Thanks, Lauralou! I love that sink too, I feel really lucky to be putting it in my house. I wanna know what your folks’ sink looks like?! I saw so many old cool, inexpensive, deep, cast iron sinks when I was at the salvage shop, might be a place that you can find a good vintage one if your folks aren’t in a hurry to pass theirs on to you.

Hey Mandolin! You are too sweet, thank you so much, seriously makes my day. I wish you all the best when you start the house hunting process, it’s so exciting once it finally begins! Thanks, and have a great weekend!

Getting the shower ready for tile was one of the parts that I subbed out. They used DensShield Tile backer board around all three sides of the stall, and then for the floor they had a dude come in and lay down a plastic membrane that went up the walls (behind the board) about a foot, and then he poured a special mix of concrete on top of that. It was at this time that he also made the lip for the door so that water wouldn’t go all over the bathroom.

I need to go back in and change out the shower valve and uncover a niche that the guy had accidentally covered when installing the tile backer. Once that is complete I’ll go over every corner with a plumbers caulk to seal it up tight. Finally I will tile with thinset, grout, caulk and seal the tile and it should be good to go! I’ll write more about it as I go!

Might even invest in one of those fancy holder things that people put their TP on.

I bet you can’t!

I think so! I’m going gung ho on this project, so I hope I have lots more to share next week!

Thanks so much, Deb! I really love the sink too. It fits into the little nook created for the sink so perfectly, better than I expected!

Hey Ana! I want to love plumbing, it all makes sense in theory, I just need to build up my confidence. I’m going to try and tackle installing the shower valve too — worst case scenario is that I have to call a plumber. I always figure the more success I have, the easier it gets to do the next unfamiliar thing. I’m glad to hear that you are comfortable with plumbing and I hope that I have the same success! I’ll try and share some new tips and tricks when I begin to tile, especially when it comes to the floor tile. I have tiled a few times and feel pretty comfortable with it. I find these posts from Yellow Brick Home pretty valuable: 1 | 2

Ooof, jack hammering the floor sounds tough! Part of our basement reno was having the worker dudes jack hammer up all the plumbing and replace it with PVC since we were having lots of backups from all the rust that had collected in the old iron pipes. I can’t imagine doing it myself, but I don’t have a second head to figure it out with either. I’m sure you guys will do great at it!

One question – what kind of waterproofing system are you going to use in the shower?