the powder room

 

Well, if the family room was Gollum's cave, the powder room was the honeymoon suite for "Bride of Gollum":

We've only got one "before" photo, because the room was so small, but oh, so much to see! The panelling was the same dark plastic stuff as the stairway wall. Just to the left you can see peeking out from the corner of the photo a fetching bright blue formica vanity. The best, though, was the floor. Looking at it in the photo above, you might think maybe we lucked out, and we had hardwoods in there. But ohhhh, no. Take a look:

Disclaimer: We hereby disclaim any and all damages, consequential or otherwise, to your retinas if you click on the above photo to see a larger view.

That, friends, is 100% gennuuuwine indoor-outdoor carpet printed to look like a hardwood floor. Truly, we were at a loss for words, and so depressed by the entire thing that we just let our crowbars do the talking.

We just gutted the poor room. Right down to the studs-- ceiling, all four walls, and floor. There was just no help for it otherwise-- judicious surgery with the Sawzall was just not going to do it. We did the room in connection with the back entry remodel, and vaulted the ceilings with the same rough sawn oak, drywalled the walls, and used the same brick on the floor (roll your mouse arrow over the top photo for before and after views, or click on any photo for a larger view):

   

We've still got baseboards to install, and the window and trim needs another coat of paint, but we're just about done!

We're particularly pleased with the vanity and mirror-- we tried forever to find an old dresser to use as a vanity, but we couldn't. We ultimately settled on a newly manufactured Shaker-style dresser with a mahogany finish, and a separate mirror to match. The dresser gave us the look of a freestanding piece of furniture that we liked, but the real bonus was not having heartburn about cutting a hole in the top of a beautiful old antique dresser! For those of you who asked for more detailed photos of the vanity, here they are:

 

And for those of you who asked for more ceiling detail, especially on the rough sawn oak, here it is:

The other neat thing about the room are the exposed clapboards, which we uncovered when we were gleefully tearing off every finish material in sight. Those clapboards are the original clapboards on the exterior of the house, and the rectangular hole (currently filled with a temporary drywall patch) was the window on the north side of the house (ultimately a stained glass window panel will be installed there).

See, the powder room is located here in the back of the house (highlighted in pink):

The wall you see to the right of the photo is the north side wall of the original 1840 part of the house. The middle addition, housing the powder room, was simply tacked on to the back of the house, partially overlapping the original north wall. So when we took the powder room wall back to the studs where it was connected to the house, we found the original clapboards. Right now they're a bit water-stained and beaten, but they've weathered to a fabulous silver, so any clean-up we do on them will have to be done carefully.

The other upside to our discovery of the clapboards in the powder room is that it gave us the courage to do a bit of exploration under the cement shingles on the outside of the house, and we discovered the clapboards under there, as well. Follow us through our exterior renovation this summer in the Exterior photo gallery and the Journal, and you'll see the cement shingle siding removed, and the clapboards patched, sanded, primed and painted to take their rightful place once again on the outside of the house.

Gee, sounds so easy just to say it-- anyone want to take bets on how much of the summer it will actually take to do it?

 

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