Bathroom Remodeling

August 2010
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2008-11
We bought this house in Nov 2008. I am Japanese and taking bath has been just my part of my life. However, we fall in love with this house so much that we accepted fact that the house only had Shower in Master. We were thinking… well, bathtub can be easily installed! We can knock down the closet and place shower there and place bathtub where current shower stall is.

2010-01
So yeah… about one year has passed. We got estimate from a few contractors and I was like wow… placing bathtub is not so cheap especially in our case, major pluming work was involving. First we got estimate from homeDepot. They told me it will be like $30K. Then we met a couple of contractors – both were like $13k or so… because of the limited space we have, I have to pick small bathtub and of course, smaller shower…. I just didn’t see the value paying that much to have small bathtub with smaller shower space… Long story short, I decided that steam sauna is what I want…
1) Greener – it use much less water than bath
2) Don’t have to sacrifice on shower space
3) and a lots of benefit – just google “steam sauna benefit”

Old Bathroom

2010-08
We found one company called Bath-Pro who we feel we can trust and offers very reasonable price. The construction was finally started on Aug 9th.

2010-08-09 [Day 1]
They did demo

Bathroom Remodeling Day 1

2010-08-10/11 [Day 2 & 3]
They placed bench and soffit ceiling so that they can tile the ceiling.

Bathroom Remodel Day 3

2010-08-10/11 [Day 4~]
I got too excited about design and forgot to check some critical thing.. Permit. My husband thought that they are professional so he assumed that they already got permit for this construction. But I wasn’t sure so I checked with them… they told me it is up to home owner… We requested Permit from city. Phew… good thing we checked with them. If you google “bathroom remodiling permit”, you will see all kinds of helpful information. We decided that getting Permit is right thing to do especially installation of Steam Sauna involves running electric cable etc…

2010-12-11

So they are still in process of getting permit right… Though good thing we asked them to go ahead get a permit. Because the way they were going to install steam unit actually violates the city code. So now that they have to re-draw some of the plan and re-submitting to the city… Though there are slight improvement since the last time.

1. they installed floor (it was carpet before)

2. they installed steam generator (which needs to be moved to outside in order to meet city code)

3. We did some upgrade by ourselves. Mirror, faucet and light. We really like how it turned out.

Some floor and New Mirror & Faucet

2010-12-28
Project Manager came back with City Permit and change of plan. According to the City of Goodyear, steam generator needs to have at least one foot of space from each wall and installing underneath of the bench didn’t meet the criteria.

Again, I am so glad to take time to get City Permit before we move forward with this project. It cost us $350 and very long period of time but I think it is worth it. So now the steam generator is installed above the steam shower room.

2010-12-30
Yey! FINALLY, we have wall in the bathroom. We haven’t had wall for let’s see… about 4 months. Now our power bill should be better…

2011-01-05
Installing KERDI paper to cover the space between DensShield (Tile Backer that has built in moisture barrier)

2011-01-11

Some more tiles has been installed.

Space between tile and wall...

woo, more tiles!

2011-01-11
Oh wow, this is pretty! Now the grout between tiles and steam controller is installed. Pebble floor and wall. I can’t wait to get in this beautiful steam shower!

steam controller and grout are installed

2011-01-19

corner pieces are installed. now it is rounded!

2011-01-24

Glass are installed and looks nice. Quality of the glass are better than expected. Very contemporarily looking. They put extra whole on side-wall. I wonder how they are going to fix…?

Glass Door is in

Glass Door Installed.

oops... they placed hole on wrong place... how they are going to fix?

2011-08-24

So we have been enjoying this Steam Room for a while. I just love it. I don’t miss taking bath at all. I use Steam every single day even when outside is 112 degree.
Everything turns out to be okay. I have no complain about final product. The whole on the side-wall was filled and I can’t tell where was the whole So it is all good.