Guest Bathroom Update

Normally, my long absences mean that I'm tired of spending my weekends covered in sawdust and splotches of paint, and that I've most likely retired to the sofa. But not this time! We've actually been so busy finishing up the bathroom that I didn't want to lose my motivation by taking a blog break. After we had the drywall done, we started painting right away. We had considered using beadboard or Lincrusta below the chair rail we installed, but decided to keep it simple (and cheaper) and just stick to paint. Choosing colors always seems so difficult, but I think we got it right on the first try this time. The bottom is Benjamin Moore Horizon and above the chair rail is Benjamin Moore Ice Mist (isn't ice mist by a less romantic name just freezing rain?). Both are subtle light gray/blue/greens, and the trim paint is custom tinted white to match the medicine cabinet and hutch. Here's our progress from laying the floor, getting fresh drywall/plaster, painting, and reinstalling the fixtures.

And here's where we were at the beginning of this weekend!

Isn't it peaceful? Notice how Ryan found the bottom of the window sill and reinstalled it? I'm not sure why the previous owners removed it in the first place, but at least it wasn't thrown out. I still have some painting to do (the window) and I've been working on all those little details (like a toilet seat), so another update is soon to follow!

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!

Tub-tastrophe

A few months ago, when we temporarily moved the clawfoot bathtub out of the guest bathroom (so we could work on putting down a new floor), we were really excited to see that it was in good condition on the back side. We thought we'd strip off a layer or two of paint, recoat it, and get to bathing! But when we looked into a rumor that old cast iron bathtubs can contain high levels of lead, we thought we'd better check our tub, juuust in case. We all know that lead paint dust is bad for us, and Ryan and I are betting that soaking in lead soup bathwater probably isn't great either.

I picked up a package of instant lead tests at our fabulous Frager's Hardware. The tests are super easy to use - just crush the stick in two places, give it a couple of shakes, and rub it on the test surface. If it turns pink/red, there's lead, and the darker the color, the higher the presence of lead. I tested three different areas on the  inside of the tub (since that's where it would leach out of into the bathwater).  Two area came back hot pink, and one (where the porcelain was worn away) came back light pink. Yikes! Just to be extra sure that I was testing the actual tub, and that I wasn't picking up rogue lead dust that had settled onto the surface, I used another stick to test a bunch of surfaces that were close to the tub. Nothing.

This tub-tastrophe was the end of our old clawfoot tub dreams, and the beginning of my search for a new bathtub. We definitely still wanted a clawfoot style, but debated over another (new and lead free) cast iron tub or an acrylic version. Cast iron is the real deal (and our preference), but they're heavy. We weren't sure how we would get the old one out, let alone a new one up our narrow stairway. Acrylic tubs are much lighter and easier to move; in fact, they're so light that they need to be anchored to the floor. From what we've read, acrylic tubs even look great. In the end though, we decided to go with cast iron because I found a great deal at Vintage Tub & Bath for one with the exact same dimensions and design as the old one! We also found a moving company that will move the old tub out, the new one in, and haul everything away for only a few hundred dollars. And they're licensed and insured, so when they drop the bathtubs down the stairs, break the bannister, and knock a hole in the wall, we don't have to worry about it.

So, goodbye, old tub. You served us well, despite your attempt to poison us. And hello to our shiny new addition, with your fancy chrome feet! We look forward to soaking in you soon!

Plumbing Is Not Our Strong Suit

While I've been away from All Features Great & Small these past couple of months, we haven't been idle. Between a fabulous trip to Japan, December craziness, and Christmas, we've done some pretty exciting work in the dining room AND we've finally gotten underway on the guest bathroom project! But this is about our ridiculous lack of plumbing skills...

Last Monday, the plumber came over and moved around a few of the pipes in the bathroom and also capped off the pipes that we no longer needed. We went from this:

To this!

I guess it doesn't look like much, but it's one more step forward and it's wonderful to us!

This is the point at which we determined once and for all that plumbing is definitely not our strong suit. The plumber was coming back on Wednesday to hook up the radiator in our new master bathroom (it's been disconnected since that big renovation, and the toilet seat was like sitting on a block of ice). We thought we'd be super organized and helpful by draining the radiators on Wednesday morning (okay, we were actually being cheap-o and doing it ourselves so that we weren't paying him to sit at the house while the system drained). Anyway, Tuesday night we planned to hook up the hose to the furnace, and all we'd have to do Wednesday morning was turn the knob and let it drain. Simple, right? Except that the hose hook up is allll the way at the back of the utility closet. After a 30 minute game of Twister played by me, Ryan, hot pipes, the water heater, the furnace, and a pair of long-handled pliers, we finally got the hose attached. Success! And just then, one of us (it was Ryan) knocked the pressure release valve. Uh-oh. Within seconds, the  heating system was depressurized and the emergency valve released a stream of the most foul smelling radiator water on earth, which promptly flooded the electrics of our hot water heater and the kitchen floor.

