California 2 Puerto Rico

We’ve just been advised that we should paint before we tile the bathrooms, so now Stefan and I are in another scramble to pick a color…QUICK (tile is supposed to start tomorrow)! I found this cool color visualizer from Sherwin Williams, that helps pick wall paint colors. It was VERY helpful!

The fixtures in the bathroom are Kohler “almond” color (I think, that’s what Stefan said) and the travertine is walnut colored (which I’ve paired with the colors below for comparison).

Here are 4 colors that I think would look good in the guest bathroom:

What do you think?! Help!

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Summer and I spent a lot of time picking out the Kohler Shower Set for the master bathroom. We are being very cash conscious with all of these purchases since the money is quickly disappearing. We were a little bummed out that we needed to make the “which one” decision before we even had tile in the bathroom because it is so hard to visualize how your bathroom is going to turn out when it looks like this!

With that said, we found what we were looking for and ordered it online, all the while our plummer is asking me on the daily basis when we are going to get the parts. Well, they finally arrived to Puerto Rico yesterday so I called the plumber and had him come over this morning. When he got there, he informed me that the “valve” we need for the “rough in” wasn’t included in the two sets we bought. After reading further about our Kohler Shower heads on line, I realized that we purchased the “trim” kit, which basically means everything on the outside.

The Installation Guide suggests the K-306-KS HiFlo Valve so I simply Googled it and found one right away. Unfortunately, the Kohler list prices is $358 each. That would make our shower worth about $1500 pre-tile and pre-custom shower pan. So, I searched for our shower heads on Kohler and found the “People that bought this item also bought this” section that showed three choices for valves that ranged from $99 to $300. Amazingly enough, I found what we needed and ordered it 3 day to California (they don’t ship to Puerto Rico). Once Summer gets her hands on them, it will take another 3 days (if she pays for overnight) to get to Puerto Rico and into my hands.

This is a picture of the infamous “Kohler HiFlo Shower Valve”.

Also, let our lesson be a good one for you no matter where you are building your house (or redoing a bathroom); you don’t need to buy you set of shower/bath accessories ahead of time, you only need to buy the “rough in shower valve.” You will need to do a little bit of research first, get an idea of the brand you would like to use (Delta, Kohler, American Standard, Latoscana) so you can match up your shower faucet with your roughed in hardware…but besides that, you can choose your finish (brushed chrome, brushed nickel, nickel, vibrant french gold, brushed bronze etc) well after the tile is in and you can visualize the bathroom.

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I spent hours looking for tile yesterday. To be exact, I spent 6 hours driving from Mayaguez to Aguadilla and everywhere in between trying to find quality tile. Everything I have found down here has been ceramic tile or junk.

I am going to have to drive to San Juan to check out some tile stores there if I don’t find anything around here by Wednesday. I hear about a place off of the 2 in Mayaguez that i haven’t been to yet..I am going to check it out tomorrow and if they don’t have anything good…it’s off to San Juan on Thursday.

I really want to have the guest bath tiled this week so we can have a fully functioning bathroom by the time Summer gets down here.

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I went to Home Depot Expo today and was looking at flooring. I totally fell in love with the MS International Inc Tarvertine flooring in Tuscany Walnut Pattern.

http://www.msistone.com/brochures/2006_Limestone_Brochure.pdf

The picture does not do it justice. The tiles are big and smooth, but with roughed up edges that look slightly crystalized. It’s pretty rad and it’s only $5.49 per square foot. Is it just me, or does that seem pretty damn cheap?

Also, I think Robin is right about the grout space on the flat river rock. Since the master bedroom is going to have hardwood floors, I think the travertine will compliment the wood nicely.

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After speaking with Gino (who is helping with the shower pan and the tile) he indicated that if the river rock we want to use in the bathroom is carried into the shower, it could pool water in the cracks between the rocks and not be the most practical thing to use.

With that said, I went to Paradise Tile in Aguada this morning to look for an alternative. I found a really cool rock, but it is pretty expensive. I also found the tile/rock that we liked from Home Depot and it cost about a dollar more per 12” section. This tells me we will have to pay for a better selection. What do you think about the new flat river rock I found?

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Yesterday Stefan and I headed over to the Home Depot Expo and we picked out the shower hardware for the master bathroom. We picked out some nice Graff brand shower set ups, but today I decided that I didn’t like them enough to spend $600 on them (this picking out fixtures thing is harder then it looks!).

SO, we went online today and ended up choosing the Kohler Memoirs Rite-Temp Shower Faucet Trim w/ Classic Design & Cross Handle, shown here in brushed nickle. We had to purchase two shower set ups, since the master bath has a double shower head. Building a house is muy caro (very expensive)! The two shower set ups cost us $522 (Normally it would have been $575, but I got 10% off at AbsoluteHome.com). Which isn’t horribly bad, but it’s starting to add up.

