Redoing back bath - in progress

I have been doing tons of research on the house and it is very clear that the 2 bed 1 bath addition at the very back of the house has nothing to do with the historic details of the house that we are trying to preserve. For that reason, it will be remodeled in a neutral style in mostly white since it isn't really possible to try and make it match the awesome design and woodwork of the rest of the house.

In general, when doing whole house remodels, it's a good idea to repeat design themes throughout. In this case, some elements from work I've done to the house will be repeated - mainly the 6x6 white tiles in running bond pattern and white track lighting that doesn't make a statement but simply illuminates. I used the white tiles in the kitchen above the red 6x6 pattern so that I could add a vent fan in the kitchen which was much needed. I also added white 6x6 tiles above the old clay tiles in the bathroom to raise the shower head. These white tile surfaces provide a functional surface while blending into the wall and not distracting from the old tile work which is probably from the '20s on the bath floor and the '30s on the wall in the bath and kitchen.

The back bath shower was originally 1/8" Masonite which is pretty odd since it is not an effective moisture barrier. If you know the stuff, it seems about as strong as really good cardboard.

The obvious choice was to do the shower in white 6x6 to continue the theme to unify the design throughout as much as reasonably possible.

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The white track light I added has LED bulbs and was also used in the kitchen. It's a flexible system that simply adds light where it's needed. 

The downstairs bath also has unobtrusive white LED lighting in the form of recessed 4" cans. 

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One thing that's odd is the bath has '20s plumbing fixtures. I'm still trying to figure out what has happened to this house over the years but the fixtures may be from an earlier upstairs half bath that was removed when the master dressing room was converted to master bath.

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The wall sink fits well there so I'll simply shine it up.  The '20s wall tank toilet is a 5 gallon flush and will need to be replaced with a modern toilet. Unfortunately, the closet flange (floor drain) will need to be moved back from 16" to 12".

Above you can also see the floor was done in a style to mimic the downstairs bath and will be left for now. 

The ceiling is definitely not large timber redwood like the rest of the house and so will simply be painted fresh white as will the rest of the back addition with this ceiling.

Update:

Back t the toilet... The vent for the toilet is wrong and I have to move back the toilet flange to accommodate a modern toilet so I'm redoing a large section.

Getting there...

Clockwise from top center: 4" toilet drain, 2" toilet vent, 2" shower drain

The 2" vent is now correctly out of the path of water from the toilet flush going down the 4" pipe. The vent is just for displaced air which is why it can have hard bends. The foreground 2" pipe is the shower drain.

It's pretty funny to see the tiny 1 gallon toilet tank next to the old 3-5 gallon wall tank toilet. 

Got the toilet in... 

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Panasonic Wall Whisper Fan

What do you do if you have exposed beam ceilings through most of the house and need ventilation?

No matter how historic your house, ventilation fans are critical for reducing moisture and odor. If you want your original bath to last forever, you need a vent fan. 

Fan retrofits can be tricky since houses weren't built with fans in mind. The standard vent fan is about 12"x12" and fits in the ceiling with a 4" vent duct to the outside. Two of our bathrooms have beam ceilings and the original bath, which we are trying to leave mostly original where possible, has a flat ceiling.

Therefore I was thinking we would need one ceiling vent fan and 2 wall fans for the beam ceiling bathrooms.

However, I cut a pilot hole where the fan would go in the original bath and there would be no room. 

Corner near the shower... The fan shouldn't be directly above the shower or the moisture will damage it

Hard to see but the floor framing is shallow because the observation deck / master closet is above and there's a 2" vent pipe for the toilet going right through.

So I will need 3 wall mount vent fans. I got three of the gold standard Panasonic Whisper line. These are expensive and the best deal I could get was 3 for $500. It's a lot of work to install a vent fan and you want it to last as long as possible so you should get a good one.  

Super nice Panasonic Wall Whisper fan. It's really cute, isn't it? 

It should fit nicely into the corner. 

It's venting out here near the top left corner of the window

The only problem with the whisper fan is that it's so quiet that people don't turn it off. I got a high tech switch so that it turns off automatically. You can get a moisture sensor built into the fan but this system is easier to service if the sensor fails. 

I'm getting ready to install this fan and sensor switch into the back bathroom after the plaster is done. I'll update this post if it doesn't work as well as expected but it should be the bees knees. 

