Next!

All right, I'm feeling like it's been a while since I posted, and a lot has happened (although lots of little jobs, so it doesn't look like much). Part of the reason we've not posted is that I (and I think Ken too) have become obsessed with the hit counter we added. Very weird how that becomes such a neat thing, especially when the one I got is pretty ugly and utilitarian. But I just have to know every day how many uniques... I guess this phase will pass pretty soon.

Anyways, we made a pact to attempt to finish the bathroom this week (though I just got off the phone with the window glass guy and it'll be a while to get our pebble glass pieces). So first we worked on installing the shower door.

Backstory: the shower opening is a little unorthodox, with a corner clipped out (it's the roof peak-dormer interface). So a curtain rod won't go all the way across except at a fairly low height, which looks odd & the curtain hangs on the floor (yes, I know, I have a sewing machine, but how many projects can one do?!?) We researched those goofy curved rods, no dice, and getting a custom one was just plain silly. So then we happened to see -in Uncle Henry's (and I'll blog about this next time) - a used glass semi-frameless shower door for a bargain price. We took a nice half day trip to Belfast, Maine (great town) to pick it up, and we were partway there.

The caveat: the door is narrower than the opening. We definitely can't afford a new, nice, gorgeous frameless door setup on our shoestring (and it's fast becoming a hobo-shoestring) budget, so we spent a while thinking about it, and eventually had a eureka moment. I found out about this wood called Hinoki (or Port Orford Cedar in the US) that the Japanese have been making wood tubs from for centuries. This is supposedly the most water-resistant wood ever, and it has a neat lemony smell.

Wouldn't you know it, they had some at Viking Lumber, a very cool building supply store (well, there are several of them I guess), so we made a pilgrimage there for special wood. They also had a great selection of fir, not quite flat sawn, but very consistent with the look of the trim in the house, so we bought all the trim boards we'll need to replace the 6 or so missing bits in the house. Good deal!

So, we made a panel out of the Hinoki to fit the space where the door didn't cover, and had to wait for another eureka moment to figure out how the heck to attach it (the usual shower door hardware wouldn't work). Of course, while peeing in a commercial bathroom, I realized that the silver brackets they use to hold panels together to build stalls in a bathroom were perfect. So now I have all kinds of goofy searches in my web history like 'toilet partition bracket'. But they're perfect. So we're about to install that next.

OK, a picture of the door so far (minus Hinoki panel): note the smiley face so we remember that it's there. Apparently several members of my family who shall remain nameless have walked through sliding screen or glass doors, so we thought it best to be safe till we are used to having a giant (albeit, tempered) glass panel in the room! And I've been known to break glass shutters at a tropical hotel just trying to close them. Usually we can't have nice things, but we'll try out the glass door! It looks way cooler than the icky shower curtain...