More hot water

Kevin called me yesterday with updates on the options for upgrading my hot water to accommodate my spa shower. He actually priced things down to the penny, tax included.

Here are the options:

12,403.06

Replace my existing hot water tank with two tankless gas hot water heaters, including gas permitting and having Puget Sound Energy do the gas service upgrade.

9,965.66

Replace my existing tank with two tankless electric hot water heaters; requires electric service upgrade and still requires permitting, inspection, and work by Puget Sound Energy.

7,940.12

One tankless electric hot water heater added to my existing tank, adequate size to provide unlimited water for all the jets in the shower. Still requires electric panel upgrade.

1,917.50

A smaller electric tankless hot water heater added to the existing tank, small enough that it does not require an electric upgrade. This would limit me to shorter showers using all the jets, but enable unlimited showers if I turn the jets off.

Sadly, the only option I can afford to consider is this last one. Part of why I'm sad is that if I can't eliminate my tank, I don't get any power-saving benefit. And, of course, I don't get to hang out for a half hour or longer in the shower with an all-over body massage going on. But I think it's an acceptable compromise.

Kevin is coming over on Wednesday with the electrician to evaluate my service and determine what's the biggest tankless unit that could be added without requiring a service upgrade.

Meanwhile, I picked out carpet and bathroom tile this week, and I made my final decision on wood and drawer pulls for the vanity. I'm waiting to get a sample of the tile so then I can go to the fabricator for the vanity countertop and pick that out, but I have decided to go with manufactured quartz, probably Cambria.

And I am still torn in my choice for vanity lighting. Most of you have picked #4, and I love that one, except that it uses standard bulbs and I prefer halogen.

My other top choice right now is #5. I found a detail image, and I really like how it looks:

Compare with #4:


So I guess I'm just going to postpone my decision for a few more days.

Well I hope the work actually begins before too much longer, now that I've pretty much made all the decisions I can make that the work depends on. The hot water decision is the last big one. (They won't even manufacture the countertop until the vanity is in place and they can come out and measure.)

You can be sure I'll keep you posted. Meanwhile, let me know what you think about halogen versus standard lightbulbs, and #5 as opposed to #4.

Completely in the dark!

I am totally befuddled with trying to narrow down choices for my bathroom vanity lighting.

At first I was settled on a polished chrome fixture to match the plumbing, but then I found this hardware that is absolutely perfect: the Latitude collection from Gatco.

Since this combines polished and satin finishes, it gives me a lot more "latitude" on other accessories, like lighting fixtures and vanity handles/knobs.

So I've narrowed it down to seven choices. Please weigh in with your opinion.

1.


2.


3.


4.


5.


6.


7.

Context

My friend Scott asked for context. So for those of you who have been to my house and can't picture exactly what I'm doing, or for those of you who've never been to my house, here's a little description.

My house is two levels with a split-foyer entrance. Upstairs is the living room, dining room and kitchen. Also upstairs there are two bedrooms and a full bath. The large one, in the back of the house, was intended as the master bedroom. The bathroom has a door leading into a hallway but also has a pocket door directly into the larger bedroom. The smaller bedroom doesn't really function well as a bedroom: it's very small, and it has French doors with glass, so there's no privacy.

The downstairs as-built was designed with the potential to serve as a mother-in-law apartment. It has a separate back door entrance into a large room that has a small kitchen area in the corner, and it has a small bedroom and a 3/4 bath. In the first post, you can see the "before" photos and the floorplan, with the existing walls as dotted lines. Coming from the front door and going downstairs, you enter a narrow hallway. The garage is on the right, and the closets on the left contain the furnace, hot-water heater, and laundry. In the floorplan, only the very end of this hallway is shown.

So that should provide context for what's getting remodeled. It's pretty much the entire downstairs area.

When I first bought the house in 1999, I had a roommate, and his bedroom was the small downstairs bedroom. We used the large room at the back as our TV room/family room. After he left, I had a few other roommates, but eventually I decided I didn't want or need a roommate, so I used the downstairs bedroom as my guestroom.

After I had my deck built in 2003, including having a sliding glass door leading from the upstairs master bedroom out onto the deck, I decided to move my bedroom downstairs into the large room, using the small bedroom as closet space and a dressing room. I made the upstairs master bedroom into a TV room/guest room, moved my piano into the small upstairs bedroom, and put my office downstairs, essentially in my bedroom.

After the remodel, I'll still have my office downstairs, but it'll be in the back corner of the bedroom, and I'll put some kind of screen between it and the bedroom area to help keep them feeling separate.

OK, I hope that provides the necessary context for Scott and anyone else who was confused.

A tough choice

I woke up at 4:30 this morning; it's not the first time I've lost sleep since the remodel process has started moving forward.

