Half Bath Tour

Doorknob salvaged from former main floor bathroom

Just down the stairs and around the corner from that orderly tool wall we wrote about here, is our new two-piece half bath. Shall we go in?

Here we are on the outside.  The tongue and groove boards and exterior marine lights make it look a little cottagey out here, so we sometimes refer to this half-bath as the indoor-inside-out-house. Much remains unfinished out here: ceiling, trim, cabinets above the washer and dryer, stairs, etc, but for now, I will try to focus on our (very nearly) completed project.

First glimpse...

Further in...

Shut the door

This doorknob and lock set is also from the former main floor bathroom.  It is not original to the house, but probably predates the conversion to a duplex in the 1940s.  This one still has some of its original nickel or silver plating.  At first we thought we required a rim lock because our door wasn't thick enough to house the old lock mechanism, but N ingeniously encased the lock in a box, carved out a niche for the strike plate, and constructed his own rim lock. It works beautifully.

Through the looking glass, right and left

It's difficult to photograph a small space. The mirror reflects the nautical chart of our beloved St. Margaret's Bay in Nova Scotia, and the rustic "Z" pattern door constructed by N and my dad out of tongue and groove boards.

the faceframe cabinet with inset door reclaimed from our original pantry

original Eastlake latch hardware from our old pantry cupboard

We were fortunate to be able to reuse the door and latch hardware from an original pantry cupboard to construct this little cabinet over the toilet.  I gasped when I first saw it installed--it looked so perfect in its space.  Honestly, when I saw how quickly N and my dad built and installed this little faceframe cabinet with its inset door and exposed hinges, I wondered why we needed to hire a cabinetmaker for the kitchen at all.

To give you an idea, here are some before and after shots:

during, and after--stairs and plumbing now neatly hidden away

the original cupboard door already hung in its new frame

chiseling a niche for the new hinge and clamping the cabinet box

And now a perfect little cabinet nestled under the stairs

In the shot above, you can see the expanse of brick wall.  It's not real brick, but the same brick veneer I used in the kitchen and which I described in detail in the previous post.  We think it does give some much needed warmth to this chilly little basement bathroom.  The wall is bare now, but once we have fewer things to do to the structure of the house, we look forward to perusing antique stores for an old porthole to hang on this wall.

I noticed that Restoration Hardware had introduced a porthole medicine cabinet, but although I like their fixtures and their washstands--their functional items--I don't like the idea of decorating with their objects.  I like to be my own collector, so we'll save the porthole as the object of a future quest.

the space saving washstand...

with weathered oak base from Restoration Hardware

 RH Bistro toilet roll holder --simple, perfect

RH Bistro faucet

We offer one little caveat about the Bistro faucet, which looks beautiful, but comes with the wrong handle cartridge.  All of the Restoration Hardware faucets are shipped with cartridges for lever handles.  This works perfectly for faucet styles with lever handles.  Lever taps open by having their handles pulled in towards each other.  In other words, the hot side opens with a counter-clockwise motion, while the cold opens with a clockwise motion.  With cross handles, both taps should open with a counter-clockwise twist (right-y tight-y, left-y loose-y).  So, after several days of deciding whether we could live with it (we couldn't), we contacted Restoration Hardware, who were a little slow to comprehend the problem, but helpful once they understood.  They put us in touch with Newport Brass who manufactures their fixtures, and who sent us the correct part.  Now order is restored and we have no more fights with the tap.

I'm going to wrap up this post with a few progress shots, just for the record.  We've learned that a small room requires just as much planning and almost as many resources as a large one, but the rewards can be great too.

An early progress shot showing framing, plumbing, and my hardworking dad

during construction, bricks partly mortared

and after, from similar perspectives

the cabinet niche under the stairs and N hoisting the cabinet into place

For reference:
Faucet, toilet roll holder, tilt mirror, and towel ring, all Bistro in polished nickel 
Weathered Oak sink console
1920s factory sconces polished nickel --all from Restoration Hardware
Toilet Toto Eco Drake
Paint Farrow and Ball shaded white on walls, pointing on ceiling, slipper satin on trim
Porcelain floor tile, Casa Dolce Casa  Pietra/2 'Fiora' from Stone Tile International
Door and cabinet hardware and cabinet door reclaimed from this, our very own old house


Thanks for coming on the half bath tour.  I'm determined to write a post about our master bath renovation as soon as I take some good photos.  Until then, here's a glimpse...

