Lots of things have been going on in and around the lightBOX studio project. While the full wall and floor tile of the bathroom has been ongoing, the electrical service and fixture installation has been wrapped up and the plumbing service and waste lines have been placed into the ground.
In order to get to that point we've hung all the sheetrock, taped and floated, primed the walls, hung and hooked up the mini-split unit HVAC and set the laminate floor. The place is really starting to shape up and feel like a finished space.
Sheetrock hanging was a straightforward affair. There were some corner details that needed some attention but by and large everything was hung in a short day. After we had a third-party inspector come by over the weekend to give us our wallboard inspection, we taped and floated the next Monday.
Wall tile was started in the bathroom as soon as the sheetrock was hung above the 4' height behind the sink. The sink is a great IKEA sink, Hollviken, that we decided to wall mount rather than have it sit on a cabinet. This decision mostly had to do with the fact that we have no distinct separation of the shower from the rest of the room based on our space constraints. To this end we fabbed up a cantilevered steel support that is framed into the wall studs to create a nice cantilevered effect for the porcelain sink. Everyone is happy with how this is turning out, as it makes for a very clean and uncluttered space.
White 3x6 subway tile in a vertical stacked pattern runs to a 4' level at the sink and toilet wall and to the ceiling on the other two walls of the space.
Due to a few orphan black tiles that made their way into the boxes of tile have given us license to scatter a few more throughout the room.
The most important portion of the work that has been ongoing has to do with getting the space hooked up to city utilities. The electricians have built the service on the exterior of the building and the plumbers have put in a lift station so we can pump the waste to the very shallowly located city sewer main at the street.
The electrical service is composed of a 200 amp service panel that serves the studio as well as the future sub-panel that will be located on the house/addition, the City Utility's meter can, and the weather-head where the city electrical drop attaches to the building.
The plumbing service included running the waste line all the way out to the street and tying into the existing yard-line, installing a lift station (tank, pump, and alarm) right beside the downstairs storage/utility room, and laying the water line from the existing house.
The shallow city sewer main at the street caught us a bit off gaurd, and having the lift station virtually fill the set-back has forced our hand to seek permission from the inspector to use an electric water heater, and cramped downstairs storage/utility room have made us seek out an efficient tankless heater. We prefer to use a gas water heater, and preferably a tankless one, but we were going to have a bear of a time getting a gas line run back to the studio. Thankfully the city inspector understood our plight and our obvious desire to make this place efficient, and has granted us permission to use an electric tankless water heater. We've settled on the Steibel Eltron Tempra20. It looks and feels like a very high quality German product and we can't wait to get it installed to see how well it performs.
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