Basement Bathroom Renovation ... The Big Reveal!!!

It's time to reveal the new, and much improved, bathroom in our basement.  This project took SOOO much longer than it was supposed to, but the results are spectacular, I almost don't mind all the delays.  Without further ado, I give you .... the REVEAL!!!

Before I go any further, let me bring those of you who may be unfamiliar with this project up to date.  When we bought this house in 2002, it had 5 full bathrooms ... three upstairs with bedrooms, one on the main floor adjacent to the office, and one in the basement.  The plumbing in the basement bathroom leaked, so we disconnected the fixtures, closed the door, and vowed to renovate it after we did most of the rest of the house.  Early this year, we decided that it was a problem not having a bathroom we could access without going through the finished living space of the house.  We've been stomping through the upper floors whenever we had to use the 'facilities', removing dirty boots or tracking stuff through the house.  I also wanted to have a bathroom that was more easily accessible for guests when I have garden gatherings here.  The basement bathroom was our answer, and I wanted to make it pretty, while acknowledging its original construction in the 1940's.

In the beginning, this room had a clawfoot tub, a broken pedestal sink, and a toilet that leaked ... and lots of exposed plumbing.  We demolished everything to the studs, tossed the toilet and sink, gave away the tub, and started fresh.  What once looked like this:

Now looks like this:

The other side of the room was this:

And now, it's this:

We decided early on that we didn't NEED to keep 5 full bathrooms in this house.  The clawfoot tub was in good shape, but we wanted storage and display space instead.  The tub went to a friend's house in Maryland one day last spring, I found this cupboard at Luckett's Store, and it's perfect!  (For the story of my trip taking the tub to to its new home, click HERE.  To see the trip to Luckett's, click HERE.)

Here's what the bathroom looked like all stripped down, as you looked at it from the hall ...

The window had a lovely view into our garage, it didn't let in much light, and we removed it.

This is the same view now ...

 (The only thing I have left to do is to install the door casing and rehang the bathroom door.  Let's pretend I've done that already.)

The bathroom has all new plumbing and electric.  The water lines, drain pipes, and radiator lines, which used to be exposed, are now hidden in the walls where they belong ... and no more leaky supply fittings!  There's a new light where the old light was, and we added an electrical outlet (which the bathroom didn't have before).

(The new light, as seen in the store display)

 Isn't it perfect?

You can see the medicine chest, all restored and installed in its new spot.  It was a flea market find from a few years ago, probably dates from the same time period as our bathroom, and I love all its Art Deco rounded edges!  What once looked like this:

(The dirty, gross 'Before' photo)

is now a wonderful addition to this vintage-inspired bath.

I left its original beveled mirror ... streaks and flakes and all.

The vanity is brand new, and its mahogany finish and curvy porcelain top blend perfectly with the Vintage vibe I was going for in this room. 

The style of the chrome faucet adds a bit of a contemporary flair, with porcelain handles that keep the Vintage feel.

The sink wall, stripped to the original brick wall of the house, looked like this as we finished the framing and began to add insulation.  All of those bulkheads were necessary to conceal the new plumbing in the walls.

And now it looks like this.

The star of the room is the step-back cupboard.  The size is perfect (it sits in exactly the same space where the clawfoot tub once did) and I love everything about it!  All I did to it was give it a good cleaning (it needed it!), remove the contact paper and wallpaper from the inside, and paint the inside with one of my current favorite colors (BM 'Paladian Blue').  The shelves of the upper part of the cupboard provide great display space for part of my collection of random country-style stuff ... a perfectly fitting display for a country cupboard, don't you think.

The crate says, "VA DAIRY CO."  I love to collect local stuff!!

The sign says, "A friend is someone who believes in you when you have ceased to believe in yourself."

This shelf is a tribute to my dear friend Kat.  I bought the duck pins while shopping with her one day at The Vintage Source.  When the Husband and I were at Luckett's picking up the cupboard, I spotted a basket of duck pin bowling balls, and I bought one for Kat and one for me.  The rose tray was a gift from Kat ... it had once been her mother's, and she sent it to me knowing it would have a good home here.  (I get teary just thinking about it.)

The flowers in the vase on the cupboard came from my garden yesterday afternoon.  I have never claimed to have much floral arranging ability, and I admire those of you who do, but it's hard for someone with even my limited talent to go wrong with so many beautiful roses to choose from.

