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Day 913…

May 5th, 2010


Nope, I didn't finish the bathroom this weekend like I'd thought! I'm tired of it! I never want to see tile again!! I might actually be afraid to enter the bathroom once it is complete… if ever!

Besides taking forever, it is actually coming along quite nicely and I have some pictures for you to view. I also installed a version of  Lightbox Lightbox instructions:

- You can navigate using your mouse, hover over the left or right side click close or grayed out area to close.

- You can use the arrow keys to navigate through pictures, Esc. to close. to make the picture viewing more enjoyable.

Just to take you back, Jen and I got our inspiration for this project when we were in Italy. We stayed at a hotel that had a completely tiled bathroom, with a waterfall tub, rain shower and LED light design in the ceiling, so we decided to design a bathroom that would incorporate some (or all) of these into our own bathroom. We designed it to have the rain shower, regular shower, waterfall bath filler and a fiber optic star field ceiling.

Inspiration in Italy

Inspiration in Italy

Master Plans 1A

Master Plans 1A

Master Plans 1B

Master Plans 1B



We framed and waterproofed the floor, shower and tub area.

Schlutering

Schlutering

working hard

me working (or posing)

Shower waterproofed

Shower waterproofed



We picked some tile we liked and dry fitted it before sticking it down.

Tile that caught our eye

Tile that caught our eye

dry fitting shower

dry fitting shower

dry fitting the floor

dry fitting floor


removed the cabinets

Removed the cabinets

removed cabinets for tiling

Removed the cabinets

We decided to remove the Cabinet and tile under it incase we decide to change out the counter later down the road (which is part of the master plan).

Next we stuck the dry fitted tile down with mortar then cut some more and stuck them down as well. This is a long process when you only work at it evenings and weekends and have a cheap Princess Auto wet saw that only cost $50 and sprays water everywhere when you use it.

dirty

The floor dirty from mortar.

tub taped for protection

Shower and tub partially complete

tub

Dry fitting more tiles around the tub


Almost done

Shower and tub almost complete

 
shower with edging

Putting the tile edging up on the shower

 
tub with edging

Tile edging and more tile around the tub



And this is were I'm at today. The tub side is grouted and the fixers are on. this is what the waterfall tub filler looks like while filling the tub.
Where I'm at on May 4th

I didn't have the magnetic access hatch for the bottom of the tub on that is why the picture is cut off an on an angle.


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Posted in Masterbath |

Bathroom Project

April 30th, 2010

The Master bath project is nearing completion! I should be done all the tiling by the end of this weekend! Well except for one tile. Yeah! One… My estimate was exactly one full tile short, well actually I screwed up one cut, so I would have had exactly enough to complete if I hadn’t cut that one tile in the wrong direction… Anyway I’ll post pics soon when I’m complete, also I’ll get that video of the star field up soon.

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Walt’s Warning!

April 29th, 2010

What the heck happened to me last night?
Who is this guy?
How does he know my name??
What does he want from me??

http://waltswarning.com

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Posted in Video, Web Interface |

What is the deal with my fonts?

April 26th, 2010

Okay so when I first implemented these custom fonts on my site I thought they looked good, now They seem to look like crap. I don’t know if it is the monitor I am looking at but I seem to be left with pixelated crap that looks like these:

"This Crap and This Crap" (crappy image)

Now to compare how monitors render this font image here is the true type:
This crap!
and
This crap!

What is going on here? I suspect that it might have something to do with monitor resolution, but I’m not sure. Let me know is you have a Mac if this font looks okay or not? My theory is that is has something to do with Microsoft’s ClearType. I’ll look into this further but really if these font’s look as bad as they do on this monitor I’ll have to replace them with something that works better. I see why designers use JPGs for headings and other decorative fonts.

** UPDATE **

So apparently it is monitors are displaying these fonts differently. I have tried numerous scenarios (different windows editions, different browsers and browser editions… ) and it seems that it is the monitor is making my font’s look cheep. So if the first and second set of fonts look identical you have purchased a cheap monitor. However if the second set of fonts look considerably better, congratulations on a good monitor purchase.

On a side note, over the summer I will be changing the look and feel of this site and I probably won’t be using custom fonts like I did here. Also I’ll try to implement some flash to make my site flashy-er.

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Posted in Web Interface |

Another game!

April 21st, 2010

How about this game? You blow up stick people with rockets! That has to be fun!

Click here to play Destroy the Village

for more games check out http://www.freewebarcade.com

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Posted in Games |

Fancy Pants

April 12th, 2010

Another fun game brought to you by Free Web Arcade.