The Half a Bath

A schematic rendering of our basement half-bath, by N using SketchUp

One of the reasons we've taken so long to get to the cabinet ordering stage is that in commandeering space for the kitchen, we eliminated a full main floor bathroom. Then, unwilling to live without a useable bathtub (our existing bathroom had a broken down jacuzzi that we use only for showers), we appropriated an upstairs bedroom for our new master bathroom (a process I plan to recap shortly). Now we have two upstairs bathrooms: the new one and the original, mostly redundant one (original to the time of purchase, but not to the house). But for now we have no main floor bathroom--nowhere to dash quickly when in midst of dinner preparations, or to offer to an unexpected guest. To solve this pressing need for an accessible and less personal bathroom, we had first planned to put a tiny powder room under the stairs in the front hall. But we eventually decided that to confiscate the only possible spot for a front hall closet would be foolish, and so we began to scout for territory elsewhere.

  
The basement, with its newly soaring ceiling of 6'4" (gained in the replacement of the sagging kitchen floor joists), became the obvious choice for a two-piece bathroom. The new half bath will be just down the stairs and to the left, beside the laundry room, and en route to the wine cellar. As with everything in an old house, this half bathroom presented some real technical hurdles for us to overcome. In particular, the toilet, being lower than our ancient sewer connection, requires a pump to propel the sewage up to the sewer line. Fascinating, eh? 

The Liberty "Low Pro System"

At the recommendation of our plumber, we chose a Liberty "low pro system". In a typical installation, you could set the "low-pro" directly on the concrete floor and build the finished floor up to meet it, but we couldn't afford any loss of height, so to set the pump reservoir  flush with the floor (pardon the pun), we had to excavate a 26" x 44" hole in the concrete floor of the basement to a depth of about 8". Then we levelled the pump and set it in concrete. And we did a beautiful job too, but you'll have to accept my word because the photos have gone astray. 

Toto Drake

We are getting the pump appropriate toilet, a Toto Drake (not nearly as sleek as the Toto Nexus we have upstairs), next week, and if the plumber can come by to install it, we should have a report on how our gravity defying system works very soon. We laboured hard to create a layout that would allow access to the pump in the future should anything go wrong.

The half bath plan, rendered in 3-d by N using SketchUp

You'll notice in the floor plan above that the area between the bathroom and the stairs, and into which we will put a removable pull-out pantry, is strategically located to provide a narrow access route that a plumber (or an unfortunate apprentice) could squeeze through to get to the pump in emergencies.

Fixtures and Finishes

In keeping with its humble location in the basement, we decided to clad the half-bath walls in tongue and groove boards, both for the slightly rustic yet still period feel, and also to avoid the drywall taping and sanding. We found these bargain boards in 6' foot lengths at the Home Depot.

Tongue and Groove boards--great price for 6' lengths

N and my dad made a beautiful door using the same tongue in groove boards.  The 'z' support and general style is the same design as the original basement doors.

The lovely simple new door, and a glimpse at the tongue and groove paneling in the background

Two of our original cellar doors

The new door turned out beautifully and has stayed remarkably true despite the fairly wet wood. The hinges are from Lee Valley tools. We haven't yet decided whether we'll paint them or leave them black (but I'm leaning towards paint).

Most of the bathroom fixtures we chose are from Restoration Hardware, including the vanity:

The Weathered Oak Single Console Sink from Restoration Hardware

the faucet ( a less expensive alternative to the Waterworks Easton we have in the main bathroom):

The Bistro Faucet from Restoration Hardware

two sconces:

The 1920s Factory Sconce from Restoration Hardware

We are still looking for a mirror.  The small recessed cupboard over the toilet will have a door cut from the original door to the small pantry that was demolished in the kitchen renovation.

