Christmas came early for us this year. Tub Guy came through, big time. I’ll admit, I had my doubts… the ever-changing timeline made me wonder just how professional this guy really was. But, once again proving that any time spent worrying is wasted, the tub was finished today and looks truly amazing…. like brand new.
Here it is resting on the kitchen floor, being marveled at:
So shiny and beautiful! Compare that to the “before”:
We had the restorer smooth out the exterior and fill the old fixture holes (our faucet will be raised above the tub); it cost a little bit extra, but it was definitely worth it. The old exterior, like any original cast iron tub, had a very rough and bumpy surface and that unevenness would be more noticeable with the shiny enamel.
The tub is 5 feet long, and very heavy. Getting it from the truck to the upstairs bathroom was no small task. Luckily, Teague’s incredibly strong friend Garrett came by to help out. All I had to do was take photos! They hulked this giant thing up the stairs without ever stopping to rest. At one point, as they reached the top of the stairs, Garrett was using his super-human strength to hold the back edge above his head. That’s when I had to close my eyes; I was afraid he’d be crushed beneath the tub. And then who’d help us move our heavy stuff?
Here’s one of Teague and Garrett carting it up – ignore the not-quite-finished walls and instead focus on the lovely shiny white finish:
If you zoom in closer, you’ll see Teague has his “holy shit, this thing is heavy and might drop at any moment” face on:
The feet came out great as well. I had wanted chrome feet, until I heard the pricetag. It would have been $200-$250 extra for metal plating, so we went with white instead. They were originally very beat up, with rust and flaking paint – and now they look great!
If you’re local and looking to get a tub refinished, I can now officially vouch for Ed Shampine, of Shampine Auto Body in Cicero NY. He did a great job, and it was well worth the wait. If anyone out there knows Ed, give him a hug for me – this tub made my year.
And thanks again to our friends Ann and Mike, who were incredibly generous to give us their tub. You guys can come soak in it any time you want! ;)
As you may already know, I’m an RPI alum. I was an Electronic Media, Arts and Communication major, and I’ve never regretted choosing that degree; it has served me well. But if I had my first student loan paid off, I might be tempted to go back a second time for a Masters degree in Building Conservation. Guess I’ll have to wait about twenty years…..
I didn’t even know this existed while I was there; the program’s blog recently linked to us, which is how I discovered it. It sounds a little bit like Cornell’s Historic Planning & Preservation degree that I blogged about a while back. It is a two-year program designed for working professionals. Classes are held bi-weekly on Fridays and Saturdays, so you could sneak it in without quitting your current job. I know I’m a geek, but I really love learning. The opportunity to learn about preservation from experts, network with pros, and socialize with a group of like-minded individuals in a great historic location sounds like so much fun to me. Makes me a little misty eyed for my alma mater and old college town ;)
Like any nineteenth century industrial city, Troy has had it’s share of problems. But I have a soft spot in my heart for it’s hidden gems, and every time I go back I am amazed by the improvements being made there. The efforts to restore and revitalize the area have really made a difference – it sometimes makes me wish I’d stayed! I lived in a brownstone on 1st street for almost a year after graduating, and spent many hours walking my dogs along the Hudson and meandering through the city streets admiring the period storefronts, brownstones, and deliciously detailed wrought iron railings it is famous for. It’s original charm is so well preserved, it’s been used in a number of movies including The Age of Innocence and The Time Machine.
Anyway, I digress. If you’re interested in the Building Conservation program, more information can be found on their website:
http://www.arch.rpi.edu/building_conservation/Overview.htm
Related links:
p.s. – Props to educators blogging to keep their students informed – I think this is a great use of the tool!
Nearly three weeks ago, we sent our clawfoot tub to a professional restorer, having very little free time and zero confidence in the do-it-yourself kits. When we dropped it off, the Tub Guy said he’d have it done in one week. A week later, we called to check on his progess. He hadn’t started, and asked when we needed it. (Umm, today? Didn’t we have this conversation already? I swear we did…) Feeling generous, not to mention short on options, we gave him another week. He said no problem, a week it is. 7 days later we called and learned he had run into some issues, so it wasn’t quite ready. 5 days after that – today – was the most recent “due date”. Teague called him earlier and left messages, but we hadn’t heard back.
All day, I have been convinced that Tub Guy had kidnapped our precious baby and we’d never see it again, that I’d have to bath in a big plastic bucket and never know the luxury of soaking in a well-restored antique clawfoot tub. But to my great relief, he just called. He just finished buffing it, and Teague will be picking it up tomorrow. It’s supposed to look like brand new, so cross your fingers and wish us luck……. I hope it’s really done, and done well!