Click here to play Fancy Pants

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Posted in Games |

New post

April 9th, 2010

So I need some more stuff to write about. I have made some progress on my Master Bath, and finally all my tile and edging has arrived so I can start to finish it. Today I’ll be pulling out the cabinet and toilette to prep the floor for tiling then hopefully Sunday start the walls.

Next projects, in no particular order, fence rough landscape, patio and finish the deck. probably a new BBQ in there somewhere as mine is kinda in need of replacement. (out door kitchen?)

So when I’m not doing my projects what else should I be Blogging about? Let me know in the comments.

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Posted in Uncategorized |

Master Bathroom Update!

March 23rd, 2010

I have made quite a lot of progress these past few weeks, (mostly why I haven’t been posting too often) and I have pictures to show.

First thing I did was stiffen up the floor with 3/4″ plywood where the Shower and tub are to be installed.

plywood and tub

Here I have the tub in place for testing, plywood is in place underneath it.

 
framing

Start of framing wall to bring it out 2 inches


More framing

More framing and another test for fitting for the bathtub.

 
I had to lower the ceiling over the tub and shower to incorporate the star field that I created in and earlier post. I dropped the ceiling by 4″ and recessed the star field about an inch to help it stand out a little. I also lowered the shower column where the rain head will go another 1 1/2″ which will later be tiled.

Start of framing in the ceiling

 

Location for star field in bathroom ceiling.



Rough in for shower valves

Rough in for shower valves also framing for shower which extends onto the roof for a rain shower head.

 
In this picture you can see my attempts at dampening the sound from the blower motor, I have place one inch foam on the floor, insulation around the tub and am using sound proofing insulation in the tub frame. Hopefully that will do something, at least I can say I tried.
week 4

I believe this is my 4th week. This is where I am now.



So That about sums up to where I am at now. It is a slow process, mostly because I’m only working on it a couple of hours at a time after work but also because I really don’t know what I am doing most of the time and am just winging it, but lets keep that a secret.
If you have any questions or comments please post them below.

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Posted in Home Improvements, Masterbath |

Star Field (Complete)

March 19th, 2010

In my first post I kind of explained how I made the star field, in this one I’ll show the results.

Location for star field in bathroom ceiling.

In our bathroom I lowered the ceiling 4″ over the tub and made a recessed area of where the light panel was going to be placed. everything was taped, mudded, primed and painted prior to the star field install. (unfortunately I never took a picture of this).

After we got the star field in place I patched all the holes and placed a trim around the edges. The end result is shown below, however I still have to cover the access to the CoolSky LED light box and receptacle. I also created a video, but I have to remake it as I filmed it in total darkness and the camera kept going out of focus, it was also a 200M file so it would take quite some time to download. I’ll try to make a better (smaller) video over the weekend.

Completed star field ceiling, well I still need to cover the hatch where the LED module is hiding on the left hand side.


Lit 1

View standing outside of tub (long exposure)


Lit 2

View looking up from the tub. (How many constellations can you find?)



Video of CoolSky LED functions will be coming soon.

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Posted in Star Field |

Star Field (post 1)

March 19th, 2010

I have finally started the star field that will be ending up in my master bathroom ceiling (you can follow that story here).

Star Plot

Star map for ceiling star field. (Click to enlarge)

First off I created an actual star map using wikisky.org then plotted four different star sizes overlaying the map using photo shop. My result is shown on the left, it was scaled down to fit on a 8 X 10 sheet of paper. It worked out so that there are about 170 stars or so in a 3′ X 5′ area.


Me plotting

Me plotting stars and measuring for the middle support braces.

 
primed and covering

3 x 5 sheet primed and I'm starting to cover it with construction paper.

Next I primed and painted a 3′ X 5′ sheet of MDF (which I hope was a good material to use, time will tell). I then covered it with construction paper and drew the a scaled grid on it. Then using the printed 8″ X 10″ paper I plotted each star to the best of my abilities and marked it size with different colors. After all the plotting was done and I was satisfied with where the stars where, I drilled each hole one by one using three different sized drill bits (3/64, 1/16, 3/32). I then flipped the board over, remarked what size each star was, and Jen (my wife) and I pushed through the number of fibers I needed for each hole until all 200 of them were completed. Once the fibers where in place, Jen glued them in place with clear silicon.

Installing the fibers

Arranging the fibers

 

Pushing fibers through the board


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Posted in Star Field |

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