When was this bathroom's birthday?

Update: At closing, above...And at move-in, below, with the paint color we decided on with the help of this post...

When I showed my friends pictures of the house, a few of them offered their services for pink tile demolition. I was outraged! I would never tear out this gaudy pink tile bathroom, partly because I love it, partly because I think some of the neighbors would lynch me for it, partly because the kiddo loves it, and largely because each individual tile has lasted so long that it seems a shame to destroy them now. Only the built-in tile soap dish has a banged up corner. Otherwise, it's all intact. I know, I know. When we eventually sell this house down the road, with so many updates, a totally retro bathroom isn't exactly going to be a selling point. But I don't care. I love it. (Ok, so I don't love the wall treatment, or the out of place cabinet above the toilet, but those things can be fixed with minimal destruction!)

Anyway, I found a light fixture on ebay that matches my living room light, and it got me to thinking about Art Deco styles and patterns and colors. I had originally thought of pink coupled with a really dark color (black or burgundy) and the strong geometric patterning of our floor tile as Art Deco, at least in spirit. The color in this photo seems a little truer on my screen than the pic above, btw:


There's also a cresting wave trim piece that goes around the bathroom, and behind the door, there's cabinetry, including a built-in hamper, with plastic door pulls-- they're certainly not original, but I wondered if they replaced glass handles that had been there at one time. The door knob is also distinctly Art Deco.

But then the inspector came; he and many other guests have since dated it as circa 1950s. and THEN we established that the tub, toilet and console sink are likely original; a family friend grew up in a bungalow nearby and said that her house had a sink and tub like ours and that they had been original. I picked up the tank lid for the toilet, and it is stamped "NOV25"; this is actually where we get the building date for our house-- HUD claimed it was built in 1940, but the K&T wiring had already suggested otherwise. Knowing what we know about the neighborhood, as well as the architectural style, old phone book listings, and the toilet stamp, we went with 1925 as the likely date. Give or take a few years; there's a listing in the city directory as early as 1922.

Anyway, I guess I'm at a bit of a loss as to the age of our bathroom decor. It doesn't really matter to me much whether it's 1920s, 30s or 50s. I still love it. It's just, as with many other things in this house, it's a total curiosity as to how it got the way it did...Any ideas? Any idea what the hell color I'm supposed to paint the walls? It's looking like white is the only safe bet here. The PO did some kind of textured treatment that looks like she glued paper bags to the wall and ripped them off before they dried.

A possible floor solution?

Literally-- we think we've found a recipe for a shellac mixture and poly coating that will come close to mimicking the way the floors look right now.

Late last week, I stumbled across Goodwin Pine's "professional" section for their website. Goodwin Pine, www.heartpine.com , is apparently the leading company with regards to antique heart pine-- salvaged and river recovered. When I was still shopping for heart pine to patch the floor furnaces, I emailed nearly every company I could get an address for who might possibly sell the stuff. A few were able to give me estimates, many of whom weren't able to guarantee the clarity of the wood. I've mentioned that ours is extremely vertically-grained with no knots whatsoever. Any variation there would stand out like a sore thumb. Anyway, the companies that couldn't help me for whatever reason-- don't do orders that small, don't sell heart pine, don't sell it in that particular grade-- all directed me to Goodwin. And when you see their website and brochure, you see why. They really are a company dedicated to this one, very particular, largely unavailable (new, anyway) species of wood. They have a very specific grading system and a lot of suggestions on the maintenance and restoration of this kind of wood.

Anyway, their "professional" section, which I had not seen before, suggested using a 3lb cut of dark dewaxed shellac, thinned and used as a wash. They claim that this will provide a bit of instant ambering. Then coat over it with a water-based poly. Supposeedly, the shellac dries pretty immediately (it's an alcohol base, after all) and as long as it's dewaxed, it shouldn't interfere with the poly.

Now I've never used shellac for anything, so I'm tiptoeing into some unchartered territory for me... Any tips or hints from anyone who's done this would be greatly appreciated!

