Upstairs Downstairs

Even without the toilet tank to frame in place, we can get ready to do that work and plan the plumbing from the upstairs toilet. So today Noel cut out one floor board (they will eventually all come out of the upstairs bathroom, to make a new sloped tiled floor).

The question was where we would run things like the plumbing vents and the drain from the toilet, and it looks like this time the framing lines up just right to make a nice straight run down.

After he removed the floor board, Noel shifted things aside in the upstairs bathroom so he could get into the corner of the staircase wall with the niche.

He carefully cut away the lath on the back of the wall -- they just lathed it like it was a real wall then made the curved staircase wall over it -- to reveal the back of the niche.

Looking down, you can see there is plenty of room in there for plumbing, especially because once you get above the upstairs bathroom floor level, the only drain we need to accommodate is from the sink -- everything else drains below the floor level.

We'll have to make that wall a little thicker to accommodate the toilet tank, but it looks very doable.

While Noel was doing that, I began the process of making the sinks. I like to start designing larger things with cardboard models, so I can get a feel for the size and shape of things. This is my first pass at the downstairs sink, so I measured our current bathroom sink and made a close pass at the design I'd like to end up with.

With the model tacked in place, we can see how we feel about it for a while before I move on to a more solid model. I'm still divided on the sink apron -- the part that comes down about four inches in front. An ordinary sink would be set in a countertop (or integral to a countertop) and would be between 3/4" and 1-1/2" at the edge there. There's no structural need to make it a thick edge, so this is purely a design decision. Something to think about this week.

Also, apologies to everybody reading us through Feedly. They've messed up how they ask for images and are sending bad requests and getting broken links lately. Nothing we can fix on our end, unfortunately.

posted by ayse on 03/23/14