Living room.

Master Bedroom.

Ok, now let’s begin drywalling. 

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The Before

So, here we are in the before. In the very foreground is the rough cut soil that is thankfully decomposed granite.  Still, that all had to be finished.  There is a good 7′ of clearance between the bottom of the walkway and the underside of the plank going from the lane to the main deck.

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The Landing

First, the landing to our main doorway was really a problem.  I cannot find any photos of the before, and that’s probably because I was repressing the image.  In any case, the gist of it is that the steps to the main walkway landed in a section that was about 4" below the actual level of the door landing area, so you would have to cross a slight "depression" and then go up again to get to the front door.  This was a result of the height requirement of the stairs.  It looked awful, but Chris said, "We can’t do anything about it; County requirements."  I said:

"You’ll fix it.  You always think of something and then fix it."

The picture below shows the first step in fixing that.  Notice how the landing area beneath the step and the entry pad to the right are on the same level? 

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First, you need radiant barrier foil. This is essentially a shiny foil-like barrier that is applied to the surface of the floor before any of the radiant tubing is put down. Shiny side up. It was developed initially by NASA for astronauts’ suits, and it’s a fundamental part of any radiant heating system. You can read more about how radiant foil works by checking out this fact sheet, or by searching on the topic.

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See, initially, our bathroom plan looked like this:

The shower is on the left and the big whirlpool tub was in the corner.  But two things happened:

1. I felt that the tub wouldn’t be used that much, for a number of reasons.
2. Every time I looked at the space, it just seemed like an odd arrangement.

How Much are Whirlpool Tubs Used, Anyway?

Turns out, not very much.  Of course my decisions was based only on an informal polling of 4 different people, each of which had a relatively new house that they lived in for the past 5 years or less.  In the space of 2 years, most people used their tub once or twice over that 2-year period! Another couple we met who recently completed construction on their home simply chose to put in a nicely designed tub in their master bath. Most people out here use hot tubs rather than take individual baths. If you’re considering a spa bath tub for your place, you might want to read this excellent article from HGTV.

As for us, we currently have a nice, deep clawfoot tub that I’ve probably used 3 times in the 9 years we’ve lived here at Pine Cottage. In El Granada, we will be installing a 2-person SoftTub on the deck off the master bedroom.  It’ll be an amazing spot to sit and view the ocean with a glass of wine, and its view will be wonderful.  Finally, what really bothers me about spa tubs is that in water-hungry California, it seems wrong to use 50 gallons of water for an hour and then just dump it down the drain. Plus, you have to install a heater in the tub to make the bathing experience worthwhile, because that much water just cools off after a short while.  So, after thinking about all of this, it seemed silly to put in a huge tub costing many thousands that would likely just sit there taking up the grooviest spot in the bathroom.

Odd Spaces

Let’s face it, when you have a lot like ours, you’re bound to have a house with odd spaces, and the master bath is a prime example.  Here’s a shot of the room with the studs, where the single sink stall for Chris at left, and the space behind, with the drain intended for the steam shower and the back corner where the tub was initially intended to go.

Well, the more I thought about that shower jutting out from the wall, and how you’d only see the tub sort of through the glass of the shower, the more bothered I became.  It seemed to me more logical to have the tub surround forward of the taller design of the shower.  And then I found out that you can easily make a shower space both shower and steam room.  I saw the products on Mr. Steam’s website and thought: "Yep, this is the best way to go." One rather difficult phone conversation with Chris, and voila! The new bathroom design:

Note: this change was way more "Voila!" for me than it was for Chris, but after thinking about it, Chris also agreed it was the right choice.  Here below, you can see the rough framing he did for both the new location of the tub and for the shower.  We both really liked the curving bench in the steam shower, which Chris and Lora came up with together while thinking about how best to use the space. 

Chris also had an opportunity to install a custom shower pan for the steam shower, so you can see below where he has started, first with a morter bed carefully sloped to have all water flowing to the drain.  After this set up, Chris tested it to ensure the water drained properly.  It also turned ou that there was no water leakage, even though the next step will involve putting down a leak-proof membrane over the bed and about 6 inches up the side.  Here’s his work so far. Max approves!

For me, I can picture this now all complete, and it’s a good thing I have a vivid imagination, because at this stage, this is what keeps me excited.

This ventilator has four ports, 2 for fresh air supplied to the house from the outside, and 2 for stale air exhausted from the house.  Typically, most ventilation for houses involves either air being forced  into the house, or air being forced out of the house, but not both.  What makes this setup different, energy efficient, and quite comfortable for the occupants, is that the air exchange is balanced, the unit itself contains a heat exchanger.  This heat exchanger contains many very thin aluminum baffles through which both the supply air stream and the exhaust air stream pass, but without mixing. The warm, stale air being exhausted from the house passes its heat to the fresh, colder air coming into the house by means of these baffles, which act as heat conductors.

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This first shot shows the garage, no wiring and no finish work, on a rainy December day. In the center is the doorway through to the utility room, where we stored and locked up all the tools for the job.

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