As for house progress, we happily made none this weekend ;-). Sunday was going to be devoted to a family gathering, so we decided to take the weekend to catch up on things at our rental-- cleaning, some light packing, a few trips to Target. Our cats couldn't believe their luck to have us both in the house for 3 straight days, a clean living room, and boxes galore for snooping and napping. It was like heaven for everyone involved.

At a steady clip

First of all...drumroll....The electrical inspector signed off!!!!

That doesn't mean we're done with the city-- we still have to have the mechanical inspection (for the newly installed HVAC) and then the final...but that's one MAJOR step!!!!!

Other things are moving along as well. This last weekend saw the painting of the walls-- a sandy, adobe sort of color in the living room and office-- Caramel, from Lowe's Eddie Bauer Craftsman Collecction-- and green in the dining room-- Ruskin Room Green from the Sherwin Williams Arts & Crafts collection. We painted all the rooms with Valspar primer, which didn't coat very consistently, but it did the trick of toning down the dark colors that were already there. Luckily, the actual colored Valspar paint went on very thick and smooth; the Sherwin Williams Classic 99 paint, however, went on very streaky. The dining room will therefore likely need a second coat. In other words, I highly recommend the Valspar Signature stuff. And with a mail-in rebate (and a 10% off coupon), it was cheaper than the SW, even though the SW was already on sale AND I had a 5% off coupon. Still, the Ruskin green was just what we wanted, so I'm not too disappointed. Here's before and after of the living room (sorry-- camera phone again):

We finally gave up on getting the chair rail paint line eliminated. I simply reached a point where I couldn't stand the thought of wasting any more precious time futzing with something that probably wasn't going to be noticeable to anyone but us and would be deal-withable later. Screw it.

And the dining room was also a lovely success:


I know that the actual colors don't translate well, having gone through the camera and different computer monitors...But you can see how much lighter we went and what a difference it makes. It was a little like getting a haircut, though-- you know how the minute you decide to cut your hair, people start complimenting you on it? Yeah, that's how it went with the paint. Everyone who came into the house looooved the colors it was already painted. And while I could have totally lived with them, I really thought that it made the rooms feel a little cave-like.

I swear, though, the POs did some weird painting-- like painting the side of the trim the same color as the wall, and the casement windows in the dining room are also the same color as the wall, even though the trim surrounding them is the color of the rest of the trim. Who knows. Much shaking of my head.

Next painting step will be to paint the trim an antique white semi-gloss. And we have great brushes for it! I now know why my father always painted rooms with a brush and never with a roller-- he bought $40 brushes and they're worth every penny. We only used them this time for getting close to the trim. But while Adam and I complained of brush strokes in the green paint with our cheap $7 brushes, my mother had no problems because she used what she was calling the Magic Brush. And it was magical.

All trim work from here on out is to be done with a Magic Brush.

And stupid me, I forgot to take pictures of one of our biggest accomplishments-- the upper cabinets are mostly installed. Because we replaced the plaster with sheetrock, they don't fit into the space in quite the same way. I believe much shimming will be needed.

I will have pics of the cabinets soon-- hopefully with them totally in place. We also sanded the cabinet facings. The wood is really pretty-- hard maple, maybe?-- so we thought we might just put a clear-coat on them. I've also found a company that would make doors for something like $500 total, so we may just opt for new doors altogether, rather than sand the ones we have and don't like.

Adam spent today at the house edging the kitchen floor-- he says it's coming out pretty well, so hopefully there'll be pics of that coming soon.

We've decided to make the end of January our final goal of getting completely out of the rental. I was a little upset about it, but as long as things are moving steadily, I'm happy with whatever.

We got walls

In fact, we got some pretty good walls, if I do say so myself. Mudded, taped, and primed. My dad built houses when I was a kid, and luckily I picked up some drywall skills through osmosis-- I sure didn't get any by paying attention. The job's not perfect and we still only have the primer coat on, but I don't think we're going to need to do any texturing (touch wood). We also got the lower cabinets moved into place. (Apologies for the blurry pics-- I forgot to put new batteries into the camera, so I had to use the phone.)