We also found the sinks we want to use in the master bath as well:

I was just kidding about the god-awful gold sink above. Here are the Kohler sinks we are really going to use in the master bathroom :):

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There are two things that made redesigning the Master Bedroom and guest bath possible.
1. Our house is all wood framed upstairs
2. The only weight bearing walls are the two off the great room and the outside of the house.

With that in mind, look at the first before picture before we re framed the wet room, removed the closet, enclosed the little porch, and built the walk-in closet.

I didn’t really notice this until afterwards, but look how long and skinny the bathroom was. We would have been squeezing in any kind of “over sized tub” into the corner and it would have looked ghetto. We also wouldn’t have had room for a his and hers sinks and I don’t ‘think’ we would have had enough closet space for summer and I.

Now, we have a walk-in closet that we will have to do some cedar built-ins because of the high humidity down here. We opened up two windows to the bedroom that were blocked by the old wall. If we left the wall up, we would have lost all of our cross breezes entering the front of the house (where the trade winds blow from) and getting sucked out the back windows. We also wouldn’t have had the bad ass set-up we have now. It might be hard to see this in the below pictures (maybe a video will make it easier to picture…or a visit!) but the way the room is set up now, when we sit in the jacuzzi now we will be able to see out the windows with the crossbreeze and still have the rest of the vaulted ceilings and master bedroom making you feel like you are in a giant room (as opposed to boxed in like the old set-up).

The water closet will have a door (our old plan was to leave it all open), the toilet and a two headed shower that will take up the entire back end of the room. It will be 5ft wide by 4.5 ft long. Frame it in a little and big clear glass doors with the river rock floor and travertine walls…it is going to be an insane bathroom!

We are looking into what type of granite we can get down here (and how much) so we can do a teak or mahagony finish on the front of the jacuzzi and top it/back splash it with granite. Hardwood floors throughout the entire house (to make it feel more open/big) with no interuption right to the woodwork at the bottom of the jacuzzi. Very exciting stuff…i’ll stop yapping. Check out the other pictures.

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Trying to envision the house complete is much harder than I thought now that I have been in there working everyday. We are ready to tile the guest bath and get the entire guest side of the house up and ready to go so we can live in a completed part of the house while we finish the rest of it. While Brian was down here he suggested we do river rock floors in the bathrooms and travertine walls. Here are some pictures to give you an idea of what we may do.

River Rock for the floors

Travertine for the walls

What do you think?

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I happened upon josplumbing, which I think is an EXCELLENT internet marketing idea by Kohler.

The interactive website let’s you pick items from the bathroom and flush them down a toilet. Sounds strange, but check it out. After flushing random items (including a bra, rubber duckie, flowers, dog food and more), I thought, “I want a toilet like this!”, and just so happens we are in the market for a toilet for the master bathroom…Very slick marketing, indeed!

Thanks to SayNoToCrack.com for the tip

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When Brian Mangen showed up, we had just finished most of the rough in work (electricity, plumbing etc) and we didn’t really have much direction. I knew it was time for drywall and we were getting quotes, but that was about where we were. Summer came down for the week and we didn’t work much in that time. It was great spending time together, we don’t get to do that much these days, so I was guilt free shopping for fixtures and kicking it with Summer.

My plan was to finish the bathroom downstairs (we are going to make it all white and sterile looking so I couldn’t mess up the decor), finish up the offices (so I can stop renting an office once we got power/phone/DSL) and get the kitchen started (custom wood worker, appliances, etc).

Brian has been remodeling houses for a long time and has done quite a few of his own homes while living in them, like I am doing now. He re prioritized my list. Our goal this week is to finish the Guest Bath and Guest room so I can have at least one part of the house that is done in order to keep my sanity. Also, when summer comes down we will have a full bath (Bathtub and all!) to enjoy instead of using the outside shower and the toilet in a framed off soon to be a bathroom. From there we will finish drywalling the great room and master (we are framing in the walk in closet and water closet) and I will move my be into the master and have the guest room as an office. Simultaniously (hopefully) we will be getting electricity and I will be able to put a fridge in the house (no more dirty coolers and 3 bags of ice a day) and wait for our cabinets. From there, when the money is there, we’ll open up the floor, put in the staircase and finish the offices, bathroom and great room (Media Room) downstairs.

The only thing we will complete downstairs is screening all the windows and covering all the holes critters and mosquitos can fly in through so we can start sleeping without nets….and the laundry room.

Here are some pictures of the guest bath upstairs.

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