Dr......toilet???

Last week I finished my PhD, so that meant just one thing: time to take a few minutes off and finish the bathroom! Without guilt, finally. So here's how we celebrated (after some fun with friends, we're not that weird!)

First, we had to pull out the old pink toilet - which we're keeping because it's fabulous and we designed the whole neutral color scheme around it. But we had to pull it out, assess its underbelly and re-plumb it (and deal with the floor), and get it cleaned up to go back in. And custom order a brand new pink toilet seat with chrome hinges - yes, they still make them (thankfully). With the toity, the last, last, final, sole-surviving silver and burgundy PLASTIC marbled 70s tiles came out. Yee-haw!

Next Ken coached me through the whole wax ring thing. Apparently ours was quite clean, but I guess they can be pretty covered with dookie. Ours looked pretty shocking until I learned that it was just icky wax, then it was OK (with gloves on and a surgical scrub afterwards!). Interesting little invention. The toilet will be getting a brand new waxless ring this time, the downstairs one worked great and they're better for wood floors.

Next we pulled out the old, icky subfloor and of course found some joists that needed to be sistered, so we fixed those up. Oh, and speaking of pulling up the floor, Ken attacked the radiator moving project and got it all plumbed & ready in its new, far more rational spot. Who the hell puts a radiator smack in the middle of a room, anyways? Duh!



Then we realized that, after pulling all the guts out of the toilet, it was leaking the rest of the tank water all over the floor. Duh again - and then we used the handy-dandy wet vac feature to clean it out. The only reasonable caption for this photo is: Is this what PhDs do?

OK, so we laid a new subfloor and some plywood substrate for the parquet teak floor.

Then plastered the end wall to prep for tile

Then back to more tiling, almost the last wall section! Note the way cool ebay find: a built-in vintage porcelain toilet paper holder that went in great and looks awesome. A favorite, and for $3, who can argue?

So we've been busily intalling the teak parquet, and it's almost done - just a few teeny areas to fill in. So - what color stain (if any) to use...? Votes, anyone?