1. Wagon Wheel Bright Pink,  2. New Dawn,  3. Comtesse de Segur,  4. Gartendirektor Otto Linne, and some Queen Anne's Lace.

1. Mme. Desire Giraud,  2. Sequoia Ballet,  3. Elina,  4.  Comtesse de Segur.

1. Puerto Rico,  2. Sequoia Ballet,  3. La Marne

1.  Not-September Morn,  2.  Alba Meideland,  3.  Snow White,  4. Souvenir de la Malmaisson.

Mr. Lincoln, and some pretty weeds, in a bud vase on the sink.

Except for the aforementioned bathroom door, this room is completely finished.  Yesterday, as I was channeling Gumby in all sorts of twisted, uncomfortable positions taking these photos in this small room, I marveled at the transformation.  I hope you enjoyed the tour as much as I LOVE our new bathroom.

(If you are itching to see details on the construction, vanity, floor, etc., click the 'Basement Bathroom' label below to get a list of all the blog posts about this bathroom project.)

Welcome to Our Foyer ... A Work in Progress.

It's been a while since I shared part of our house with you.  Today, let's take a tour of the foyer.

This is what you see as you enter through the front door.

2010

I stood on the front porch to take this photo.  The foyer is wide and roomy, and is a great space to greet friends and guests.  There are parts of the foyer that are completely finished (mainly the walls), but most of it is a work in progress.  As I show you around, you will see lots of stripped wood and trim that is waiting to be sanded and painted.  Eventually, these projects will rise to the top of the list.  Until then, they're fine just the way they are.

2002

This is what it looked like the first time I walked into this house, when we were touring it with our realtor in the summer of 2002.  The stair runner at the time was too narrow and worn out, and I have always called that light fixture the "Bug Bucket".

2010

The door to the family room is on the left.  I showed you the Family Room in THIS POST.

2010

And the living room is on the right.  When we bought this house in 2002, the door to the living room was missing.  We found it in a pile of junk, as we were cleaning stuff out of the loft of our barn.  Who knows how long it had been there.  I used a heat gun and a scraper to strip off many layers of peeling paint, revealing the original colors of cream and green (See the green on the corner blocks and the door panels?)  We keep this door closed because the living room is nowhere close to finished, and we use it for storage right now ... such is life when living in an old house under renovation.

2010

The front door is huge and heavy ... 42 inches wide!!  There is never any problem getting furniture into or out of the house through this door.  It took me over a week of solid work with my heat gun and various scraping tools to remove all of the built-up paint from the door, sidelights, and transom.

2002

Here's a before shot of the front door, showing the white paint (it will be white again one day), and the gold flocked Japanese-style, 1960's wallpaper.

2010

This mirror was a gift from the family we bought the house from.  They left it for us (in the dining room) because the wife thought it should stay.  I love it, and I moved it to what I think is the perfect spot behind the front door.

2002

This is the staircase in 2002.  Notice the curvy trim on the side of each step, and the ogee molding that surrounds each wood panel.

2010

Right now, all of the trim is in the basement.  It's stripped and sanded, and it's ready to be primed and reinstalled ... whenever I get around to it.  I removed half of the balusters because it is easier to strip them if they're not in place, and to make it easier for the floor refinishers when they did their job on the stair treads.  The stair railing and newel post wear their original finish, which I protect with the dedication of a mother bear.  I have threatened more than one tradesperson working here ... warning them of the possibility of immediate, violent death if anyone were to damage the finish. 

2010

From this angle, you can see the wool runner we had installed after the steps were refinished, the chandelier I restored and installed, the mahogany clock that we bought as a present to each other on our 25th anniversary, and an aerial photo of the house.

2010

I found this chandelier online, at a shop at Ruby Lane Antiques, and it is PERFECT for this space.  My father-in-law disassembled it, I painted and antiqued the pieces, and he rewired and reassembled it.  From the look on Alice's face, I think she approves.

2010

The clock was built for us by Irvin Rosen, of McKinley, Virginia.  Mr. Rosen was in his late 80's when he built our clock (and another one identical to it for someone else).  He is an exceptional cabinet maker, with a workshop full of wonders.  We have two more Rosen clocks (a banjo click and a pillar and scroll clock).  I feel priviledged to have met him, and honored to have such beautiful examples of his work in our home.

