July 2005

July 15, 2005: Well, after four months of quasi-solid hard work (with some land clearing and a few other diversions thrown in there) the hall bathroom is finally finished! And it looks damn good, if we do say so ourselves.

You know, we've always admitted that the hall bath, comparatively speaking, wasn't near as ugly as the master bathroom when we started:

But the dark brown plastic paneling, swirly gold Formica countertop, skinny brown plastic molding and stick-on floor tile weren't doing it any favors. Not to mention the avocado green and white tub surround, which looked like someone was trying to depict binary code in itty bitty mosaic tile:

10110001000111110101...greenwhitegreengreenwhitewhitewhite....

As if that wasn't bad enough, by the time we got around to demolishing the bathroom, the tub was held to the entire surround only by a few layers of rapidly failing roofing tape:

And.. Oh. Yeah... there was that one small matter of having to to cut off all the supply and drain lines to the hall bath in order to re-route the entire plumbing stack during the master bath remodel.

All these realizations just served to remind us that for every Cinderella bathroom transformation... comes an Ugly Stepsister: a completely non-functional hall bath in a house with 2 adults, one child, Parents-With-Attachment-Issues who arrive at random without warning and Just. Don't. Leave. (for months), and a busy summer entertaining season right around the corner which always brings constant houseguests.

We waited around a couple of minutes for our Fairy Godmother to magically grant us a completely finished hall bath, plus a couple of spares for the other bedrooms. Wench never showed, though, so we just decided to bite the bullet and do two bathrooms in a row: the hall bath right after the master.

Which we will never do again. Ever. Ever, EVER.

No words, people. There are no words.

Complete bathroom gut and remodels are horrendously complicated projects-- they impact major plumbing and electrical systems, and they require that it all get put back together, functionally, in a REALLY small space.

It was just too much of a drag to do one bathroom right after another, and we found ourselves just kind of slogging through the second half of the hall bath project to get it done, and not getting much joy out of it.

Luckily for us, though, the project went fairly smoothly, with only a few glitches here and there that, of course, we'll tell you about as we go along.

The progression of the hall bath project went from

This... to this... to this...

And finally to this:

(roll your mouse over the photos below for before and afters, or click on either for a larger shot)

Pretty cool, huh?

Bathrooms are hard to do in an old house, and not just because bathroom renovations are always complicated. Old House Psycho...errr, Owners who possess any sense of aesthetics try to create a bathroom to blend with the house's style, when the house never had a bathroom to begin with. To complicate matters, our ideas, as 21st Century owners, often include indoor plumbing.

Our house was built roughly around 1840, and the idea of indoor plumbing or electricity out where we are, at that time, veers into George Jetson territory. It just didn't exist. Somewhere along the line, someone glommed on to the newfangled idea of an outhouse as inhouse, and a revolution was born.

In the master bath, we went for an upscale vintage feel, but certainly not a reproduction bathroom. In the guest bath, we did the same thing. A vintage feel, but with a real casual, farmhouse look-- a bit unfitted, like the bathroom kind of evolved there. We didn't plan on going quite as posh as we did in the master, but we wanted to tie in certain elements of both bathrooms, just so at least they look like they belong in the same house.

Here's an overview of what we did...

The first thing we did was knock out the wall enclosing the tub and turn the tub lengthwise along the back. It meant, once again, having a window in the tub surround, but it was well worth it for the way it opened up the bathroom.

The tub surround was done with basic, off the shelf 4-inch square white tiles. We didn't want to do too much with the surround since there was going to be so much else going on in this bathroom, but we did do a diagonal layout, and inserted a couple rows of pinstripes for some interest:

The tub is an American Standard whirlpool tub-- not huge, but certainly big enough for a decent soak. The stained glass window hinges back out of the way for a view of the pasture while you're soaking:

The stained glass window treatment idea worked out so well in the master bathroom, we decided to do it again for this bath. It just fit all our requirements for a window treatment so well: waterproof (and mildew proof) but also able to be moved out of the way for the view out the window while someone's soaking in the tub. We ordered both windows at the same time from an EBbay vendor who has since opened her own web store (Stained Glass and More) and treated them the same way-- reframing and facing with Lexan for safety:

The shower curtain's a custom job we sewed ourselves. Lucky for us, we've got a Waverly fabric outlet a few miles away, so we just picked two different striped patterns, and railroaded the bolder one across the top and bottom for the ruffle and bottom border:

The rainshower head is identical to the ones in the master bathroom (picked up off the shelf at one of the local big boxes) but since we didn't actually tear out the ceiling in this bathroom, we couldn't plumb it to hang from the ceiling without major hassles. So we did the next best thing-- a swan arm that puts it right at the ceiling. Always a good thing, in case the Very Tall Kilted One ever has to shower in there:

The shower valve is once again, identical to the ones in the master bathroom. They're thermostatic valves (Beaumont series from Hudson Reed England), and we still had to import it from the other side of the Pond because apparently, in the last few months, American manufacturers have still not caught on to using the decades-old technology in an attractive valve trim package. The tub faucet's an EBay find. It's about identical in style to the one in the master bath, and not so coincidentally, another last-minute find:

You may remember from our February entry giving you all the details on our master bath that the original faucet I ordered for that bath was a wall-mounted one, and it turned out that we couldn't use it because a wall mount would leave the faucet too far from the tub edge. So we put it away for use in another bathroom, and grabbed a last minute deal on a deck-mounted one.

