The First Room

There will probably be random philosophical and experiential postings interspersed throughout this blog but most of it will focus on actual remodeling efforts.  The first room we finished was the bathroom on the second floor.  It was one of the failed "modernization" attempts made by previous owners that I mentioned in an earlier post.  The door had opaque glass panels and the walls and ceiling were either shingled in cedar or covered in tongue and groove flooring as the photos will illustrate.  The sink was a modern pedestal backed by heavy contemporary tile.  The ceiling had been lowered from 10.5 feet to about 9 and the whole look was intended to be "I don't know what."

At least the glass was opaque!

Splinters, cobwebs... who came up with this?

Behind the glass door

Lots of patching and sanding

Hammer and chisel to remove that tile,
cement and chicken wire

Our renovated cabinet with bargain sink and faucet

New trim and paint

Built-in cabinet to replace the hanging one

Patched and painted ceiling and added crown molding

The first task was to strip the walls which meant scraping glue, pulling nails and screws, chiseling off tile, chicken wire and the underlying cement and then patching all the sheetrock which had been put over the original lath and plaster walls.  After that we painted, added crown molding, constructed a built-in cabinet and added new casing around the door and window.  Several years later we found a door at a second hand store that stylistically matched our other doors though of slightly different dimensions.  During the interim we hung a sheet on an expansion rod for what can be termed limited privacy.  Our sink came from an antique cabinet (more art deco than Victorian) that I adapted.  I should mention at this point that almost all of our plumbing and several of our lighting fixtures came from ebay or clearance sales.  We literally saved thousands of dollars  shopping on ebay and only had one slightly bad experience in dozens of purchases.  In the next blog I'll show the efforts made to restore the bathroom door.