2010

The aerial photo of the house was taken some time after the addition was built in 1967.  It appears to be a hand-colored black and white print, and it has never left the house.  Each owner passes it to the next ... a tradition I will keep, if I were to sell the house ... which I'm not going to do.

2002

The door to the basement is under the stairs, facing the aerial photo.  It hasn't changed much since I took this photo in 2002.

2010

This oak sideboard is the very first piece of antique furniture that my husband and I bought after we married.  We are now using it as a place to drop keys and whatnot, and we store our shoes in the bottom section ... to keep Daniel from eating them.  On it, you see two oak humidors that once belonged to my husband's grandmother, and a miniature Lane cedar box from a furniture store in Fredericksburg.  These tiny boxes were given by furniture stores to graduating senior girls, in hopes that the girls would visit the store to buy their 'hope chests'.   I collect these boxes, which are stamped with the company name and address, from local companies whenever I find them.  So far, I have Fredericksburg, Richmond, Charlottesville, and Orange.  (all Virginia, of course)

2010

As we go upstairs, this is what the view to the downstairs looks like from the first landing.  If you look carefully, you can see Alice lounging on the rug by the front door.

2010

This small flight of stairs leads to the upstairs landing and two of our four bedrooms ... the doors are closed to protect the innocent.

2002

In 2002, before we moved in, this landing had the same gold flocked wallpaper as the foyer.  After removing the wallpaper, stripping the paint off the doors, walls, and trim, repairing the plaster and painting the walls .... it now looks like this.

2010

The French doors lead to the roof of the front porch.  They were installed in place of a window during the 1960's renovation.

2010

Here's a photo showing all of the stairs, and Dorothy coming out of the Family Room.  Alice is still on the rug.

2010

Back downstairs (there's Dorothy again).  This doorway leads to the dining room and kitchen (which I'll show you some other time.).  It was cut into what was originally the back wall of the house.  One side of that line in the floor is original 1848, and the other side is 1967.

As you have seen, there is still a lot of work to be done in the foyer.  The doors and moldings are stripped of all their globby, built-up paint, and I have to give them a final sanding and who-knows-how-many coats of paint.  The stairs will have their trim and balusters primed and reinstalled.  Don't even get me started thinking about the work that's going to be necessary on the front door.

Even with all of this ahead of me, I look around and I fall in love with our house all over again.  Can you imagine how many people have walked through our front door in the 160+ years of history in this place.  Each family has made changes, some good and some awful.  I'm trying to sort out these changes ... keeping the good ones and repairing the mistakes ... on our home's road to restoration.

Where Do You Blog?

I have dug up a recent post about the restoration of our Family Room to link to the 'Where Do You Blog' party at Centsational Girl.  Click HERE to go my original post, with lots of photos that show the whole restoration from start to finish, for those of you who are new and haven't seen it.  (If you ARE new ... Welcome, I'm glad you came to visit.)

If you're so inclined, head over to Centsational Girl and check out where many of our other favorite bloggers do their best work.

(written by Hartwood Roses.  Hartwood Roses blog.)

It's an Honor to be Nominated

Last week, on a whim, I entered our Family Room renovation in a contest over at Blayne Beacham's This Photographer's Life.  Much to my surprise (and shock and amazement), my room was chosen as one of the finalists!

To vote, visit Blayne's blog, leave a comment or send her an email with a vote for the room you like best, and the room with the most votes wins.  Some of my competition are professional designers, and bloggers with much a larger following than I have, so I probably have zero chance of winning.  I'm just jazzed that the judges liked my family room enough to include it in the contest. 

If you feel inclined, run over there and cast a vote for me, #6.

The voting ends Tuesday, June 29th, at midnight.

Thanks.

Have a wonderful Sunday.

(written by Hartwood Roses.  Hartwood Roses blog.) 

My Favorite Space ... Welcome to Our Family Room

If you are joining me for the first time, thank you for coming, and welcome to our Family Room.

Have you ever wondered where I am in this old pile of bricks when I'm working on the blog?  I got this new laptop in the fall, combined with our existing wireless network, and I now have my choice of locations to work.  My favorite place is the family room.

