Hi all -- I wanted to follow up on this thread about shower curtain ceiling tracks. I don't think there's enough information on this forum about them! We did finally decide on and install a single ceiling track. It is not recessed as some suggested. Our ceiling drywall was already in so we couldn't easily recess things. And it really didn't have to happen. I looked at the trax product suggested here and decided against it because it came as two pieces and I really wanted not to be bothered by the glides getting hung up when pieces come apart. As we are installing there is a sub-standard installation potential at work here -- ;) -- plus this is EQ country, and as well our second floor was not actually constructed very well; for a variety of reasons things are shifting too much and I was worried about having pieces that needed to be fit together. So we wound up with hardware from this company. I recommend them. They were very nice and helpful during business hours and have a call center for accepting orders much extended past these hours too. I found both opportunities helpful. Good advice, very accommodating when I messed up and needed more hardware, etc. We used the 6100 flexible curtain track. It arrives rolled and needs unrolling for 24 hours or so. What arrived looked *way* too small by eye but wound up being just right. It turns out two lengths of a curtain are not very long! I ordered the medium weight track because I was not clear on how much weight would be needed. I am sure the lightweight track would have been fine weight-wise. But the saleslady explained (after the fact when I was annoyed I had "overbought") that the medium weight track may have been a good choice from a quiet-ness POV. She said the medium-weight glides better and more quietly than the regular weight. I haven't seen them to compare. My point is, shower curtains are lighter weight than you think! What we wound up with works incredibly well; I love it. For our purposes it is perfect. I was concerned feeling too closed in and also too dark in the tub. I started out really wanting a half glass door, but was led to believe that would be too cold. I think that is right. I then looked at enclosing the thing all in glass: waaay too expensive! $1K or more. Yuck. But I hate curtain rods that get dirty up top and the sag in the elbow of a two-sided space to cover is such a drag. I've btdt for so so many years, I wanted a solution that worked better. This sure does! It's quiet, it rolls incredibly smoothly, and it allows me to afix a clear curtain on one end to allow lightening inside the tub, you can place the track wherever you like on the ceiling so an inch of two out from the tub's perimeter gives you that extra feeling of space inside the tub; I don't ever feel squished in there at all. In the attached photos you can see I've added two curtains to the long side, one of plastic for inside that has my dh's beloved map on it -- so we didn't have to sacrifice that content! While on the outside is an attempt at being more "grown up" with an actual patterned, fabricy curtain. I've actually kinda gotten over that need and would be fine with the dorm room map now, but at least we got to try this. ;) Mostly, as hoped the track glides effortlessly and the curtains stay closed and zero water spills out, everyone's warm, it cost *way* less than a grand, and this has been a very, very good solution that I think more people should consider! Note to the wise: it is in fact very easy to install the track, but we made some mistakes. First, dh was concerned the tighter curve couldn't be made, but I'd seen videos of people gently bending the track to a very tight angle; I knew it could be done. After he'd installed the cartridges to the ceiling in a too-shallow curve I made the guy take them down for a tighter curve. He grumbled and we have some holes to patch, but it was worth it, the tight curve looks way better and there are no problems with gliding or catching or anything. Another really dumb mistake we made (there are no instructions!) is not attaching the first cartridge pretty close to the wall -- not all the way to the wall, and the track needs to have a space left close to the wall in order to fit an endcap over the track -- don't forget that either! But if you're spacing the cartridges at, say, 10" intervals, don't start your first one 10" from the wall ... .duh! I ended up sending for a couple extra cartridges to cover for this dumb mistake. But the lady was very nice and sent them by return mail; very little delay, just sheepishness all around here. For some reason this company does not sell stainless steel curvy hooks. I ended up ordering these from a separate company and also ordering a whole spool of stainless steel ball chain. I decided it was cheaper this way (it was) than ordering the prepackaged set height extensions they sell, and better quality. It's very easy to snip the ball chain with just a scissors, even -- special tool isn't required. You can hang the curtain from the ball chain in a criss-crossy pattern to enable the curtain to fold up more tightly if you wish -- that's what I've done on the short end. And Where the short end curtain meets the double long end one, I've offset the long end fabric curtain with its plastic curtain behind, so the plastic meets thus creating a good seal but the fabric still wraps around ... I think this is hard to explain with words! It's possible you can see it in the pictures. But it winds up getting a good seal. You can buy glides with magnet snaps to them but this was not necessary; this fiddling with placing of hooks does the trick just great. Here are some pictures: For context, this vanity is across the floor from the bathtub. The knobs are odd and not 100% successful -- some of the ring pulls from this second hand chest of drawers were broken or missing so I stuck some fossilized sanddollars we had hanging around onto knob backings. Turns out the fossilization isn't rock hard so while the glue sticks to the surface of the underbelly of the sand dollar, the actual fossil sometimes sheers from the center -- they're not, obviously, therefore really strong and I wouldn't necessarily recommend this! As well, they look kinda odd, so definitely not everyone's cup of tea. Cheap though ;) Thanks, as always, for everyone's help! I am hoping this is useful as a future reference. BTW, I tried to clean up a bit for the pictures but as usual, haven't done a perfect job. I've really been criticized in the past here for pictures that show a sloppy kid-infused household. I'm sorry about this, and I don't intend to offend anyone. Please accept my apologies in advance but also, please don't flame me if I've fallen short on this here. I want this information to be useful to someone in the future, but I don't want to feel rotten about our taste which isn't always completely GW-approved... Here is a link that might be useful: Start of my pondering how to finish the shower

