Window Window in our Tub

I did not include this with the rest of the bathroom due to the pain that went into figuring out what to do with it. I have been in many houses and even lived in a few with the bathroom window in the tub area. Therefore, I had never really thought of the difficulties of having a window in the tub. Now, with these older houses this apparently didn't originally present a problem. This is because it used to be that people only took baths. However, now that people take showers having a window right in the water line is a pain in the butt. (Hence our missing sill and mold throughout that wall). Our first idea? Go to Lowe's and ask. We had some ideas that we thought might work so we headed over to the store and presented our conundrum. The guy listened, scoffed, and said "take it out". While that was technically advice it wasn't terribly helpful to us so we had to get a little creative.

Problem number 1: What to use for the sill?
So the natural choice for a window sill is wood. Wood is not so good with water however so we needed something else. On an unrelated trip to the store, we happened to be in the tile cutting area and sitting there like it was waiting for us was a display of marble. They came in different lengths and widths perfect for window sills. We were also lucky enough to find a guy at Lowe's who was willing and able to make some questionable cut in the marble so that it would actually look like a sill. (We had previously delt with someone who was very unwilling to even do a simple cut in normal tile). So problem #1 solved. We had a sill that wouldn't fall apart with water. To make sure that water didn't pool on the sill we installed it at an angle.

Problem number 2: How to frame out the window?
There were a couple of problems associated with this. The first was that we didn't really think about how we were going to frame the window before we tiled. Because of this, we really didn't leave enough room to use tile as the frame and so we had to find something else that was waterproof. This was solved by finding this cool trim that looks like white wood trim, cuts like wood but is actually a plastic material. So, now we had the trim but how do we attach it? I had tiled right up to the edge of the window so we couldn't nail it in. Also, since the house is 50 or so years old, nothing is perfectly square anymore. So Nate got out his handy dandy tools and cut and trimmed until the rectangular pieces fit to frame the window and the trim could be nailed to the trim. We also used caulk behind the trim and in the seams to make it as waterproof as possible and it finally looked like a finished window!

Problem number 3: Privacy

So the last issue we had with the window in the tub was the fact that it faced our neighbors window and it was in our tub and it was a very clear and the perfect height to give a show to anyone who happened to glance over. Since I am really not a fan of having a curtain in the shower, we once again headed over to Lowe's to investigate a solution. We found two very viable options. The first is basically a stick on frost of the glass. For our window that would have run about 25 dollars. While a good option, option #2 was a lot cheaper. For about 3 bucks you can get a can of spray paint that frosts the glass and doesn't paint it. Besides the cost benefit, it also comes off with a little acetone so we can change it if we want to. Some things about it that aren't as nice are that if you don't follow the directions to keep it at least a foot away from the window then drips form. This isn't really noticeable as long as you don't try to fix it which of course I did. It's like when you try to cut your own bangs for the first time and they don't come out even so you trim a little more... then a little more until you're left with these really short hairs that stick straight out from your forehead. Anyway, I've been told that it's not noticeable, but it definitely is not completely smooth. the great thing is that we now have a private shower that does not require a curtain.

Lesson learned? When building a bathroom, try your absolute hardest to not but a window in the tub.

 

For prosperity sake I thought I would include in this post the finished bathroom with all the accessories.