Setbacks.
The light we selected for the bathroom originally arrived scratched, and had to be sent back. The lighting store promptly lost the order, and it took weeks to get a replacement. Finally got that installed, only to discover it was too dim, even with max wattage fluorescent bulbs. I had had reservations about its brightness when we first saw it near the beginning of summer, but was assured that our senses were being thrown by all the other lights in the store. Nope. Should have trusted first instinct. I also hadn’t had a good feeling about the color temperature of fluorescents. Even with warmest available tube type, the light feels cold. So after everything, the “Forecast” went back to the store and we went back to the drawing board, focused on glass and halogen this time.
Yesterday finally cleared time to install the tub/shower fixture set. Halfway through reading the directions, the “should have been obvious” dawned on me – you can’t install a full shower fixture set without ripping existing tile and backer board off the wall — there’s no way to connect supply pipes to the pressure regulator unless you can get your hands inside the wall. I think I had approached this problem like most plumbing — thought that I could just install new handle, spout, and showerhead over some kind of standard valve. But it doesn’t work that way. If you don’t want to rip up the wall, you can buy just a “trim kit” to change the look of an existing set (thanks baald), but of course the range of trim kits available for your existing valve is much more limited. Now grappling with whether to go for it and rip out some shower wall, or live with a lesser choice. At this point, very eager to just have the job over and done with. But it would also suck to spend all summer on a project like this and have such a visible detail stuck in the 80s.