Leaded Glass Window

The mystery of the framed out rectangle in the wall between the guest bathroom and office might be explained by these photos.

We're putting in an interior leaded glass window! Our house only has a few exterior windows (because we live in a rowhouse with two shared walls), so the more light we can get through to the interior of the house, the better. We happened to have a window in more or less the exact dimensions that we needed, but it was in pretty rough shape with broken leads and cracked glass panels. In my non house renovation life though, I happen to be an objects conservator (I fix broken museum artifacts/artwork), so it was all in a day's work to remove the old glazing, secure the loose glass with a few new glazing stars, reshape the loose leads, and mend the broken glass.

We stuck it into the framing yesterday, but I still need to actually re-glaze it and paint the frame. Here are a few pics of it (in case you can't tell, the window has two hummingbirds on it), as well as some Photoshop drawings for my daydreaming purposes. The office:

And the bathroom:

Don't mind the wall colors in the bathroom, I just went with the paint that's already there. As you can see from my extremely accurate bathroom drawing, the window is high enough that we won't have to worry about peeping Toms, and actually, the height matches the transom windows over the bedroom and laundry room doors (which can be seen from the office) and the transom over the bathroom door (which is just a few feet to the right). So it all looks nice and cohesive.

Just one more quirky feature that we're really excited about!

Bathroom photos found here and here.

Wall Framing

Major progress on the guest bathroom and office! We knocked up the walls and did all of the electrical work over last weekend. The space is really starting to look like two actual rooms now, and we're so excited for drywall.

Here's a little before and after looking towards the guest bathroom wall.

Wondering why there's a framed out rectangle at the top of the wall? We have big plans for that space - stay tuned.

The next shot is from the top of the stairs looking towards the double doors into the office. We're planning on having French doors there (you can see one of our $17.50 French doors from Community Forklift in the background of the left hand photo). On the right is a little Photoshop magic so we can all envision how gorgeous it's going to be!

Bathtub Switcharoo

Our new clawfoot bathtub from Vintage Tub & Bath is here, and we couldn't be happier with it! The switcharoo between the old lead-infused tub and the new one happened on Friday, and apparently, it took seven moving guys to maneuver them up and down the stairs. Yikes! I'm glad that I wasn't here to see it. All in all, it sounds like it went smoothly, and the parade of little dings on the stairway wall is a small price to pay when we're talking about this beauty!

Ooh, ahh!

What shiny feet!

Right now, it's in the middle of the bathroom so that we'll have room to build the walls, drywall, and paint, but eventually it'll be moved against the wall opposite to the medicine cabinet.

We were a little nervous about buying something like this sight unseen, but we can happily report that it looks great and appears to be really high quality (at least to us non-tub experts). All of the drains, supply lines, faucets, and shower parts also feel heavy and well made. Online shopping success!

Weekend Tile-A-Thon

Every morning this winter, as I've walked by our guest bathroom project, I've had a moment of panic as I've imagined taking one wrong step through the open floor and falling through the ceiling. But no more! Not only do we have a new plywood subfloor and the cement board down, we have an actual tile floor!

The tile-a-thon started with a trip to the Tile Shop, where we debated between porcelain basketweave and octagon/dot tile.

                

Buuut... since they only had the octagon/dot in stock, we decided to go with that.

I'm not sure that laying a subfloor is very exciting, so here's the quick version. We leveled the existing floor joists (either by chiseling bits off or gluing shims down)...

Hung a few new joists perpendicular to the original ones to give extra support under the bathtub and sketchy spots...

Glued 'n' screwed down the plywood...

And finished the job with a layer of cement board.

Notice how the seams between the pieces of plywood and the seams between the cement board don't line up? It's important to do it that way so that there aren't any weak spots that could lead to cracked tile or grout. Also important - taping the seams with fiberglass tape and covering them with a layer of thinset. This final step ensures that you're laying tile on a strong subfloor that won't shift or buckle at the edges when weight is placed on top of it (for example, a bathtub that weighs 710 pounds when filled).

Next, we laid out our tile to figure out how we wanted it oriented and where we would need to make cuts. We preferred the tile set diagonally (as viewed when entering the bathroom), which was great because it meant making about a thousand fewer cuts around the edges. And surprisingly, our walls are also fairly straight, so that also saved us from slivering little bits off all over the place. The only finicky cuts were around the pipes and the threshold. 

Here it is, our brand new guest bathroom/pizza parlor!

After all that work, we decided that it kind of looks like we should have a wood-fired pizza oven in the corner and a couple of those tall red plastic soda cups strewn about... hopefully it will look less like Mama Baño's Pizzeria and more like this lovely bathroom found on Pinterest once all the fixtures are in!