We then go get our original wall-mounted faucet to use in this bathroom, unpack it, and what do we find? The vendor sent the wrong faucet-- it's deck-mounted, not wall-mounted. Yup-- if we'd only thought to open the package to actually check the faucet, we would have found out that by a fortuitous mistake, we could have used it in the master bathroom after all. Oh well... now we know our daughter's bathroom's going to get a really nice faucet.

Anyway, this one's mounted temporarily (because we're waiting for the right fittings), but it's going to work out fine. And as I swore before, with Gawd as mah witness, ah will never be without a spray faucet in a bathroom again!

As hard as it may be to believe, the old bathroom did give us some inspiration. A small bit, but inspiration nonetheless... paneling!

For some reason, seeing the old brown plastic paneling on the wall in the bathroom as an accent inspired us to keep paneling on the same wall as an accent, only updated (or retro-ed?) forty years or so. We don't know why-- after all, we gutted the entire bathroom, so it wasn't as if we couldn't have just drywalled and painted it, but we thought the paneling would look cool, so there it be.

We used lauan sheets with lattice molding nailed on top to create the look of board and batten siding (without the bulk), and capped it with a peg rail and shelf. The two hanging buckets hold spare toilet paper and other assorted bathroom stuff, as does the cabinet below them (a ready to assemble, off the shelf Target special):

We also installed a towel warmer in this bathroom (Warmrails, once again). We love ours so much in the master, we decided we had to spoil guests and everyone else in the house, too:

The vanity is one of the coolest things about the bathroom. We knew exactly what we wanted, but there was no way we were going to find it, at least nowhere near our price range. Plus, standard double vanities are 60" long, and we knew, since this bathroom's not so big, that every inch counts, and it would fit better at 58" long. So we decided to build it:

We ordered the legs online from Classic Designs, and reclaimed the wood for the front and side faces from the fake box beams we tore off the kitchen ceiling. We were shocked that we could actually use something Joey had installed, but we did, and waited breathlessly, for one second... two... three...

The Earth did not reverse directions on its axis, the fabric of the Universe was not rent with an apocalyptic scream, and babies the world over remained sleeping snugly in their mothers' arms.

So we moved on to the countertop. We fabricated the top from a couple pieces of 3/4" plywood, glued and screwed, and cut out the sink and faucet holes. Then it was off to the yellow pages to find a sheet metal shop which would wrap it in galvanized steel for us. They promised they'd have it for us in two days, which turned into two weeks, but they ended up doing a terrific job and we're pleased with the result. The sinks are handpainted Talavera sinks from Mexico (another EBay find, of course), and the faucets are the Savannah series from Price Pfister:

The lights and mirrors were off the shelf finds at one of the big box stores (don't remember which one). Maybe we're not picky enough, or maybe we're just incredibly lucky, but we've never really had to hunt for lights and mirrors that would work for us-- we've always just come upon them when we needed them (knock wood):

The floor, we love. Somehow, there's just nothing that says farmhouse like a checkered painted wooden floor. It wasn't hard to do, but it was a loooooong process, since we had to let each coat dry overnight. It was worth it, though, for how it turned out:

And now, its midway through July, and we finally are able to close the door on the bathroom (figuratively, people... sheesh!) and move on to painting the exterior of the house. Which we've been working on for years. And haven't made any progress on since September of last year. And should have started back up doing in May.

We have much work to do.

July 21, 2005: We were supposed to start work on the exterior painting this weekend.

We didn't. A combination of Dread and Mother Nature prevented it.

We got caught in a band of summer storms that, for two days, dumped many inches of water for ten minutes every two hours. The other 1 hour and 50 minutes consisted of bright sunshine and oppressive humidity. Needless to say, the weather alone would have made painting outside a frustrating endeavor. Then Dread took care of any residual desire to get out there with the palm sander, caulk gun and primer.

What? Dread? You don't know Dread? Sigh...

Gather round, young grasshoppers, as once again, we enlighten you on one of the many aspects of renovation that This Old House and HGTV neverEVER tell you about: Dread. Dread is what creeps in after you have to, for whatever reasons, put a project on hold for a while, and then have to pick it back up.

When you leave off a project, it all seems so bright and sunny and easy... you just leave the current project at a perfectly logical stopping point, pack up and store your supplies in a ridiculously organized way, shift three bags of hand tools and a small cart of power tools to the next Site O' Destruction, and vow to pick right back up again at the old project just as soon as circumstances are right. No big deal, right? Everything's organized and set to go just as soon as you're ready.