I have to give credit where it's due-- I'm a big fan of the metal reinforced inside corner tape. We bought it by accident at the hardware store, but it turned out to be the perfect material for one particularly wonky corner. Some previous owners, many years ago, tacked a modular broom closet onto the end of the pantry. I wasn't a perfect fit, so once the plaster was gone, there was about an inch wide gap between the wood broom closet and the corner stud, with nails spanning the distance at an angle...we had to bevel the drywall and then I did some fancy footwork with the tape and...voila! a corner with only a ghost of a seam. We also ended up with an outside corner that was essentially too big for normal metal corner beading. I used the paper-backed metal instead since there was nothing to screw into...So far so good. I couldn't find any installation instructions, so I just slathered on a ton of joint compound, pressed it into place and got rid of the excess with a trowel-- I basically treated it like any other taped seam. We'll see how well it stands up to the refrigerator door.

Then, after mopping up the drywall dust, we got to see the floors for the first time-- we'd never mopped up the water-soluble mastic, so it was quite a nice surprise. We did a little bit of spot sanding under the lip of the cabinets-- the water damage is pretty obvious, but I think a darkish stain will hide a lot of problems. Then we sanded part of the cabinets-- the facing is indeed solid wood, and a careful pass with a belt sander does wonders.

Still not sure what to do about our living room walls-- we took the chair rail off to open the room up a little (it didn't seem like original molding) and apparently there had been a lot of painting around the rail over the years. There's now a lip of built up paint. We sanded it down some, but the walls have been textured at some point. I guess we'll try to match the texture. Time to start sampling!

Still a lot to do, but we're making progress.

Getting things done...

This last week was pretty productive in terms of getting the kitchen walled up. As I mentioned before, we can't get our final inspection until the kitchen has walls. Being 80 years old, the house doesn't have a square joint in it, so cutting the drywall was quite a process, especially for us amateurs, and there were a lot of little annoyances that kept making the job harder. We had to get a couple of rotted spots in the floor patched. Then we had the issue of an old doorway to what we can only assume was a butler's pantry-- you can still see the trim for the doorway in the laundry/mud room, which appears to have at one time been two rooms: a pantry and a small back porch landing. Anyway, we got that framed in and were finally able to hang the excessively heavy 5/8" drywall:


Yeah, there's some pretty big, gaping seams-- and we're no experts on taping and mudding. But most of the walls will be covered in appliances and cabinets and framed prints...and maybe even some textured paint to forgive the many sins that we and every other previous owner has committed in this room.

In addition to finishing our drywall hanging (which you can imagine involved a lot of cursing and quite a few ruined boards), we got the house cleaned up, made 2 trips to the dump, finished our backyard privacy fence, got one gas line added for the stove and removed a couple that were no longer needed. We'll get the gas turned on today, hopefully, so we can be sure to check every pipe that's been messed with; and we have the start up scheduled for our new heat pump tomorrow-- and just in time, as it's supposed to get wicked cold tomorrow night.

As you can see, we've started the mudding process, and one of my big goals this week is to get the next 2 coats on and sanded. I will also be sanding down the little paint strip left by the removal of the living room chair rail and primering as much of the house as possible. We'll try to get the kitchen floor sanded and the cabinets back in place. We still have a giant gable vent to build. We need to get the house as ready as possible for the inspection and for the big sanding and finishing of the rest of the floors. And then I think we'll be in a position to move in.

But I gotta tell you-- it's been awfully hard to get much done with the outdoors as pretty as this:

There's a ten year old girl in there somewhere...

Electrical Updates

Well, the electrician has gone as far as he can until the final inspection. He ran all the wires, added new boxes where necessary, and wired up our cheap, $4 light fixtures from Lowes. So before the final inspection can happen, we have to show that all the wires will be covered up, which means getting a lot further with the kitchen-- as in, getting the actual walls up.

So far, the money has totaled around $5000. More things were grandfathered in than were expected, and we asked for the bare minimum. Putting in a new 200 amp box and wiring our new heat pump cost $2k. And the rest of the house was about $3k-- lots of our outlets are in the floors because of the masonry walls, and they were left there; we also had smoke detectors hard-wired in, which is code but which is also going to totally suck the first time I burn some toast.

