Bywater Grange Main Bathroom

The main bathroom photographed OK, but the floor was water-damaged, the vanity was too small, the space rather cluttered, and the shower and bath altogether too fibreglassy. We tore it out.

Here you can see Alan about to shape the joists to give the new floor the correct angle so water runs into the drain that will be in the floor.

Once AJ had finished the subfloor, I did the new plumbing. Of course NZ plumbing does not use either the same gauge of pipes and fittings as the US, nor the same materials in general. Crimped plastic pipes are popular because they are cheap, but we went copper and brass.

Additionally we have a "low pressure" hot water system and central heat exchanger system, to accomodate the wood-burning stove's exchanger. This means that there is both low- and high-pressure cold water distribution, the former so that mixer-style taps work. It is awfully complicated, and yet another hangover of the "little-brittain" mentality. (Britain has neanderthal plumbing, by all accounts from sympathisers. We postulate this is because Britain was too skint to update its plumbing for about 30 years after WW2.)

Then Damien did our tiling, and we had industrial-grade waterproof linoleum put on our nicely-graded floor.

We installed a "Tastic"-style set of heating lamps for those chilly Winter mornings.

We also put in a huge porcelain sink and a stylish vanity, serviced by a powerpoint with an ELCB/CBR.

The cabinet was outrageously expensive, but as soon as we saw it we knew it was the right one. The door slides to the left to open the cabinet, moving the mirror across the window in sink-centre in the same move, as you can see in the photo below.

This view is as panoramic as possible. It shows the vanity, the cabinet with the mirror-door slid across in front of the window and the huge, 1.8-metre, claw-foot bath.

Note the feature tiles in the wall behind the bath. Kay managed to get tiles for this bathroom from the same studio that supplied the existing feature tile sets in the upstrairs half-bath and for the stove splashback in the kitchen.

As Jonathan likes his showers a lot, more time was spent on the shower head than most of the rest. The huge gooseneck pipe is a custom piece of work to hold up the shower rose.

The rose weighs a lot, it has a machined brass heart. It is 200mm diameter, with 100 holes. Each hole has a rubber nipple that can be massaged to remove scale or buildup. The price took some getting used to, but returns to Google kept finding flaws with alternatives and reasons to think that NZ$158 was quite reasonable for this particular specimen. I think it may have to move on with us if we ever leave here!