This room didn't always look as nice as it does now. Like the rest of the house, this room required serious work on all of the surfaces and systems. Every square inch of the room has been stripped and refinished ... floors, moldings, and the walls. The beautiful results were worth the months of hard work it took to get to this point.

See, there's the laptop.

This is a nice large room, with an odd shape and lots of challenges when it came to arranging the furniture ... two doors, a huge fireplace, a deep pointed bay, a monster radiator, and two large dog beds. I'm not all that satisfied with the arrangement we have now, but it's functional and I'm going leave it alone. One day, I'm sure the solution will come to me.

Floorplan, to help you visualize what I'm talking about.

Here is the only photo I have of this room before I started tearing it apart. I took this with an ancient digital camera in 2002, when we first toured the house with our realtor. All of the stuff, of course, belongs to the prior owners of our house. You can see that they also had trouble figuring out what to do with the bay window area.

Here we are, about half way through the stripping process. I used a heat gun and a scraper to remove all the paint from walls so the plasterer could do his thing. I stripped all the paint off the moldings (heat gun, again) to get the built up paint out of the grooves and contours, so it would be a nice smooth surface for a fresh coat of paint. The moldings in this house, we discovered, have always been painted a pale color.

Here is a tour around the room, after all the walls were scraped and the molding was stripped, sanded, and primed.  The room, at this point, is ready for plaster.

My father-in-law (the electrician) figured out how to snake wiring through these old walls and ceiling, and he installed new lighting throughout the house.  This room received recessed lights in the corners of the ceiling.

Door to the Foyer.  I see a bag of plaster by the steps, so the plasterer must be getting ready to work.

Fireplace, and double doors to the Dining Room.  Everyone has a refrigerator and a couch in their dining room, don't they?

After plaster and paint, the place started coming together.

The color is Restoration Hardware's Silver Sage.

Once the floors were refinished, the place really looked good!

This room, along with the rest of the house, is furnished with items that my husband and I have collected during our 30 years together.  We were antique collectors when antiques were cheap, and we were happy to snap them up and bring them home ... not something you can do so easily today, I'm sorry to say.  Lots of other things came from thrift shops and discount stores.

 

Lazy Boy chairs, pillows from Home Goods, antique trunk with a glass top for the end table, painting over the mantle and the chestnut side-by-side secretary were from estate auctions years ago.

I bid WAY too much for this Victorian sheep painting at the auction ... but I was not going to let that other woman have MY painting.

A view the other direction.  The turquoise armoire is one of my better finds on Craig's List.  All it needed was a good scrubbing.  It holds the Grandson's toys, books, and games.

My father-in-law built the model ship AND the glass case that holds it.

Through the door to the foyer, you can see that the staircase is still half taken apart.

Many of you have already seen our TV cabinet, which used to be our china hutch.  (If not, CLICK HERE to see how I made it.)

In the photo above, you can see one of the reasons why it's so nice to hang out in the Family Room ... this is where our pets hang out, too.  (That's Maggie on the dog bed.)

Emma is sacked out, as usual.

"Whatcha doin', Mom?", says Daniel.

We do just about everything at this coffee table.  It's 42" in diameter, with four wedge-shaped stools tucked underneath, and it's perfect for games, or snacks, or just propping up your feet.  A friend brought me the greyhound pillow on the sofa ALL the way from Scotland.

We took this painting of Heidelberg to Antiques Roadshow a few years ago ... found out that it's not a 19th century painting, but an early 20th century forgery.  I've never heard of the artist that it's supposed to have been painted by, so I can't figure out why someone a hundred years ago would go to the trouble to forge his signature.  All I know is that I think it's pretty cool to have a real live forgery.

I love this painting ... we call it Mrs. Chicken.  I bought this at the same auction as the sheep painting.  I instantly identified with the look on Mrs. Chicken's face, and I knew that I HAD to have it.  She would look better if she took a trip to the conservatory in Richmond for a good cleaning ... we can do that later.

Here you can see the stools under the coffee table.  The wing chair came from a thrift shop.  Ever since I had it reupholstered a few years ago, I haven't been able to stop the cat from scratching on it.  She has practically shredded the corners of the cushion.  The walnut table was a surprise gift from my husband.

Thanks for coming with me on the tour of our Family Room.  Whenever you read the blog now, you can imagine where I am when I create each post. 

(written by Hartwood Roses.  Hartwood Roses blog.)