Original Decorative Tile, '39 tile, '60s(?) tile

As you know if you have been following, there appears to have been three major phases of work:

1927-8: original construction, I'd guess 1200 square feet, 1 bedroom and the downstairs bathroom

1939: music room and breakfast nook added, changing room turned into master bath, probably crappy walk in master closet added (without permits and leaky) around this time (windows are single-light wood windows which would fit with this period). Garage seems to match the style of a Maybeck from this era (Wallen II house) and was probably added around this time as the rock fascia matches one put on the music room.

'50s and '60s: back bedrooms and upstairs bath ('50s I think), and linoleum in the kitchen and the last new roof '60s (last owner told me this). Also, I think the crappy master bedroom walk in closet probably had cabinets added because they cover the windows.

I have overlaid the permit records with the date of plumbing fixtures and rough estimates for stylistic features as well as information from the owner who grew up here whose parents bought it in 1960. He told me they did the roof at that time and added the linoleum in the kitchen. All the other work seems to line up with the three permits. 

Using the story I've put together, I can break the bathroom tile into three phases as well. 

1927: original downstairs bath tub and floor tile. In the notes it says the tiles are from Tunisia. 

LOVE these tiles. One of the features that sold me on the house  

I did an image search for Tunisian tiles and found this: 

Look at the little bird! 

credit: 

http://www.elleninturkey.com/2012/09/santa-barbara-sights/

The 1929 Santa Barbara Courthouse has one of the same tiles! It's not the exact same tile, but so similar. I think it's like Mexican crafts sold on the street - everyone makes their own clone of the same hand-painted maracas or more recently NFL themed day of the dead masks.

It appears that these Tunisian tiles were popular during the late '20s. 

Tunisian and Moroccan tiles are more the "Arabian" style of hand-painted decorative tiles than the hand-painted decorative Mexican tiles known as Talavera tiles. I was looking at both and though decorative tiles and terracotta tiles are common in both cultures, they have a notably different "feel." My house has North African style and therefore I should use that type when tiling the master bath.

For reference, these are more Mexican looking tiles at Import Tile in Berkeley

1939-40: These tiles may have been added later as they don't totally match the originals:

Here the circa '40 tile is next to a 4&1/4" square Dal-Tile spa tile. 

It seems odd the decorative tiles match ONLY above the floor. The clay tiles also seem a bit different color than the floor. This and other reasons make me think this base tile was part of a bathroom overhaul in '39

These tiles, and the 6x6" red clay quarry tiles (terracotta), were added to:​

-original bath as base tiles (like a baseboard)​ and around the tub which  may have had a low shower head added at this time

-behind the range as a backsplash​

-laundry sink backsplash​

It's possible that they are original but it seems odd the same accent tiles wouldn't be used throughout the original lower bath. 

I had to repair the range backsplash so I had to take off some tiles. The red clay quarry tiles were labeled "CARLYLE MADE IN U.S.A." and are very similar to the Red Blaze Quarry Tile made by Dal-Tile today. They probably used to be the same color too but they're porous and darken with age.

Lighter tiles are new Dal-Tile quarry tiles

'50s/'60s: some effort was put in to match the original bathroom tiles in the upstairs bathroom. But they are yet a third type of 6x6 clay tiles and accent tiles

Decorative tile is "hmmmm..."

They used Italian thin clay tiles and probably Dal-Tile trim pieces to match original but the accent tiles seem... off. 

I know these are a third type of tile because I found extras. The clay tiles are the thinner, more modern kind from Italy. 

Modern Italian clay tiles are thinner than the old clay tiles which are very thick  

Finally, the mid-century mosaic tiles. 

The wall tile looks '40 but the floor tile looks '60 as well as the shower door

This marble linoleum tile was added at some point. It's over 1/4" ply which may be on top of wood or... 

Here is the mid-century bath.  The tile is made to match the lower bath but the trim is definitely mid-century

The door and shower pan match the master bath and both seem wrong for the house 

So there you have it! 3 phases of work, three sets of tiles, and some other crap thrown in too! I'm doing this research to help develop my design for the master bath tile and upper bath shower repair. I am looking for consistency here! I need to unify the design of the house. A big part of my job when working on old houses is to peel back the dated, halfbaked "improvements" and to remodel and restore the house by using the original style as a guide as much as possible. I think Maybeck had a hand in the '39 addition so I will respect those features as well. I have decided to make the master bathroom look '27 even though it was originally a changing room. I'm looking forward to that!

The tub I want to add to the master bath from VintageTub.com

Raising the shower head, tile layout, and expensive grouts explained

As you can see below, the original downstairs bath tile is quite lovely. I want to preserve the original design, while adding subtle improvements. I talked about adding LED cans earlier (link). Since I'm 6'4", I wanted to raise the shower head which is currently chest height. 

