get through this!

Sounds like y'all are making good progress, can't wait to see your pictures!

One learns. When they told me that they were out of 12x12 tiles and I had a choice of 18x18 or 6x6 I chose 18x18. Wrong choice. Fortunately I was out of the house, and HD had just stepped out of the shower to reach for another tile when an 18x18 ceiling tile came crashing down. When I commented that I hoped the tile didn't break I got a rather short "It did. Gouged a hole in the kerdi floor too."
So I have added a photo of the plywood platform and 2x4 prop to the collection. DH's anxious question to HD was "Is it apt to fall down once the mortar is dry???? " Hmmmm maybe the steam shower won't be quite as relaxing as I had planned!!
The back of the shower niche was done in the accent tile, so hoping to cheer HD up I chirped "well how was the mosiac tile to work with?" "A bugger" was the short answer. Choosing to ignore that, I commented that I was thinking of doing the inside edges of the niche in the mosiac too. This was met with stoney silence. I peered more closely at the niche and saw that it was not the mortar but the inside edges were already done in cut pieces of the 18x18 tile, so I hastily added "but this looks so much better, don't you think???"
So as of Saturday night the shower is half finished, but at least there is tile in place, and no blood down the drain...yet.
Sally

Sally,
I love reading about the daily trials and tribulations of your project. Your posts are witty and amusing and keep me laughing!

Day 29
Damn porcelain tile is hard. HD's drill, which was supposed to be for tile, just danced and got red hot with nary a dent in the tile. He was trying to drill a hole for the pipe to go through. The other pipe was close enough to a tile edge that he worked around it. I promised to head across the border to Lowes to get a tile drill bit for him today (Ontario holiday today). Well neither the diamond chip whateveryoucallit nor the tungsten cylinder worked. The pipe wall was abandoned until tomorrow when the local building centre opens. The shower, not counting the mosiac floor, will have 92 tile pieces in it, of which only 13 tiles didn't need to be cut, and most of the others needed to be cut twice. No wonder things progress slowly, although we have progressed from dust to sludge. Another gawdallmighty crash, but no curses, so I hope, I trust, I believe, it was only a partial piece that hit the floor. I hope 10% overage was an ok estimate and I ordered enough tiles. Breathe deep and focus on how pretty the niche looks.
Sally

Hurray! last tile put in place in the shower. On to the walls. Bad news - I have re-measured and re-counted and re-measured again. I think I am one tile short. I have mosaic left over from the shower floor. I think for my original measurement I must have had the shower threshold in mosaic rather than large tile. oops.
I guess I am not the only one getting a bit frayed around the edges. The cat just sh*t in the new tub.

Day 31. Tile with accent stripe installed behind the sink - or rather where the sink will be, as the sink is still living in the hallway, between the toilet and bags of mortar. The accent looks pretty, although DH mumbled that the light, porous stone squares will probably darken once the grout is installed. Now that the tile has been installed on the shower threshold we were able to take measurements for the steam door and got that ordered on line. Need to put more primer and paint where HD fixed the ceiling to his satisfaction tomorrow morning before HD arrives. things are starting to move!
Sally

Day 33
Wall tile went up yesterday....and my beautiful blue paint...does not work with it. The blue wall looks like an orphan, unwanted and unrelated to anything. As my mother would have said "damn blast and thunderation". The blue in the accent tile is quite dark, and I don't think I want to have a dark navy bathroom. Sigh. Back to the sludge palette. So off to my local Home Hardware to the resident paint guru. Of course when I got there I only had a sample of the wall tile, so home I trudged again to get the wall and accent tiles, and back into town. Mme guru short listed 3 tones for me as that is the range of choice I can cope with. " How much to you need" " Undoubtedly one quart plus a tablespoon so I had better get a gallon". Handyman Dave (HD) was hard at work when I got back, so I didn't have a chance to paint before the floor started to go in. Good thing last night I had painted sealer on the travertine squares in the accent tile with an iddy biddy 10 hair brush, as the floor is down now so I can't do anything this evening.
My the floor is a rich colour. Things are starting to pull together, and even without my blue I think I am really going to like it. The piles of tiles is diminished, although the piles of garbage and detritus are not. I can now manoeuver through the upstairs hallway, and only have to clamber over the piles of tile bits and cardboard boxes piled by the door.
Tomorrow is grout time. The end is near, the end is near. and I can always stick in a few accessories to highlight the blue.

ooh - Looking good! pictures any day now !

day 35
Yesterday HD grouted and DH scrubbed while I attended a previous commitment (o lucky me). Of course they ran out of grout. So much for the store's fancy calculation of grout consumption. Late last night between Olympic events I put a first coat of paint on. Didn't look bad. This morning at the crack of dawn on went the second paint coat then I was off to the metropolis to pick up more grout because of course the local store does not carry laticrete and hey if the gurus recommend a product who am I not to follow good advice. The grout colour (laticrete sand beige) is significantly different dried between the tiles than it was on a sample smear I put on paper. It looks very handsome. While the colour scheme is not what I originally had in mind, it is turning out very nicely, if somewhat more sophisticated than my natural persona (she said picking straw out of her pockets and brushing potato chip crumbs off her shirt). Hopefully vanity light, sink and medicine cabinet go in tonight.
Sally

"I don't like this". Coming from your handyman, those are words to chill your soul.
To back up a bit, those of you in the large throbbing metropolis may not be aware of this fact of life, but we in the country are used to such truisms: caulking only comes in two colours - white and almond. Of course it comes in 2 sorts - acrylic or silicone - so of course it took two trips to the local building centre to get the right one.
The "I don't like this" comment was about the first streak of almond caulking on my dark beige tiles. He was right. It looked awful. Think of those tacky unisex washrooms in roadside eateries where they store the brooms and the light bulb is always burned out.
We both agreed that somewhere there MUST be caulking of different colours - London or Paris perhaps. However, I had ultimate faith in Tile Bill who had recommended the Laticrete grout. Surely if he recommended it there must be caulking to match. Yup - an internet search of Laticrete showed matching caulk. Wow, even sanded too to match the texture.
Back into the big city 50 miles away to get the caulking from the store where I had tracked down the grout last week - twice. No textured stuff, but sandy beige silicone. Back to the local building centre to pick up another piece of moulding because 28 running feet of moulding cannot necessarily be accommodated by 4 - 8 foot pieces if you don't want a seam. Duh. Another entry in my lessons learned log.
Sally