Time enough at last

(which is the title of the famous Twilight Zone where Burgess Meredith survives nuclear destruction with all the books and then breaks his glasses.)

But I digress.

Already.

My wife and son have departed for more northerly climes, leaving me holding down the fort. It's actually quite a heavy fort, very good at holding itself down without too much complaint, and so in the remaining time I am at long last fulfilling my promise to blog.

Let's start with the bathroom. We designed it. Richard built it. It's beautiful. And Sarah has already covered it a bit in her Letters Home page. To refresh your memory, here's the slideshow she included:

So. What Sarah's magnificent images don't really capture is the finest level of detail of the place. I shall try to rectify this deficiency forthwith.

Here's the floor of the toilet, those same old reclaimed junkyard tiles:

It took many days, but I meticulously dremmeled and sanded all the old glue and grout off of every tile one at a time, and then sarah washed and treated them with oil. They look great. But because they're old and a bit worn, and there should be as little as 0mm of grout between them, it was an ordeal to get them all perfectly laid. Sorry, Richard.

Speaking of floors, check out the floor in the main bathroom:

They're terracotta, but look at their texture... all the flecks of mineral in the clay. it turns out that the darker ones in the checkerboard are just cooked a little longer, which also means that they're a tiny bit smaller than the lighter tiles, which practically means that they were trickier to set in an even pattern. Sorry, Richard. But to his credit, Richard laid all the light ones with horizontal grain, and the dark ones vertical. Nice touch.

Between these two beautifully-floored rooms is a wall, and up in that wall are some windows. These come from our friend Helen, who found a stack of these empty windowframes in her house when she moved in. Richard had already done the wall when we decided to put these in up top. Sorry, Richard.

We have a nice big junkyard sink, and more mirrors will come as we find them at car boot sales.

The countertop is solid ash, made by a very cool woodsmith nearby, and conceals its support beneath it, so that it hovers above the floor. After we had such a nice floor, it seemed a shame to cover it.

But to stand looking at the sink, you miss the real view behind you:

What was once a dingy dark little cave is now gloriously light. Next to the junkyard bathtub (which Sarah painted up real good), the stone wall is gone, and rehabbed junkyard windows take its place. They were a square pane taller; Richard cut them down to size. They open and everything. And of course he had to put up the steel girder to take the load of the building as well. Notice how structurally sound it all is:

I reckon literature is quite heavy, And sturdy.

In the corner next to the tub will go this ebay dental sink:

So that I can shave in the tub. Always wanted one of these. The plumbing is all set up for it, I just need to figure out how to support it.

And did you notice the putty job on those french windows?

Not only did I have to make cardboard templates to get all the glass cut, I then had to putty all that glass in. 24 panes, nearly all of them with curved sides. It was a labor of meticulous, finger-numbing love, shaping the putty and smoothing it one tiny glass pane at a time.

In the bathroom entryway, we have a moroccan lamp:

Which casts nice shadows about. We wanted a chandelier over the bathtub, but apparently that's against electrical safety code. And you can also see the shower window. At the moment, it's empty, which is quite nice, but when the steam machine gets installed in the shower, of course we're going to have to glass it in. But never fear: we got a cool ceramic temple window in Burma, and the window is made to hold it perfectly.

So the shower window will still be cool, even if glassed on the inside.

Here is a picture of the shower through its door:

Besides the glorious overhead rainshower, we have a hand shower and a bathtub tap as well. Because Sarah likes mandy, which is the Indonesian shower: you dump coconuts-full of water over your head out of a bucket. The door (which you can't see here, but which you wouldn't see even if it were closed) is a big juicy sheet of safetyglass. So chunky and transparent. The doorframe is acacia, to withstand the rigors of the steamroom this will someday be. The grout, and the ceiling, is epoxy cement, also steam-resistant. The walls themselves are made of hi-tech cement-backed foam panels, followed by a further layer of normal rockwool. A hotbox of steamy insulation. The ceiling slants, because as a steam room, we want the droplets of scalding hot water to run down to the wall, not drip onto our tender tender flesh.

And did you notice the gutter into which all the water flows?

It's copper. Richard folded it out of a big sheet, and then tiled it in. The floor comes from a Moroccan-stuff shop in bordeaux. They're all slightly different sizes. Richard was very happy about that, I can tell you.

And when you're basking under hot rain looking out at the swaying trees, all the sweating over details seems blissfully worth it.

It took a long time to make. And I love our bathroom.

(see? I blogged!)