I'm surprised that in a gut remodel accommodations couldn't be made for proper venting. Or did they just forget? Even if they did forget, I'm not up on plumbing code anymore, but you used to be able to wet vent 60" laterally with 2" drain pipe. An air admittance valve is going to leak water every time the water is turned on or off? I've NEVER seen one leak water when properly installed. That said, I've seen the valves hidden in adjacent closets. I've seen the valves run up an interior wall, and then a little "medicine cabinet" type of enclosure was built to house the valve. The door to the cabinet can be made to look like a painting or photo hung on the wall. Sort of like a hidden compartment. Easy to do. The valve does need to be accessible so it can be replaced if needed. The higher above the waterline of the tub you terminate the valve, the less likely you'll ever see water dribbling out of the valve. And again, water should never exit the valve unless there is multiple failure. Clogged line, the valve flapper fails, etc. Any backup within the tub's drain line itself should backup and exit out of the tub's overflow before it ever reached the height of the valve. If you do bring the valve out of the tub deck, then disguise it with a small enclosure that slips down over the top of the valve and its standpipe.

I've been trying some of the chalk paint, mixing my own with Aura and plaster of paris (3:1). I find that my coats come out quite thin, probably because I am treading very cautiously. The second coat went on yesterday. I decided that hopefully they are the thickness of one coat! I do want to rub the layers down a bit and not hit the primer I'd started with before chalk paint came into play. So I'll do yet another of this color, trying to go thicker on the subsequent layers. First coat, I could see the white primer underneath (what you call bleedthrough?). Even with the second coat I could sort of see some white showing in some areas that are more difficult to get good coverage on because they are narrow. I like seeing a little bit of brush stroke. So far, there is none, lol. Didn't want it to look sloppy and unsure of what this paint would do, so I'm probably being too careful! I am liking the look of the paint itself. There was even a little bit of random grit in the last batch but I continued anyway. It will lightly sand off just fine. Think the PoP needed more water. It sets very quickly. Or else some sludge settles if you don't use it all at one time. Not sure yet. The first batch was smooth and creamy but my PoP mix was looser. I had added a little more PoP to the leftover for this second coat, to reduce the sheen more (started with Satin). This post was edited by snookums2 on Mon, Mar 4, 13 at 12:12

Quick update: BM rep came by my house a few days ago and took a look. Said smell normally disappears sooner, but wasn't too concerned. He would have been concerned if there was a rotton egg smell as this means mold or bacteria is in the paint (it must have happened before for them to check for this). He said this is only the 2nd case of someone complaining about Aura's odor lasting too long. He said the other people used Mr. Clean to prep the walls so he was interested to hear how I preped them. In the end he said nothing stands out as improper preparation. He suggested I keep more windows open while I'm painting (I had all the hallway and other bedroom windows open but keep them closed in the room I was painting to try to minimize the amount of dust in the air. I opened them after painting). Anyway he offered me a complementry can of Aura which I will use for another coat in the next few days. I'll update the thread again to see if the odor experience is different.

We have red oak floors in our house (would NEVER be my first choice -- let's be generous and say it was a "miscommunication" with the floor guy) and we wanted an ebony color (darker than what you're after). We had the floors installed before we moved in (from another state) and sent pictures and samples to the floor guy of the color we were after: ebony. I wanted to walk on a chocolate bar! So we arrived the night before the moving truck to find these floors: Beautiful, but not what we wanted. I'd been sooo good about not swearing in front of my kids (who were two years-old and nine months-old at that point) but walking into that I let it fly and then said I needed to go buy a real chocolate bar to calm my nerves! The floor guy knew it was hard to get red oak a dark, full-bodied color, so he did pop it with water (which means liberally wetting the floors to get the grain to open to accept the stain) and then applied Bona's Ebony stain. See for us, that's the rub: if he knew we wanted an ebony-colored floor and he knew red oak doesn't like to get dark and full, why would he choose to install red oak and not white oak or walnut? To quote my now almost four year-old "whatever!" After a lot of research (and I give full credit to my husband, not the floor guy ...) my husband found that Dura-Seal's Ebony stain is the best way to get red oak really dark (after first popping it with water). (My husband found it through some Manhattan pre-war apartment remodeling forum, because evidently a lot of those gorgeous old NY apartments have red oak floors but they want the the ebony finish, and they have tried just about everything!) And this is what we wanted and ultimately got: You'll have a happy ending for your story as well!