Marble Madness: Part 2 The Emerald City

Well, I almost feel like I shouldn't post this because there has been so much buildup that the reality can't live up to the hype (like The Matrix Part 2). But here here it is.

I should mention that whenever I find a really nice bathroom to, ummm, to do my business I usually name it.

Examples:

1. the toilet by the law library at school, by the Federal Registers, which no one knew about but me--The Fortress of Solitude;
   
2. the bathroom in my Dad's place in Florida (wall-to ceiling italian marble everywhere): the Taj Mahal;
3. the nice toilet at work: the Throne of Gondor.

You get the picture. Anyway, without further ado, I give you: The Emerald City!

This is a shot from the doorway. My brother helped with the install. With Ceramic Tile, I'm like Rainman is with BlackJack, but this is the first time I did Marble by myself (which is much less forgiving) so I wanted the skillz of the Fat Ninja on this one.

I should probably think of a new nickmane for him since he beat me up about 500 times when we were growing up and I probably shouldn't make him mad. I'd like to think I could take him now, but that's probably just wishful thinking. (My record against him is something like 499 losses- 0 wins-1 draw)

Here is a finished shot of the right side of the room. The wall has been primed, but not painted yet.

I'm telling you, with all that marble, if you take a deuce on that toilet, you'll feel like the King of Siam.
We drilled the holes for the toliet paper holder right on the grout joint so that the tile wouldn't crack. This tile would crack all over the place (Chinese Marble, man).

The tile is plumb here, but the wall isn't. I'm still thinking of a way to finish this off.

It looks a lot nicer after it is primed. I thought about using ceramic, but the nice ceramic tile was only a little less than the marble tile on sale so I went with the marble. This stuff looks great on the wall, but would crack a lot when I cut it on the wet saw so there was way more waste than I wanted. If I had to it over, I wouldn't use this marble again, I would pay for the good stuff from Italy. Once it's on the wall, however, it's solid.

Here is an inside-the-shower shot.















And another nice shower shot.

Here is a nice shot of the vanity and toilet. (okay, yes, I am bragging about a toilet). This was a pain to install because the plumbing monkey intsalled the toilet flange wrong when he leveled the floor so it took a little ingenuity on me & Fat Ninja's part to get it to get the bolts to sit right.

We also installed that tile on the floor. I think it matches well with the marble. I used a 2x2 tile because I didn't want to take a chance that using larger ones on the floor might cause them to crack. (plus it's not a big bathroom).









Another gratuitous shower shot.




Look at those lines....sswwweeeeeeeeeeeeet!

I also tiled behind the shower. I need to finish that door off with some trim.





This is what it looked liked with drywall, but before primer. I added more mud and and sanded before priming.













Here is something that still needs to be fixed. I need to close that hole in the ceiling, but first I need to get another bath fan and some of that ducting to take the moisture outside. The previous owner had a working fan in there, but no ductwork, so the fan was basically taking the steam from the shower and shooting it into that rafters...don't get me started on that.










This is something else I need to do too. I need to get some trim and finish around the door.

Closing up that switch box too might help. Bare wires and water are probably not a good mix.

My brother and I installed this sink too. It's only 24" wide. I would've liked a wider one, but I needed somthing that wasn't very deep (because the whirlpool tub sticks out a couple of inches more now, a regular vanity is kinda' a tight fit). This one is only about 13" deep.

AFTER we installed this I saw that HD now sells the same 13" deep one in a 30" wide model. Arrrrgh! Even when I don't buy soemthing from them, they still manage to piss me off.

[Ooops. I moved the pics on Photobucket and they went MIA for a while. They are back up now. ]