We are going to frame, or at least plaque-mount, a nautical chart of St Margaret's Bay, Nova Scotia, to hang on one wall. N and I visit Nova Scotia every summer and spend hours kayaking and boating in this little part of the world. We'd like to find a library lamp with a short extension to illuminate the chart.

Library Picture Light from Elte, also available in polished nickel

I did find one I love at ELTE in Toronto, but at almost $400 for a single sconce it may be a little much for a modest half bath.

Tongue and groove paneling carefully scribed to the brick veneer wall

We covered one of the bathroom walls in brick veneer, a process I'll write about in detail in a future post. I know that fake brick sounds like it might look contrived or, well, fake, but since being mortared and patinized with a dilute paint paint solution, it looks surprisingly good and understated. We love how it plays against the texture of the tongue in groove panelling and adds some warmth and a sense of age to the basement space. I installed the brick myself, and even I can't believe it's not the real thing.
 

Pietra/2  'fiora' from Casa Dolce Casa

The floor was tiled by our tile setter with tile left over from our kitchen floor. It's a gorgeous Italian porcelain tile from Casa Dolce Casa in the colour fiora. It's meant to mimic limestone, but I think it's beautiful in its own right, and it's indestructible.

We've made good and, for us, quick progress on the little half bath. We've filled all the holes with wood filler, shellacked the knots, primed with a shellac-based primer, sanded and painted.  We used Farrow and Ball's shaded white on the walls and pointing on the ceiling--the same colours we've been trying out in our kitchen while the renovation is in progress.  We're still looking for an appropriate door trim molding and baseboard, but I should have some photos of the nearly completed half bath in the next week or two.

A Delicate Operation

Our bathroom renovation is very close to completion, which shouldn’t be surprising since it’s been going on for over two years. What is surprising is how many things there still are to be done and subsequently how many things to go wrong.

A couple of weeks ago, N discovered that our plumber, while installing the thermostat for our in-floor radiant heat system, had put a screw right through the thermostat wire, seriously wounding it. Unfortunately, the damaged wire was inaccessible deep inside the wall, our beautifully tiled wall.

• Solution one, chisel out the surrounding wall tiles and repair the wire, necessitating a costly call to the tile setter or a messy, and possibly amateurish time consuming repair
  

• Solution two, purchase the appropriate tools from the local army surplus store and perform surgery on the wire to remove the offending object and repair the damage

N both dreamed up and chose to perform solution two.

the newly acquired surgical tools

the patient (top right) prepped for surgery

the operation in progress (disclaimer--no electrical circuits were active during the operation)

I'm pleased to report that the surgery was a success. No tile was harmed during the operation.

___________________

As the project nears completion, it’s the little things that can hold you (by you, I mean us) back.

For example, when our vanity mirror was to be delivered early last week, everything seemed to be going well when I heard, from another room, the unmistakable sound of breaking glass.

And

Our marble slab, purchased as an off-cut from another project, turned out to be just a little over an inch too small to do both our vanity counter and shower seat. We are waiting for another off -cut from a project using statuario marble. Coincidentally, the project we are waiting on, so that we can get the remnants of their counter, is the kitchen of our next door neighbours, which is very strange since we chose this marble company in another city through a series of random incidents. Unfortunately, our neighbours’ renovation seems to be progressing almost as slowly as ours, so the shower seat may be a long way off.

Still, the bathroom even as it is—doorless, shower seatless, and mirrorless—is wonderful. We are very happy with it and will soon (relatively) be posting an entire bathroom redux.

