December 28, 2015

It's amazing what can be done with a few skills!  We really gifted ourselves this Christmas.  We were having trouble with leaking, mold growing, wood rotting, and mushrooms forming around our shower in the master bath, so we knew that we would be tearing it out to find the extent of the mold growth.  We were very alarmed due to the fact that our home is only four years old.  Ever notice the rim on the vinyl shower bottoms?  It is very flat around the outside edge which is a poor design to prevent water from leaking eventually toward the wall.  Anyway, as this is our forever home, we decided that if we had to tear it out anyway, we might as well put in what we wanted, and I have always loved white marble.  As we are improving around the farm, we keep asking ourselves how we can get things done in a way that it will last the rest of our lives.  Marble
 seems to satisfy that as well.  So I shopped around to get the best price on

marble tile, bought a few basket weave marble tiles for the bottom and niche, and got a professional to put it in for us, due to the building of the shower pan.  We love our new shower! I knew I did not want to put the glass shower door back up, as I was trying to eliminate cleaning issues for the next fifty years and not only was the glass a pain to keep clean, but the bottom track always seemed to look dirty no matter how often I cleaned.  However, I did want to make sure I used a sheer fabric so the light would come through.  I bought a set of white sheer curtains with gray embroidery on it.  It is so sad how when you order curtains, none of them seem to come in at the length they said they were.  These curtains were supposed to be 84" and they were 82"!  So, I let out the top and bottom hems, added some fabric to the back of the top and added buttonholes to the top for the shower clips to go through.  For the liner, it was short as well.  I cut off the top with the grommets and added a band of fabric sewn to the top and to the shower curtain.  To allow me to sew it without getting stuck on the plastic curtain, I had to use strips of paper between the sewing machine foot and the shower curtain.  Once done, you wet the paper to take it off without pulling the stitches.  I love the way it turned out.  My handy husband installed a chandelier over the bathtub where we had a flush mount light.  As he had to add a box in the ceiling to hold the new light, we found that a ceiling medallion covered the extra spaces and edges.  It looks great, too!