Bathroom Remodel Part 8: The Mirror

Part 1: Demolition
Part 2: Plumbing
Part 3: Material selection and Floor Tile
Part 4: Shower Tile Prep

Part 5: Shower Tile
Part 6: Walls and Caulk
Part 7: Bathtub Siding

Of course because this project was not already super difficult and involved, we designed and fabricated a custom mirror frame complete with overhead lighting as well. Because I guess we hate life and having a life.

The mirror glass itself I got from a coworker who was doing a bathroom remodel of his own and was giving it away for free! They were almost the perfect size for our project, but unfortunately not for my car. He was kind enough to drive 50 minutes round-trip to drop them off just to get them out of his garage though, and in return I gave him a bottle of wine. Fair trade, right?

Bathroom Remodel Part 7: Bathtub Siding

Part 1: Demolition
Part 2: Plumbing
Part 3: Material selection and Floor Tile
Part 4: Shower Tile Prep

Part 5: Shower Tile
Part 6: Walls and Caulk

One of the major design elements of this bathroom is the Teak wood, or in our case, Afrormosia "the poor man's Teak" wood. This stuff is seriously beautiful, just wait.

Since my favorite hardwood store (Macbeath's in SF or Berkeley, if you're interested) only sells these boards at 12" widths, We decided to join two skinnier 8" pieces together to give us the required width for the side of the tub.

Megha's Planter Bench

One of my very good friends came to visit the Bay Area a few weeks ago. I probably owe a large portion of my blog's popularity to her, because she forwards my posts to just about everyone she knows (and she's a very well-connected lady). 

Megha had talked about wanting to learn to use power tools, and I mentioned a while ago that during her next visit she should stay over at our house and let me help her build something. We had talked about building something small like a simple box planter, but when she ended up driving her own car up to visit, we got a little more ambitious. 

Like myself, Megha has been getting into gardening (as much as she can on her LA balcony). Unfortunately she doesn't have a lot of areas that take advantage of the sun due to the shade of her solid balcony wall. She had been talking about building a raised planter bench to put her vegetables on, and finally she did!

We only had an evening and a bit of morning to complete this project, so I kept the design pretty simple. The frame was to be constructed of redwood 2x4s and the shelves out of 1x3s and 1x4s.

We came back from a shopping trip at Lowe's around 8:30pm, so I tasked Boyfriend with making us some dinner while we retreated to my garage workshop. Role reversal, I love it. 

Fireplace Makeover Part 2: Yummy Mantel

Catch up on Part 1!

Here's where I left off last time. I had just finished the tile and was ready for the FUN PART (I like woodworking, can you tell?)! This post is long, so buckle up.

For the materials, we decided to go with a combination of MDF for the face and poplar wood for the trim. Both materials are paint-grade, which will give us a super smooth surface once we paint everything.

We just barely got away with using one 4'x8' sheet of MDF, which we had ripped into long boards at the hardware store, then when we got home we ripped them up even more. For this, I got to use my new toy, the Kreg Rip Cut!

Board has already been ripped. I'm just showing you how it works.

This thing is seriously fantastic. I've always run into problems with ripping large boards on my own, and table saws scare me (um, hello unprotected blade sticking up in the air that I'm supposed to slide my fingers near, no thank you). This Rip Cut guide attaches to most circular saws and has a built-in ruler, so no measuring is required EVAR! It took some calibrating, which the instructions are very clear about, but once we got it set up, it worked like a dream. Basically there is a right angle guide (you can see it on the right-hand side below) that slides along the edge of the board, while the blade cuts at the specified width. Awesome straight cuts most of the time (obviously if your guiding edge is not straight, you'll have issues) and added confidence when using your circular saw!