Now, not only did we not have heat or hot water, but the water that was released from the radiator system smelled so horrifically bad that we had to open the door to the outside and blow a fan into the kitchen. Did I mention that we also managed to do this on the coldest day of the winter so far? Yes, it was cold outside, approximately 17° F.

But all's well that ends well. Despite it being only 40° in the house the next day, the plumber was able to hook up the radiator, repressurize the system, and fix our hot water heater. And I think he must have done some kind of secret voodoo plumber dance in the kitchen, because the stinky swamp water smell was gone too! All I can say is, lesson learned. We'll leave plumbing to the big boys from now on.

How to Make a Decision on Flooring Material

  

Most of the decisions we've made on the house renovations so far have been the result of careful weighing of options, costs, and the opinions of our trusty panel of advisors (hi Mom and Mom-in-law!). We'd been playing with the idea of leaving the tongue and groove wood flooring in the guest bathroom rather than tiling, hoping for a look something like these bathrooms found at DecorPad and Country Living.

Because our bathroom redo involves switching the location of the sink and bathtub/shower though, we had to pull up some of the floor today so that a plumber will be able to access the pipes. Yes, we're normally big DIYers, but we're gonna leave the serious plumbing to the big boys! Pulling up the floor boards wasn't a big problem project-wise because we had to patch a few holes and rough areas anyway. What were a few more boards to bang back into place?

We removed the floor without too much damage to the delicate tongues and grooves by taking a couple of steps. First, we removed all of the nails that we could see with the back of a hammer or crowbar (wearing our eye protection, of course!). Then Ryan applied upward pressure from underneath using a crowbar against the floor joists for leverage, while I used a 2X4 scrap and a hammer to force the boards apart at the seams.We started at one end and slowly worked our way down each plank. After each board was freed, I removed any additional nails by hammering them through from the back. The process was successful for removing most of the planks, and it looked kind of like this:

Once we opened up the first few feet of floor though, we realized that a bunch of the floor joists had been cut, drilled through, partially sistered, shimmed, patched... it isn't pretty. And it made us really nervous to put our faith in the structural stability of the mess. I'm pretty sure that our clawfoot tub will need a little more support than these Swiss cheese joists and toothpicks.

So, on to our flooring decision. It looks like we're going to need to put down a new plywood floor to help distribute the weight of bathroom fixtures more evenly across the holey joists. And if we're going to put down a plywood floor, it might be easier to just slap some tile down, since we actually know what we're doing in that department. Installing old wood flooring would be a totally new undertaking.

Now we're thinking that the floor might end up looking more like one of these bathrooms found over at DecorPad.  

It's so much easier to make a flooring decision when the decision is more or less made for you!

At least we don't have to worry about the joists throughout the rest of the house. The cats have been under the floor a few times today, and they've assured us that all looks good everywhere else. They also found the great Northwest Passage between the guest bathroom floor and the kitchen ceiling, and it looks like one of them even did a little electrical work for us on the sly (he had a big strip of electrical tape stuck to his belly this morning). One can never have enough helping hands when it comes to the big home renovation projects!

Lincrusta?

I'm thinking about using Lincrusta in the guest bathroom. The name conjures some kind of soap scum remover or industrial cleaner, but really it's an embossed wall covering made from linseed oil and wood flour invented in the late 19th century. It looks more or less like carved plasterwork, and we have some (or something Lincrusta-esque) in the downstairs hallway that I really like.

I think it could be a really fun variation on the more traditional beadboard wainscoting, but I can only find a couple of examples of textured wallcoverings in the bathroom (found here and here). 

Either I'm ahead of the curve on this one, everyone else thinks it's terribly ugly, or it's a lot more difficult to install than I'm imagining. In truth, we'd probably be using Anaglypta (a molded vinyl paper) rather than true Lincrusta because of cost, but either should hold up fine under the heat and humidity of the bathroom.

I've found a few modern styles of Anaglypta that I really like, all of which are made by Brewster.

Should we go for something a little different, or just stick with the traditional beadboard?