The hole middle bottom is the original height. The mark near the top is where I want the new one to go. 

I carefully extracted the rusty old galvanized pipes when doing the copper plumbing and reused the cool old brass valves. 

I added some brown aluminum flashing to direct the water over the redwood trim and not into the wall behind the tile. 

After adding some cement board for the wall, it looks like I'm going to need to add some mortar to straighten the surface

Here is a confusing diagram of how I'm trying to do the obvious - make the tile even

Evening out to make it so the finished tile looks continuous with the old tile

more straightening  

This is what you call a story stick: you mark out the grout lines on a piece of lathe so you can easily hold it up to the wall and compare layouts. 

Most of the work is setup and layout. The actual tiling goes pretty quick. 

You need a logic to do the layout. In the above pic, I used a standard rule - if the tile is in a running bond pattern, with an accent strip, you typically continue the running bond past the accent strip as if it wasn't there. In the above pic, imagine the area with the jade colored tile to the redwood trim deleted and you can see the running bond pattern is simply "interrupted" by the accent strip. But since I want to use a 1/8" grout line to minimize visual impact, the different 6" tiles top and bottom can't line up. So I centered it on the center line of the tile that dies into the soap dish.

Here's a tricky little piece  

More layout planning

I used my story stick to plan the adjacent wall layout, above. This is a tricky one because the center line is blurred - the middle of the shower valves does not line up with the accent tile, and neither of those line up with the shower head. I'll just pick what looks the best using a bit of logic from before since there is no obvious "correct" layout. 

This option starts with a long edge bullnose 3x6 which looks good along the right side. 

That results in this appearance in the middle. The middle white tile lines up with the middle tile between the shower valves. The accent strip looks a little weird but 2/3 is the best we can do. 

Another aspect of layout you should consider is where the cuts will occur. Having a small piece on the side is fine if you have a plumb wall. If you don't, these pieces will emphise the crookedness of your wall

This is a bullnose corner. Home Depot has regular 6x6 white dal tile and bullnose in stock but not 3x6 long edge bullnose. You might be starting to notice that having an ideal layout requires LOTS of planning. I think it took about a week to get the special order tiles. 

Tile is set  

Now I wait for mortar to set and then grout... 

LOOKS AWESOME!!! 

I used this expensive grout. 

I used expensive white grout. Traditional grout is water permeable. That means bacteria and mold can get into your grout because they have water and food - your body oils and dead skin. 

Traditionally this was prevented with a tile sealer, which is basically a fine oil clearcoat. The oil finish is soaked up by the grout (and stone surface of natural stone tiles) and repels water, directing it down to the drain. You want the tiles, thin-set mortar and grout bone dry or the water behind the tiles will create hairline cracks when it escapes and the materials contract.

Over time, cracking is inevitable because of the expansion and contraction of materials by the changing of temperature and moisture of day and night and through the seasons. Oil finishes have some ability to stretch, but over time they become very tight and hard as they change in chemistry and eventually like sap they become brittle too. 

If you are diligent about keeping your bathroom clean and sealing the grout every 10-15 years, you can avoid complete failure for a century. It is inevitable. However the ubiquitous use of bath fans in modern times has helped moderate changes in moisture. I think every bathroom should have a fan for moisture and odor.

Modern materials have come to the rescue to solve this age old problem. Grouts resembling plastic in texture in cured form have come onto the market which are extremely durable and water repellent throughout. First of this kind was epoxy grout, which is very effective but a sticky mess to install. Everything used to wipe it up essentially has to be thrown away.

The cool new thing is urethane grout. Like urethane or acrylic paint, it is water soluble until it cures, then it is as durable or better than oil paint. I'm a big fan of Zinser BULLSEYE 1-2-3 primer for its amazing sealing and priming properties. This "Fusion Pro - Single Component Grout" is very similar in smell and physical characteristics to the Zinser primer but thicker with lots of sand thrown in. The Fusion Pro grout could possibly be a Zinser primer type product with sand thrown in for texture. The Fusion grout at $55 for a gallon is expensive - enough for a tub to ceiling 4x4 tile 3-wall surround - but worth it's money if it outlasts a small bag of traditional grout at $15 for even 5 years. I wonder how Zinser at $20 something for a single gallon with fine sand added would perform. If it matched the performance of the Fusion grout - hey you could make $25/gal just by pouring sand into paint! There's a money making idea!

Looks like I'm rambling again. The short story is if you want white grout, which I think is beautiful looking, you should probably spend money on fancy urethane type grout.