Stolis Wooden Bathtubs
17 June 2010
“Make the World Go Away”
One of the slickest things my wife and I ever did was get a spa for our home. The bad news about it is that it sits outside, because of its size, but the good news is that I made a permanent structure for it, as opposed to one of those redwood patch-together-anyway-you-can rickety jobs that, to me at least, do not give one the impression they’re likely to last more than a season or two. No, I went to the mat on this one, and made an honest-to-goodness separate building for the spa, and we have gotten quite a bit of use out of it over the years.
But one of the things that impedes the pleasure sometimes is just the fact that it is a spa with jets, because it means that when you’re doing your thing with it, and trust me, at my age, you will most definitely want to do your thing with whatever spa you may have available, but with those spa jets, I say, there is the noise of them. And that is true regardless of what they may bring to you in the way of therapy. The other aspect is just the sheer size of the spa itself, because ours is much too large to have in even one of those dream bathrooms I sometimes review, as I don’t know, some kind of penance, I guess, for whatever sins I may have committed in this Vale of Tears. But I digress.
To get this back to the subject at hand, and to get serious about it, there is a lot to be said for the idea of a tub in which one simply soaks away the cares of the world. If yours is a bathroom large enough for a separate tub and shower, then I honestly think that something like this massive wooden tub from Stolis is just the ticket for what that bathroom needs, and for what ails you. Bad day at work, finally put a fussy kid to bed, husband being a jerk tonight-any kind of bad news works for this sort of scenario. And also good news, because sometimes a good soak is the perfect end to a perfect day.
But whichever scenario works for you, this is the kind of tub that will deliver the goods because it is deep enough to qualify for the best sobriquet of all, a soaking tub. But it cannot be that unless it is deep, and the Stolis is deep. The other thing about it is that it is both cutting-edge in its choice of wood for building material and wonderfully old-fashioned in design. The whole idea of a soak in a tub is an idea so old-fashioned that it has now come round and become the new, um, hot thing to do (sorry!). But these tubs are just the thing for that hot soak.
The other thing I like about the tub is that it is made infinitely beautiful because of the fact that it is made of wood. Wood that gleams, that is stylish and wonderful and, surprisingly, water tight, because otherwise, who would want it? But as I have learned in my own Internet searches, there are a number of products available that do a wonderful job of sealing wood against water damage, even something as severe as hours of standing hot water. One of the manufacturers I ran to earth actually had a customer who wanted to make sure his product would work for the line of sinks he wanted to manufacture, so he coated a piece of wood with their finish and then ran it through a dishwasher several times in a row! It came through with flying colors.
Really, the worry here is not possible water damage, but coming up with a bathroom design that allows one to incorporate the Stolis tub into the final plans for the bathroom remodeling. With that glorious wood, though, it’s the sort of item that would fit into just about any decor, and once there provide a wonderful escape. You just ease your shoulders down into this tub, and by gosh the world does go away, quite irrespective of your succeeding in getting someone to “say you love me like you used to.”
Joseph
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One Response to “Stolis Wooden Bathtubs”
June 17th, 2010 at 6:50 AM
As a woodworker I love the look of wood tubs, but I find it hard to believe that there are actually finishes durable enough to hold up to this. What kind of finish is this and who makes it?
Joe