Soaking Tubs

If you have more than one bathroom in the house you might consider installing something different than your ordinary run of the mill bath tub and shower.  With a little imagination and planning you can build a real show piece with out spending too much more than in you would spend putting in a standard bath.

We decided to install a soaking tub in what will be our guest bath.  We purchased it from http://www.arpbathtubs.com/soaktub.html 

It is absolutely amazing.  If you are looking for something different I highly reccomend them.  They are very relaxing.

We wanted this bathroom to have a tropical feel so we used the same IPE for the tub panels and shower that we used on our deck.

IPE is such a lovely wood.  It looks similar to Brazilian Cherry.  The wood is a little tough to work with as it is very dense and needs to be predrilled before using screws.

We painted the walls behind the shower black enamel and lined them with Plexiglas and caulked all the open edges.  That will protect the walls from moisture.  We used a standard shower pan and put metal flashing on the bottom edge so when we put down the IPE floor, the water will drain in the shower pan.

Since we didn’t want screws to show we put the panels together from the back. We used tile spacers to keep the wood spaced evenly while we did this.  We installed them one edge on top of the next , like a puzzle so there are very few points where we actually had to use screws to attach them. 

The one place that screws showed was on the panel between the toilet and shower so I decided to put towel hooks there to hide them.

One of the best things about building or remodeling your own house is that you get to make all the decisions so when it comes to doing something like a bath room try thinking outside the box and and do something a little different.