A Little Fixture of Luxury (part 1)

The upstairs was completely re-framed in renovating the house, but the basic configuration changed only a little.  The re-framing took place so that the master bedroom ceiling could be lifted, the bathroom enlarged, and a loft constructed for my son's bedroom. 

Formerly the closet between the master bedroom and the second bedroom was a walk-through affair.  I closed off access from the second bedroom and moved the door slightly so that it was more symmetrical with the door on the other side of the room.  I also framed-in a closet for the smaller bedroom.

I made the bathroom larger so that tub could be positioned away from the sloped ceiling.  Originally, the bathtub was tucked in against the knee wall which prevented it from being used as a shower.

One small luxury we decided to add in the renovation of our modest home is a bidet.  This is a handy toilet fixture that Americans have never quite gotten used to.  Simply put, it allows you to wash your private parts without having to take a complete shower or bath.  I might argue that it's a way of conserving water, but I don't have any real statistics to back that up.

The bidet will go in a little closet off the Master Bedroom.  I roughed-in the plumbing for this feature two years ago when I plumbed for the laundry downstairs.  The first order of business towards installing the bidet was finishing the floor.

We originally wanted to lay down a kind of rubberized industrial floor as a fun solution to this little bidet room but as we started to look into the cost, we backed away.  The area is only 9 square feet but the cost of materials alone was going to be around $100.  For a space that was going to be taken up mostly by the bidet itself, and in a time when the budget is tight, that was more than we wanted to spend.

Looking into cheaper solutions of vinyl tiles, we couldn't find a color or pattern we liked without having to order an entire box.  We decided that a painted wood floor will be fine I had some scraps of luan in the barn, and decided that it would be sufficient to cover the uneven floorboards and provide a smooth surface for painting.

After placing the luan I installed baseboard and door casings around the inside of the door. I primed everything and then put two coats of semi-gloss latex on the baseboards and casing.  On the floor, I put two coats of latex and two additional coats of clear high gloss urethane to make it easy to clean.

With the carpentry and painting done, I'm ready to hook up the bidet....

handyman