Bathroom Update--Window Coverings

Way back in June (but shamefully only three blog entries ago), N reported on our bathroom progress. The windows had been trimmed and were in need of some kind of covering. Natural light in a bathroom is a wonderful luxury and during the course of our renovation I'd fallen in love with the unfiltered light streaming in all day. Sometimes I'd find myself just hanging out in the bathroom doorway, drinking in all the light. At night, however, the three big uncovered windows became black mirrors and put us uncomfortably on display. So we faced the dilemma of choosing window coverings that would allow bright light through the day while simultaneously providing privacy and standing up to the humid conditions of a bathroom. We have a cellular blind in our current bathroom--the kind that is translucent and offers light by day and some privacy at night and has the option of being lowered from the top to allow views of some of the surrounding landscape. But I've never liked that blind and never felt that it offered quite enough cover at night. The commonly prescribed option for our set of circumstances (at least according to my web and magazine searches) seemed to be the Silhouette blinds by Hunter Douglas. On the website, the blinds seemed to meet our requirements: louvres encased in nearly invisible netting allowed filtered views outdoors by day and near opacity by night. The top-down option was also available for unobstructed views out the top of the window. In the showroom I visited the blinds looked, well, commercial, and manufactured. Something about them reminded me of childhood appointments to the doctor's office where old fashioned gray aluminum horizontal blinds covered every window. The mood they evoked was all wrong, but my options seemed limited, so I got a quote for our three windows and I was astounded. The price for three blinds with the option of the top down function was over $2000. Granted, our windows are large, but for mass-produced synthetic blinds with an inescapable commercial feel and mechanisms that might eventually break or tangle, $2000 seemed ridiculous. I talked to some of my neighbours, one of whom had also recently considered Silhouette blinds for the sunroom on the front of her house. She too had been shocked by the price and was exploring other options. I'm sure those blinds might be perfect in some situations, but they were not for us.

The main window shutters--I can't really explain the strange soft focus

This is when we began considering shutters. Up until now I had thought a custom option would be out of reach. Initially I was also worried that wooden shutters wouldn't stand up to bathroom conditions and might warp. We briefly entertained the idea of vinyl shutters, but didn't like them in person. Most of the shutters we saw required an ugly frame to be installed within the existing widow frame. Given the time and care we'd spent on our window trim, the idea of an aluminum or vinyl frame marring the refinished wood was an anathema. This is when I stumbled across the website of the shutter guys. They offered custom hardwood shutters with louvres of varying widths and complete freedom in choice of finish. They could match our paint precisely or even use a paint we specified. Best of all, the shutters would be constructed to fit our windows precisely, which in our case, because our window trim is deep, would mean no additional framing.

Shutter detail

The shutter guys were as good as their word. One of them came, with samples in hand, which allowed us to change our minds from the 3 1/2" louvre we'd been leaning towards to the narrower 2 3/8" louvre (which in person seemed much more in keeping with the scale of the room and our house), measured, and promised to return in a couple of weeks. Both of the shutter guys returned, on time, and installed the shutters, a process which involved a little onsite planing and retouching for a perfect fit, and left. We couldn't be happier with the result. Even with the bottom louvres almost closed, the shutters allow in a huge amount of light.

The shutters cast great shadows

The cost? Less than half the original estimate for blinds. And, by going with shutters, we supported a small business and the tradespeople in the Toronto area factory where the shutters are built. I'm sure we'll choose shutters for the windows of several other rooms (once we complete them). Any window covering epiphanies or advice out there?

Bathroom Trim

Some shots of our bathroom trim (colour is a little warmer than the real thing)