Unable to get back to sleep, I got up and dashed off an email to Kevin. (I keep referring to him as "my contractor," but perhaps it's time to start using his actual name.) He had emailed me to tell me that the electric tankless hot water heater wouldn't be adequate to do the job. So I wrote that I might want to think about scaling back on my plan. I'm thinking I might have to give up the two Water Tiles and just go with the single showerhead plus the handheld. Even that might require enhancing my hot water service, but I'm hoping it can be done much cheaper than the full deal. He's supposed to get back to me and let me know.

I hate to lose that. The whole spa shower idea was so appealing to me, but to spend at least $7000 just for two body jets in my shower is hard to justify.

In Hot Water

I met with my contractor this morning. He got the list from Ferguson's for the bathroom fixtures, and I came out about $700 below my allowance.

That's the good news. Unfortunately, the bad news is ten times that.

Since I am going to have a shower with a regular showerhead, a handheld, and two body sprays, I could potentially pull 2.5 gallons of water per minute with each of those. If I were to keep my 50-gallon tank, I'd have about 2 minutes of shower time before the cold water refilling the tank would pretty much end my hot water supply.

So the choices are to add a tankless hot water heater in tandem with the existing tank, or remove the tank and add two tankless. One tankless isn't enough because it can't heat cold water to shower temperature fast enough for ten gallons of flow. The combination of the tank and the tankless would expand my shower time to about 12 minutes, but for unlimited hot water, two tankless is the only solution.

The problem is that my gas supply is inadequate to drive two tankless hot water heaters (each of which uses a lot more gas than a single tank system), plus my furnace, plus my gas range. This means bringing a bigger gas supply into the house. The combination of installing the two new hot water heaters, removing the existing tank, and running the new line into the house is upwards of $7000; and if it requires them to dig up my landscape in the front of the house, it's a lot worse. They may be able to tunnel in; that remains to be seen.

But I was looking at the option of using electric tankless hot water heaters instead of gas. I might already have adequate electric service, and even if I don't, it seems to me that would be a lot less expensive. So I've dashed off an email to my contractor, and we'll see what he says.

Tomorrow morning I have an appointment to decide on my custom vanity. Next Tuesday I select tile, and probably this Saturday I'll go pick out lighting. I'll be back with details of what I select and what gets decided about the hot water situation.

Polished chrome it is.

Thanks to Melissa and Margot for the input. I really was torn, because I do like the serene feeling of the brushed nickel, but I also like the gleam and sparkle of the polished chrome.

It wasn't really a matter of the money, because if I had a strong feeling, I would've spent more to get what I really like, but because I was torn, I didn't see any point in spending more for the one over the other. And since the polished chrome is significantly less expensive, that seems like a reasonable choice.

And it's not a trivial difference. The retail price on the faucet alone is $312 for polished chrome and $452 for brushed nickel. Add all the shower features--showerhead, handheld, slider bar for the handheld, all the valves (1 temperature control and 3 volume controls), and I probably save around $1000 by going with polished chrome.


Here are some more pictures: the showerhead and the handheld and the temperature valve.




Next: I'm meeting with my contractor on Wednesday morning to talk about all the plans. I'm hoping by then he'll have the options for the hot water heater for me to decide on.

Polished Chrome or Brushed Nickel?

Choices! Choices! How do I make up my mind?


Some things were easy. I picked out this sink:

However, I wanted to go with a wall-mount faucet, and I couldn't find one I liked that also fit the specifications for the sink (which called for a 12" spout). And I really want a single-handle faucet, so when one hand is busy with a comb or razor or toothbrush, the other one has full control of water flow and temperature. So I think I've settled on getting the sink with single faucet hole and this faucet:

Meanwhile, I've selected this toilet. Not only is it cool looking, but it's a dual-flush (one low-volume flush for pee, and one higher-volume flush for poop).

And I decided on a showerhead, hand-held, plus two Kohler Water Tiles:

The thing I'm debating now is polished chrome or brushed nickel? Please give me some advice fast!

Also, I met with the plumber last week and got some bad news. It seems my existing 50-gallon hot water tank will allow me the luxury of using my new spa shower for about 2 minutes at a time before I use up most of the hot water. So it looks like I'm going to have to replace it with a couple of tankless on-demand hot water heaters. Well, at least it's more environmentally friendly.

Starting out

I could have started my remodel blog a while ago and gone through the process of selecting a contractor, but I didn't. So here's where things stand now: I've selected a contractor, emptied out the space, and approved a design.





Here are some before pictures.



When you come downstairs, this is the hallway you enter. You can see the door into the bathroom at the end of the hallway.

Here's my beautiful bathroom. Can't wait for this to go away.

This is the small bedroom and its closet.

And here we have the lovely kitchenette. I guess if my mother ever moved in with me, she'd have loved to stay down here and do her own cooking. And don't you just love that light fixture?

During and after pictures yet to come.