Problem is, during the intervening months, Dread sets in. And after spending months on another project, going back to the original project doesn't seem so sunny. Or easy. Not to mention, the Tool Trolls have visited.

What? Tool Trolls? You don't know Tool Trolls either? Jeez. What the #$%&* have This Old House and HGTV been telling you people? Tool Trolls are the wretched little creatures that raid your nicely organized stash of tools and supplies after you've packed it all nicely away to begin your project anew at a future point in time. They gleefully toss everything willy nilly in the air, trash any sense of organization you may have had, and make off with a few things just for fun. Then, just before they take off for their next round of mischief, they coat a few tools in troll boogers just to be mean.

Oh... sure. We hear what you're saying-- you don't think trolls exist. Well, ok, maybe we didn't quite put away everything as organized-ly (is that a word?) as we would have liked to when we stopped the project, but it wasn't as bad as all that. And ok, we admit to rifling through our neatly stashed project piles once or twice to look for something we needed for something else. Once or twice, but that's all. Oh, and sure... we know troll boogers look just like rust, but we can tell the difference.

So, since starting to paint the outside of the house clearly was not happening for this weekend, we decided to focus on a long-standing problem we'd yet to address: we couldn't see in either our kitchen or family room. Which wouldn't ordinarily be a problem, except of course, like most families, these two rooms are where we spend most of our time. And at least in the case of one of them, handle burning hot pans.

So we figured running lights in both rooms would be a good weekend project-- after all, we tore out both ceilings a year and a half ago, and hadn't gotten around to replacing them:

Don't know if you can even see much of those rooms, but if you can't... well then you'll understand why we finally got fed up enough to do something about the lighting.

Of course, as with most projects in the house, the first thing we had to do was undo what Joey did. All we knew from our cursory study of the family room electric was that there were two switches in a wall (one of which worked) and some kind of demented octopus-looking thing hanging off the ceiling. The Kilted One was convinced that the mentally unhinged octopus had something to do with the switch, but knowing Joey, I wasn't about to mess with it to find out unless I called the local power company to shut down the entire tri-state grid.

The Kilted One wore me down, though, and convinced me, finally, that I could re-wire the box after only shutting off the breaker for the circuit. So I climbed the ladder, grabbed hold of the octopus, and discovered this plaster crusted mess in the ceiling:

Once again, Joey proves why it is that his full name is never to be spoken, except at slumber parties. In a dark room, in front of a mirror, three times. And then when you open your eyes, he'll appear behind you...

Fiendishly waving a tool belt afire with the souls of the damned houses he's collected.

Sheesh.

Bloody Mary was a freakin' amateur.

So after de-crudding and de-tangling and de-mystifying the tangle in the box, and determining that, as always, half of it wasn't necessary and could be done a simpler way, we set to two days of drilling holes, running wire, shimming floor beams, and banging up cans in both rooms. When we were done, we breathlessly ran down to the basement to flip the circuit breakers back on.

As we rounded the corner of the basement steps, we saw LIGHT at the top! Beautiful... warm... irresistibly... welcoming... Lllliiiiiight. Screw Carol Ann-- ridiculously angelic wench can fend for herself. We were going in! We made a run for it, ecstatic to see what our kitchen and family room actually looked like, but after we fought each other halfway up the stairs, it all went out. Gone... Poof.

Jeez... wha' happened? Well, as it turns out, it took the Kilted One another couple of days to figure out just what did happen, and I still don't know. I know it had something to do with a bizarre three-way switch configuration in the kitchen (another Joey triumph of ingenuity), but that's about it. I checked out in complete and total paralytic frustration about halfway through the trouble shooting process, and, despite being the "official electrician" of our renovation projects, retreated into a dark corner with a bottle of wine and some cheesecake. I think Gollum might have showed up during those dark hours to keep me company, but I'm not entirely sure. I may have to revisit that particular vision with my therapist.

Meanwhile, The Kilted One soldiered on, and actually figured out what the problem was. I still don't really know how he did it, or what the actual problem was. I made him promise to tell me whenever I was ready to hear it, and he readily agreed.

I haven't asked, yet, though... I'm sure that the information will be invaluable in fighting the inevitable future battles against Bad Joey and his Evil Electrizzian Powerzzz, but right now, I'm not quite sure I'm ready to grok it. Plus, knowing that the Kilted One now has a bit of secret JoeyFightingSkillz just adds a bit of mystique to his already considerable sex appeal. I'll twist his arm some time later when we have to worry about some other screwed up wiring-- till then, I'm in no hurry.

After all this, it might be worthwhile to actually show you what we did. Roll your mouse over the two photos below for the before and afters:

And God commanded... "Let there be Light!" And the Kilted One arrived, and he was really, really good...

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