N here, S figures it's about time I put down my tools and stop tirelessly slaving on the 'ol house to write a blog entry and to put an end to all those rumors that I'm just a figment of S's imagination (although this could just be a clever change of voice). The bathroom has been progressing (albeit slowly). Over the last few weekends I have reconstructed the doublehung windows and installed the window sills and trim. S had already stripped and repainted the sashes. Reassembling the old windows was pretty straightforward, the terminology I am going to use may not be, but if you are interested check out The Window Glossary from the WDMA. After reinstalling the original (now refinished) sill, the the upper (outer) sashes needed to go back in. But in order to get the parting strips installed the sashes needed to be installed at the bottom of the window and then raised into place. Unfortunately after the parting strips were installed the sashes wouldn't budge, so the strips had to come back out (they were a snug fit so I had already tapped them in with a hammer -- removing them without breaking them was not easy). Getting the sashes to move freely required lots more old paint to be removed from the blind stop and the addition of Gamblin cold wax painting medium (basically beeswax petroleum distillate) courtesy of S's studio. With the parting strips and the upper sashes in place, the strips needed to be painted. S and I took turns, it was tedious: First the lower part of the strips were primed, then we had to wait for primer to dry, lower the sashes, prime the top, wait, raise, now paint, wait, lower, paint, wait...second coat... All for 4 little strips of wood. When the paint was fully dry, I finished assembling the windows. The lower sashes were put into place and then the interior stops reinstalled and secured with finishing nails (in my case I used 1 1/4" brad nails from a pnuematic brad nailer). The newly reassembled windows work great (probably as well as they did in 1890 -- I think removing 100 years of paint is mostly responsible for the like new operation). Finally the original trim was reinstalled with finishing nails and here is the result:

The newly restored, refinished, and reassembled original window

On the south wall of the bathroom we had a brand new double hung window installed (*cough* over a year and half ago). Trimming this window has been a bit of a challenge. First there were the jamb extensions. New windows aren't designed to be installed in 12 inch thick double brick walls. So S's Dad and I fabricated new jamb extensions using 5/4 clear pine. The new window was already made of pine, so it didn't make sense to try to use fancier hardwood like the original windows. The next challenge was the sill. Luckily one of my neighbours is a woodworker and had a piece of red elm which he milled into a new sill. The edge profile was difficult to match, the closest matching router bit we found at Lee Valley tools.

With the sill pre-cut to specification, assembling and installing the trim for the new window was pretty-straightforward. One piece of trim wouldn't sit flat against the wall so I used a power planer to gouge out the center of the trim piece before nailing it in place.

The new window (detail)

The refurbished window showing accurate daylight colour and the original trim profile for comparison with above

The final problem: filling the nail holes. I bought a number of coloured wax pencils from MinWax., none of which matched closely but strangely enough the No 1., which I though was way too yellow, seemed to disappear.

Our next trim dilemma will be the door. The inside of the door will need to be stripped and refinished to match the trim, but the other side should match the rooms beyond. So should we keep all the rooms outside dark, or strip and stain to match the bathroom. The strip and stain with white stain method we have employed is a nice compromise between the typical male, "don't paint the trim, keep the natural wood" and the female, "paint the trim and brighten the house".

Daytime shot of the trimmed out bathroom window

Offsite Excitement--Bathroom Vanity

A while ago we commissioned furniture maker Erik van Miltenburg to build a bathroom vanity for us. We first contacted him almost two years ago with high hopes of requiring his services in the next couple of months. About a year-and-a-half later, finally ready, we contacted him again. We've discovered, more than once, that a highly skilled local craftsperson can often build a custom piece of furniture for a lower price than a similar piece from a recognized manufacturer (barring IKEA, of course).

After searching unsuccessfully for a bathroom vanity, I designed one specifically for our space. N converted my pencil sketch to a accurate 3-D drawing in SketchUp (complete with texture mapping).

Here is my original working sketch (left) and N’s SketchUp version

Our bathroom vanity will be veneered in quarter-sawn white oak—a pale, grayish, highly figured wood, topped with a piece of marble and an undermounted enameled cast-iron sink.

Quarter-sawn white oak veneer

We were having some discussion about the curve I specified (as homage to French Regence style) for the bottom of the otherwise sleek-lined and spare cabinet. Yesterday, our furniture maker sent me this snapshot of the curve template, and actual curve (under all the clamps) in his shop.

The bottom curve of the bathroom vanity (template and actual)

I think it looks perfect. We are having difficulty reining in our excitement. I can’t wait to see the finished thing. Although this bathroom renovation project is about 90% complete, the remaining details are taking forever to resolve.

A request: If anyone in the GTA has had good luck with a supplier/installer of frameless glass shower doors, we’d love hear about them.