99¢ Mantel

No pretty bathroom progress pics yet, but the adjoining guest room is looking a little nicer, due to a tiny step forward in reclaiming the fireplace in there. The credit goes to the shabby mantel that's not so shabby anymore. It wasn't a bad purchase for $.99, especially since I bought it over two years ago and didn't even know if I would get to use it. But after all the restoration work it has required the past few weeks, I'm glad I didn't pay much more!

 I don't know if it was purposely "shabby chic" or just really neglected, but I'm leaning more toward the latter. After scraping, heat gunning (if that's not a word, it should be), cutting, repairing, sanding, caulking, priming, and painting, the mantel is fit for the guest bedroom!

Before:

Stripped bare:

Priming:

Painting:

Sadly, the guest bedroom firebox is not quite ready for such a lovely surround. It will probably be months before we tear open this brick wall, especially after our lengthy experience with the other firebox (which you can read about here and here)! But the mantel is now sleek instead of shabby and, more importantly, out of our shop and closer to realizing its potential. Even if we never get a real fireplace installed, I will have gotten to enjoy the effect of a design idea concocted before we even purchased the house!

Propped:

Red-dy, Set, Tile!

I'm so excited! We're finally to the fun part. Building the tub surround has been a long, slow process due to out-of-square walls, wonky studs, lack of tools, and not enough time. Jeff has done a marvelous job framing for the cement backerboard and building the shampoo niche. It was my job to caulk, tape, and mud with thinset to even out all the awkward transition spots. Then, in a romantic little duet, we both climbed around each other in the tub to apply the vivid RED waterproof membrane as quickly, evenly, and neatly as possible.

And today, the moment has nearly arrived. The tub area will finally look like a place to shower or bathe, instead of a dusty wall or a glowing neon inferno. Tile time!

The process:

Protecting the tub and framing the wall

The much measured, plotted, and planned shampoo shelf

Mudding the joints with thinset

Feathering in the strange wall thickness

Jeff touching up the very red RedGard membrane
(the Pepto-Bismol pink coating dries red, so you know it's cured)

Placing the very first tile. Only about 70 more sheets to go!

Wet Feet

Not cold feet, as in backing out of something, but wet feet, as in changing horses mid stream!

After spending hours planning around the one inch mosaic tile I selected for the shower surround (and I mean hours!), we have scrapped that plan. Not because it wouldn't work eventually, but because inspiration struck while in the Lowes tile aisle!

To give you an idea of the magnitude of this change, I had better back up. To minimize tile cuts, we had measured and plotted every inch of the shower layout to perfection with the original tile I purchased in mind. We designed and built the shampoo niche to within an eighth of an inch specification so the tile patterns would fall just right. And then I had to go and fall in love with a different tile just one day before install!

I've mentioned some of the issues we had with the first tile. But we were moving forward pretty well and had everything on hand to start the job. I only ran to Lowes to pick up the flooring before the holidays. I will be forever grateful that the staff was stocking the tile department and had boxes and pallets all over the aisles. I grabbed what I needed, but had to detour down another aisle just to get out. And that's when I saw it! Lovely mosaic tile on clearance. Only $2.99 a square foot, in a 1x2 mini brick pattern, with mixed glass and travertine, picking up my bathroom colors AND the flooring tile I had just grabbed.

I stopped. I stared. I wavered, desperately sure that changing tile now would mess everything up. Why, we had just spent hours building the shower around a different size tile and mosaic sheet dimension! We couldn't change now, could we? Even though the new tile was cheaper? And prettier? And matched the flooring perfectly? What would Jeff say?!

I won't say it was a sign, but the store had exactly the right number of boxes I needed; no more, no less. And all in the same dye lot! I knew I could always bring the tile back, so I loaded those puppies up. All the way home, I wondered what Jeff would think. But I needn't have worried. When I got home and explained why I had 80 square feet of shower tile in the car when I went out for 50 square feet of flooring, he calmly listened to all the pros and cons, helped me carry in some samples of each tile to compare, and weighed in with his decision that...
He, too, liked the new option better!

