time for a shower door.

The last big(ish) project for our bathroom was to install the glass shower door we ordered a couple months ago. It ended up being really straightforward, and took my father-in-law and I maybe a couple of hours to get it installed. I started by leveling the holes for the vertical track, then drilling into the shower tile -

Attached the track and inserted the glass pane -

Then drill a hole into the tub to attach it -

And the solid glass section was in -

To keep it stable, we needed to drill another hole to attach a horizontal bar at the top -

Now it was solid. Finally, then, the swinging door. We first leveled the hinges and screwed them in place -

In order to space the door at the necessary height above the tub, I used drywall shims set to 5/8" thick -

Boom. Installed! It looked gorgeous, let all the light in through the (north-facing) window, and allowed us to see all the tile we installed. Win-win-win.

While Scott was here, I used his help to install the attic fan I had wired and vented.

It took some finagling and adding some scrap 2x lumber to the joists in order to attach it (stupid thick sheetrock on top of lath and plaster ceiling), but with the fan and shower door installed we could (FINALLY) use the shower!!!

Really, really awesome.

time for (heated) flooring.

In addition to the whirlpool tub, we thought it seemed nice to have a heated floor. Especially since it would be tile. Especially since it's a small space, so the heat from the floor radiating may just heat the whole room and we can close off the heater vent. And, especially since I had run a spare circuit that only had two outlets on it, and the flooring element only uses 12W per square foot (the space is 50 square feet). Oh, and lastly... because all the walls were torn up and we were starting from scratch, as opposed to trying to wire the programmable control in an existing wall.

So it would be relatively painless, and provide another bit of luxury.

And, finding both the programmable thermostat (there really is no point in having a heated floor you have to get out of bed to turn on, seriously) and the floor element on Ebay for half the cost of Home Depot sealed the deal.

On President's Day, we got to work... With the electrical box already wired and ready to go, all we had to do was layout the mat and run the wires - electrical from the mat to the box, and the floor sensor from the box to the middle of the mat.

The electrical cable was sort of thick, so I took my plunge router to the subfloor to cut out a channel -

We then just stapled along both edges of the mat and cut it to fit the 90º corner to the other door -

The point the manual makes is to test the resistance and continuity of the floor sensor wire and mat power leads, respectively. So before laying the first tile we tested each, first the resistance of the floor sensor -

The ohm meter read 17.73 (20k ohm scale, so about 18,000 ohms) which was exactly what it should be based on the temperature of the room.

The white/green and black/green measure no continuity (which was correct), and the white and black did (also correct) -

So the mat and sensor worked. Time to lay some tile! We decided we wanted a dark, not-shiny grey tile like this (well, not that crazy pattern - but that color and sheen) -

And when we were at Lowe's picking up I-forget-what for this bathroom, we wandered through the tile aisle and found six cases of tile on clearance ($30/dozen) - so we bought all six! Scott and I worked together to mix the mortar and lay the tiles -

The tricky part was the transition of tiles above the mat to just bare subfloor, and keeping them level with each other. So with each tile we'd check level, lengthwise and widthwise -

Cutting the hole for the toilet trap was fun (nice photo Scott heh!) -

And one corner done!

All of the whole tiles are laid. Now I'll spend the evenings with the tile saw in the bathroom cutting the rest of the tiles around all of the edges, before mixing up another batch of mortar and laying them. Then we'll need to grout and the flooring will be done!

Next up... walls (and more tiling)...

time for electrical.

Ok, so we now have lights and a fan and heated flooring and outlets in the bathroom...

But backing up a bit, I first had to figure out the wiring scheme for the lights, which I was running off a single circuit devoted to all the overhead lights in the house. Oh, and since this bathroom is a jack and jill bathroom with two doors, I needed to throw in a 3-way switch into the circuit.

I started the original circuit when I had to wire a front porch light after painting the house, which looked like this -

But yeah, throw in a 3-way switch. I drew out a diagram, scratched it out, drew out another, scratched it out, drew out a third, and that's when I felt like I had gotten it right...

The hot coming into the box was tied off with the hot in the 14/3 cable to the 3-way switch and the hot going out of the box to the shower light a few feet to the right. The neutrals were tied from the cable coming in and going out, and the cable going to the first fixture (yeah, there are three fixtures on this switch), while the neutral in the 14/3 cable was coded 'hot' and ran - along with the traveler cable - to each of the two switches.

Yeah, it looked right. But I wouldn't know until I wired it all together. So I spent a couple hours in the attic drilling holes through the joists, running cable, and pulling it through the top plate of the wall framing. Then I tied everything together the way I had drawn it a third time -

Then flipped the breaker back on in the basement, and at last one of the 3-way switches... nothing. Oh well. I figured I'd look at my diagram again and try to - wait! The fixture (being a 1920s replica) had a switch on it, too! So I flicked that and... boom! Light!

It worked! It actually worked.

So the hard part done, the rest of the work I needed to do was cleaning up the mess of old wiring so I could splice in the fan (since I opted for a fancy fan control with a humidity sensor, it needed a constant power source - a neutral - so I couldn't wire it like a light fixture in that first circuit), wire the light above the shower on another switch, and take the spare circuit we wired when we ran cables for the whirlpool tub to wire a GFCI outlet - and second outlet on the load side - and splice from the line side to branch off to power the heated flooring element.

Not tough. A little complicated, but not tough.

Much cleaner than before, with just a single junction box that will be hidden in the wall to splice in the cable for the fan -

The box on the right side of where the vanity will be, with the GFCI box, fan switch, and dimmer for the light over the shower -

The boxes on the left side of the vanity: the 3-way dimmer and outlet that is wired on the load side of the GFCI, and the box where the programmable control (which I found new on Ebay for almost half of what Home Depot was charging) for the flooring element will go -

The whole mess, more or less -

And the pile of old electrical crap that I removed (yay!) -

Seriously, a couple of those boxes looked like the wiring versions of a rat's nest.

And the fixtures, which - now that they're installed - mean I don't have to use my work light anymore -

And the shower light -

Phwew. Now I just have to finish up the plumbing (cutting the 2" cast iron vent stack and installing a bunch of ABS drain and vent pipes, as well as a quick fix on the supplies for the sink and toilet) before I can (yay!) start hanging the walls, installing the heated floor element (I know I linked to Home Depot, but seriously - Ebay has this stuff significantly cheaper!), and tiling the floor...