Now, we haven't had the final inspection yet, and once that is done, there may be more things needed that could cost extra. But we're keeping our fingers crossed that this is at least the bulk of it...

Let's talk kitchen floors...one hand towel at a time

We bought our house from HUD-- it was totally cleaned out with government efficiency, so there's nothing left of the previous owners. The layers of the structure-- especially the kitchen-- have been the only little "treasures" we've found. That's the glass-half-full way of looking at this, because in reality, I spend most weekends saying over and over, "Who the hell thought this was a good idea?"

When we first visited the house, we both tripped over the kitchen floor-- about 3/4 of an inch higher than all other floors in the house. Each owner just stacked another layer on the top until we ended up with the lovely black and white sticky vinyl tile:Now, before you say "Oh! I love black and white checkerboard and it's so retro!" you should know it was in terrible shape, matched absolutely nothing else in the kitchen, and showed the impression of the faux-tile flooring beneath it. So we did a little digging at this here location to see if the lovely pine floors were living underneath. They were! But that's also where we discovered that there were a few other layers culminating in some seriously sturdy black stuff that went right over the wood. Hmm.

At this point we decided that, regardless of the state of the wood, we needed the floors to be a bit more level or we'd end up face-first on that floor more times than we'd like to, especially if we were going to have to add to the pile to cover up that crap.

A little internet research, and we started peeling away. Below the top layer was another black and white sheet vinyl. Below that was my favorite-- it looked like candied fruits suspended in gellatin. Another plywood subfloor below that. Then yellow sparkly sheet flooring. We thought it ended there and went straight to the mastic but no-- TRUE linoleum. The stuff that was laid out and heated to adhere to the floor. It was very 30s and very cool:The black border is separate from the red trim is separate from the central art deco pattern. And each piece was put down with a different mastic. So we both spent a lot of time on the internet looking for way so get this crap off the wood, a lot of hours on our hands and knees trying out all the different things we found...

And here's what worked for us so far: Steam and Ace Hardware adhesive remover, which burns like a mofo if you're not careful. Wear gloves.

First, we peeled as much of the actual flooring off as we could. The central rug used a largely water based glue. I used a spray bottle to dampen the area; then I laid a wet tea towel on top. I took my old iron (good excuse to buy a new good one!) and ironed the wet towel on a high cotton setting until it stopped sizzling-- a few seconds, less than a minute, moving around the area so it didn't burn. I then pushed with an old scraper (going with the grain), and most of the leftover backing and mastic just peeled right off. Then I repeated the process and used a carbide blade pull scraper to get as much of the remaining mastic off as possible. It left a white/gray residue that smears with water, so hopefully that will sand off when we're ready to finish the floors. You can see that white overtone-- almost like the wood is simply dried out. But if you wet it a little, you can see the wood beneath it.

The black border areas were a different story altogether. They had no intention of coming off of the wood no matter what we tried. We used Kleenstrip (I think) stripper and adhesive remover. The stripper worked better that the adhesive remover. But then we tried the Ace brand adhesive remover and it seemed to do a better job. Just painting it on, waiting, and scraping with a good, sharp blade. Repeating where necessary. Unfortunately, this mastic was an oil-based one. So it has stained the wood, possibly further down than we want to or can sand. On the other hand, though, this is mainly around the perimeter where the floor will be covered by cabinets, appliances or overshadowed by the cabinet overhang.

Our next step is to sand the floors; however, as we all know, it's a process, and we have to get a few other things done first. Then I think we're going to try staining it a dark red mahogany...? The room is big enough that I think it can take the darker floor and darker cherry cabinets. We're just hoping the dark stain will mask the glue stains enough. We're ok with the floors being "rustic"-- they'll have nail holes from the plywood, etc. But hopefully it won't be crazy obvious.

And if it turns out heinous, we'll look into laying new hardwood-- even though that raises the floor back up to its previous level, we would have had to lay something over the ugly B&W checks, so we'd still be ahead. Or perhaps we'll give cork tiles a try...

I know the dreaded black mastic is a common problem of houses this age-- linoleum floors were so very "now." Any advise on finishing with this kind of distress in the wood would be greatly appreciated!