A Tub by the Window — and the Day We Cut a Hot-Water Line

Day thirty-four. The bath became a design, and the floor reminded us — again — what lives beneath it.

The layout, finally locked. The bath is this house’s signature gamble, and today its geometry was settled:

• A masonry tub, 1500 × 1000 mm, cement-reinforced walls, positioned at the window — so a long soak comes with a view out, not a wall
• Ceiling extractor fan, because sustained bath humidity is the enemy of a timber-framed building
• The rest of the room dry — a proper zone for undressing and toweling children
• And the detail we’re proudest of: an oversized sliding door aligned so the tub is partly visible from the main dining sofa. Parents eat; children splash; nobody has to hover in a doorway.

We visualized the layout by staging the empty room with battens and photographing it, then having an AI image generator render the finished scene over it — an instant, startlingly persuasive preview that settled debates a floor plan never could.

The floor strikes back. Final excavation ran in both bathrooms — armed with today’s absurdly effective purchases, a ₩6,000 hand trowel and a ₩16,000 steel dustpan (now we understand why every demolition professional carries exactly these). Mid-dig, the breaker tripped and water seeped: we’d torn through a CD conduit (electrical) and nicked the hot-water line in the same stretch.

The recoveries: hot-water line cut back clean and re-joined with repair fittings; the damaged conduit’s wiring insulated, taped, and made safe. No flood — the meter was off before the first swing, the lesson from two days ago already paying rent.

And still the boards go up: three more insulation panels around the future bath, plus timber trim tracing the lintel and post lines outside. Even on accident days, the surfaces advance.