On Saturday, as we puttered around the bathroom pulling nails and readying the walls for drywall, it occured to me….. the walls were ready for drywall! I got downright giddy. That is phenomenally exciting to me. I was expecting our progress to be much, much slower. I think this is one of those projects that begs to be worked on – and the little extra hours here and there are adding up. We’ve also gotten noticeably more efficient at certain things, and we seem to make fewer mistakes. Thanks to Teague’s construction business, we also have some great new time savers like the Passlode nail gun and a larger chop saw. So chalk it up to dedication, better tools, and a lot more experience I guess.
This weekend we finished modifying the toilet drain (which moved about 3 feet with the new layout), insulated all of the walls and ceiling, sheetrocked the ceiling and approximateey 1/3 of the walls, ran a ceiling vent to get rid of all that shower steaminess, and put in about 1/2 the subfloor. It’s looking more like a real room every day. I’m glad we went all out and moved the plumbing lines; we had some hesitation about this, but the extra work was definitely worth it.
Our clawfoot tub, which is currently in the hands of a pro, is scheduled to be finished on Tuesday; it was supposed to be all set about 10 days ago, so I’m not holding my breath. I really, really hope it’s ready though. I’m dying to see it!
In the meantime, I have to get down to business with the shopping and decision making. First and foremost, I have to find 2 vanity light fixtures and decide on a color for the vanity itself. I’m still trying to decide what color the beadboard and walls will be. I thought I was going to have alot more time to figure this stuff out! I’m on the hunt for the perfect shower curtain. I have a bad habit of picking paint colors before fabrics, and when you do that, it’s guaranteed you will NEVER find a great color match no matter how many fabric stores you wander around with a paint chip in your hand.
What happens when you leave me home alone for 6 days straight with nothing to do but watch tv and gripe about how bored I am, and how much my head hurts? The ornaments come out, and every last inch of this house gets a little holiday cheer.
Ok, well I kept it to the downstairs, since the upstairs is a giant mess and I’m pretending it does not exist. But the downstairs has glittery things from one end to the other. I have a thing for holiday decorations. I go nuts buying them after the holidays when they’re 75% off, so we have many tupperwares filled with stuff. Here’s a small sampling… the tree really highlights our bay window, which is in the “foyer”. I wish we could keep it up year round!
Entryway between the foyer and dining room (complete with lights):
Our real Christmas tree, looking spectacular.
The dining room chandelier, with gold berries and birds.
The dining room mantle with some spray painted pine cones (easiest decoration ever).
Pretty presents, with gold and terra cotta wrapping paper to match the paint colors in the two adjacent rooms. Me, obsessive? Never.
Not enough? Check out our Flickr account for a few more.
Yes, despite having a giant hole for a bathroom, I’ve been hunkered down on the couch all weekend. How’d I pull a get-out-of-work-free pass this weekend? I had 4 wisdom teeth out early Friday morning. And let me tell you, I would much rather be working on the house.
The general anesthesia was great – I don’t remember a thing, except for some silly snail joke they told me in the recovery room. I felt absolutely wonderful until that and the novacaine wore off around noon. The rest of the day was, without a doubt, the most miserable of my life. Also the most disgusting, since I had a mouth full of blood and doctor’s orders not to spit anything out. They gave me plenty of pain medication, but I can’t stomach it…. learned that the hard way. Throwing up with stitches in your mouth? Not fun, or pretty. So I’ve been toughing it out without so much as an asprin, because somehow even that made me sick.
As you can imagine, I’m a big ball of fun right now. I look like I’m hiding a baseball in my left cheek, and I haven’t bothered to change my clothes in two days. I’ve been busy napping and watching Scrubs reruns. I’m bored beyond belief, and wishing I was healthy enough to at least throw some insulation up on the walls. It’s killing me, being so useless!
My mission today is to find a traditional looking wall mount faucet online for a decent price. If Kristin gives it a thumbs up, I know I’m on the right track! Home Depot and Lowes don’t stock them in the store, and even if they did I probably wouldn’t buy them after our kitchen faucet fiasco. Overstock.com has some possibilities, and I’ll probably check out Ebay as well. I’ll be sure to share our options with you before buying – I’m not exactly with it today, so who knows what I might end up with!
I haven’t shared much in the way of finish material plans yet, but that’s because we’re kinda winging it. I’ve been hemming and hawing, big time because I have trouble choosing finish materials when I can’t “see” the space. Once the walls and subfloor are in I’ll have a much easier time pulling the trigger.
We know we want white hex tiles with gray grout (to hide dirt) for the floor, and white beadboard 3-4 feet up the wall. We’ll have our newly refinished clawfoot tub any day now. That was about it as far as concrete decisions went… it was all in my head, a vague design cloud I knew we were moving toward. But in the past few days, we finally put a stake in the ground and made some important purchases.
First, we bought this lovely dresser thing from the Rescue Mission for – wait for it – $25. Score! It’s going to serve as our bathroom vanity. I was searching high and low for a fitting furniture piece at antique stores and online, but hadn’t found the perfect thing. Then I saw this gem and bought it immediately. The drawers are what really sold me – the ones in the middle will become non-functional and house the plumbing for the sink, leaving me with LOTS of storage on either side. Yay to that. It needs to be painted or sanded down and stained….. I’m not sure which yet. Probably painted, but what color? I’m not ready to decide that yet.