I wouldn't venture a guess about price, because everything depends on the particulars of your house and the local market, but it could easily be a project for a good handyman. Each recessed fixture will have its own built-in junction box. So long as the existing circuit can handle the load are all of the fixtures are meant to turn off and on together, the wiring just daisy-chains from one fixture to the next.

My guess is that 100 lumens per watt LED bulb is still in the laboratory, and likely costs a mint. Exactly. I would also point out that a $5 LED with an efficacy of 150 lumens per watt isn't very practical for home lighting when its output is only 50 or 100 lumens. A 75 watt incandescent lamp produces about 1200 lumens. Think about how many 75 watt incandescent lamps the usual kitchen fitted with can lights requires, and add up the total cost for LEDs. Ouch. And before you dismiss this, consider that blue LEDs cost about that much per copy, 10 or so years ago. On the other hand, as I said above, LEDs really shine (groan) in low-output applications, where incandescent lamps and even fluorescents have poor efficacy. My point is that we have to consider what technology is appropriate for a given application. It's important to distinguish brightness and illumination. You need brightness when you want a light TO BE SEEN. You need illumination when you want to SEE BY a light. LEDs have high brightness but poor illumination qualities (low lumen output). Because of the brightness, it can actually be painful to look at an LED. This makes them appropriate technology for situations where the light source must be seen at a distance. They're good for indicators such as automotive taillights and traffic signals. Because they emit light from a very small area, LEDs aren't very good for lighting up rooms. However, because incandescents and even fluorescents diminish markedly in efficiency as they're asked to produce lower illumination (lumen output), LEDs can be an acceptable alternative. (But find a way to eliminate ballast losses, and fluorescents could still win at this game.) Fluorescents have high illumination (lumen output) but low brightness. They produce a smooth, even light. It is not usually painful to look at a fluorescent, because it emits light from a large area. This makes them appropriate for lighting up rooms, but not so good as indicators. Rather than follow up on this any further here, I would direct you to Don Klipstein's outstanding lighting pages. Don follows lighting developments, especially in LEDs, pretty closely. This page has more on why LEDs are so well suited to flashlights and traffic signals. Anyone with an interest in lighting, especially high efficacy lighting, will most likely find Don's pages very interesting.

Safety Covers (the type that attach to recessed anchors and use springs) can be installed on virtually any pool shape and deck type. The down side of this type of cover is the time and effort to put it on and take it off. On average it will take a single person about 20-30 minutes and when you take it off you need to let it dry before storing it away. So obviously it's really designed for when you shut down the pool (assuming you even shut yours down at all) and not for daily use. The other type of cover I wouldn't really call a 'safety' cover per say but rather a retractable (either manual or automatic... but manual is... nuff said) that can provide enough support to allow people to stand on it... It's like walking across the biggest waterbed in the world though! These types of covers can certainly be installed if you are redoing the deck and coping around the pool at the same time but remember that the cover runs on tracks that need to be straight so it can be a challenge on a freeform pool to make it look good. To me the biggest downside to these covers however is the cost. The price range can vary A LOT and you may be left wondering why. It comes does to quality of the product. We sold a low cost system (automatic) for a couple of years and learned the lesson the hard way. Today we only sell a top of the line system and won't even consider the lower end ones because of the number of issues our customers had. Now since I'm up in Canada, the price range and available systems are probably quite different but we've been dealing with CoverStar.com for some years now with great success and virtually no issues.