We also bought a vessel sink off of Ebay, which I’m hoping will arrive in one piece and be just as pictured. If so, it’s lovely. It’ll sit atop the vanity. The next challenge is to find a faucet that’ll work with this combo we’ve locked ourselves into. We’re leaning toward a wall-mount set……… thoughts? Is that too weird for a bathroom?
As far as colors go, we’re leaning toward a mossy green or beige-y color. Here’s a little “mood board” I threw together with our sink, the hex tiles we’re planning on using, and a bathroom that has beadboard and green walls. It has the general feel I’m going for, minus the cow painting and the naked lady sculpture…
Any suggestions, comments, ideas – send them my way!! You just may change the future of the Fixer-Upper bathroom ;)
The bathroom may have thought it’d have plenty of time to settle in and enjoy life as an empty shell, but it was sadly mistaken. Obviously, it doesn’t know us well enough.
Teague had two days off in between construction jobs, so while I was at work sitting on my butt he was home leveling the floor. We basically shimmed out the entire thing with 2x4s trimmed to size, which is a technique we first used successfully in the kitchen pantry. Each 2×4 tapers as needed to follow the ups and downs of the floor. It looks a bit odd when you see it in pictures, but it works very well.
He also put in new shutoff valves and plumbing for the washer, complete with a fancy box to purdy it up a bit. I thought it would take us at least another solid weekend to get to this point, so in my mind we’re ahead of schedule. I think that might be a first.
I’m sure the progress will slow up as we get closer and closer to Christmas, with about eight jillion holiday parties to attend to and shopping yet to be finished. But shhhhhhhhh….. let me enjoy the moment!
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They’ve been teasing us for months, but it’s finally here….. a brand new Lowe’s opened its doors yesterday, 5 minutes down the road from us! The “grand opening” is on the 7th, but they’re letting all us desperate types in early out of pity.
We live in a small town of less than 5,000 people, so we don’t have many big stores around us. Prior to this Lowe’s opening, if we needed any unusual project materials (and things like fiberglass insulation rolls count as unusual, if you can believe that) we had to drive 30-40 minutes out the closest Home Depot. While I do feel bad for the local hardware stores, who will no doubt lose some business to the big box with cheaper prices, I’m very happy to welcome them to the neighborhood because it means less gas money and wasted time when we forget to pick up important materials.
This weekend, for instance, we ran out to Home Depot no less than 4 times over the course of 3 days. If you calculate the amount of gas it took to drive Teague’s giant truck out and back that many miles, and the amount of pollution we’re adding to the air on top of that, it’s pretty sickening. I still plan on supporting the little guys, like our beloved Kimes Hardware, as often as we can. But I’m a happy girl now that we can check out appliances, light fixtures, and fancy tools right in my own backyard! And you know where we’ll be on our Friday night “dates” now……..
This weekend was a complete success!
Maybe it’s the layer of grime that runs from one end of the house to the other, or the fact that animals have been crawling into our ceiling nightly. Or maybe it’s the breeze that blows through the cracks in the wall, letting us know we’re heating the outdoors too. Whatever it is, we’re motivated and working efficiently on the master bathroom renovations.
In two (long) days we managed to get the plumbing rerouted, the walls framed up, and all of the new electrical ran. Teague taught me how to frame using this handy-dandy Passlode nail gun, so I stuck to that while he ran plumbing – asking questions along the way, since the last time we were framing was over a year ago.
It scared me at first because it’s quite loud and heavy… it’s not exactly girl-friendly, but my biceps are growing by the day. I never really got comfortable with it – I still flinch when it shoots off – but I did learn to appreciate its power. It’s MUCH quicker than a hammer.
We dragged our DeWalt chop saw upstairs (it’s a mess, after all, and it’s cold outside!) and cut 2×4’s as needed right on the floor. I’ve always had a crush on our chop saw. It’s easy to use and very well behaved – we never run into trouble with it.
Without further ado, I present to you the new framing as seen from the bathroom side:
You’re looking at the newly pushed out bathroom wall, with a new closet just beyond it. A closet with a light, no less. That’s the dryer vent curled around in there. Don’t worry, that’s not it’s permanent home.
Here’s the new framing, as seen from the craft room side:
You can see the closet (front side) and the extended bathroom wall (back side), with the washing machine’s plumbing getting boxed in right behind the bathroom to hide it’s ugliness. It’s “box” is what the level is lying on top of.
This should all make more sense if you take a look at the floorplans and before photos posted here.
I hit a major milestone this weekend when I wired up 7 electrical outlets, 4 lights, and 3 switches without a single mistake. We both held our breath when the breaker went on, and after a small GFI snafu we realized everything was working as planned. Considering that I hate electrical and avoid it like the plague, I feel a parade is in order.
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