So, the layout might not be perfect. There will be more cutting and fewer factory finished edges, since we didn't build with this tile in mind. But I will look at that shower and always know that sometimes, just sometimes, spontaneity and impulsiveness work together for an inspired design!

Our practice piece, after experimenting how to cut all those staggered edges!

Craft Room Follow-Up

My gawky craft roof is finally coming along. It's been slow going, since the bathroom really needs to take priority, but I have been able to get a few things done here and there. I still need to do something with the window sashes and muntins; I'm thinking of trying a dark ebony stain first. If I don't like that, then I can just paint it all white like the trim. The floor still needs to be sanded and finished, and I'd like to install baseboards while I'm at it. I'm also planning a box cushion for the windowseat. But the new wall and ceiling color (BM Revere Pewter) and painted trim (BM Linen White) have really brightened up the room. It definitely reflects a lot more light; even into the upstairs hallway, which I wasn't expecting!

Before we moved in:

Interim:

Now:

The wall color looks a little washed out in these photos, but it's a warm gray or light taupe. You can see the difference compared to the creamy white door and window trim.

The room is pretty sparse right now, but for a sewing and craft center, I think I like starting that way. It will fill up fast! I have a folding table I can set up for cutting or pattern layout, and I may build a fold out top for the bureau to serve as an extended work surface, too.

I mentioned the retro shortie curtains in a post a few days ago about window treatments. I was thrilled that they worked so well with my rug! This dhurrie rug started out in the kitchen, then moved to our temporary bedroom, and now finds a long-term home in the craft room. I love when a piece is that flexible! It assures me that my design choices are cohesive enough for the house as a whole, instead of just individual rooms.

I really wish I could use a vintage pendant or some other unique lighting fixture in the room, but the upstairs ceilings are barely seven feet high. So I had to go with a flush mount that would light the corners of the room and not just glare down from the center. I'm satisfied with this halogen unit, and it was cheap enough to be a placeholder unless/until I can find something I really love. I installed it in probably less than half an hour (no nightmare lighting adventure like the guest room chandelier experience!), but at least fifteen minutes of that was trying to insert the small, fiddly halogen lights into the narrow shades using the special "relamping" tool, since you can't touch any part of the bulbs!

Another little update was my sewing machine table. It's just a small desk I bought years ago. But I didn't know what I was doing at the time and painted it rather poorly with a cheap brush and low quality paint. This time, I sanded it down to smooth the bristle marks and gave it two coats of good paint with my favorite Purdy sash brush. What a difference!

Before repainting:

 

After:

I was thrilled to find this vintage metal and wood ironing board at one of my local thrift stores last month. It was only $5, and I find it functional as well as lovely. Double score on the William Morris test!

"Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." - William Morris (father of the Arts and Crafts movement)

It's a happy, streamlined little space now, so maybe after the bathroom remodel is done, I'll be able to get into the craft room and do some sewing!

Pet Peeves

Perhaps I'm a grammar snob. Or maybe even more broadly, an English snob. But it really bugs me when simple rules of English fall by the wayside. Not esoteric things, but things every native, American born English speaker learned in elementary school. And sadly, the problem is getting worse, not better!

If you regularly search Craigslist, you will see a never ending stream of comic errors. If I see another ad for "Chester Draws" down here in the South, I think I'll scream. Who is Chester and why do we care that he has artistic talent? Has the accent so pervaded the brain that somewhere along the way the knowledge that it was a chest of drawers has been lost? I won't even go into the number of times I've seen something for "sell" or how many people try to "sale" their merchandise.

Another thing that gets me is the wrong use of the apostrophe. I know it can be confusing when you're talking about contractions versus possession (I don't think there's any excuse for people who use it for plural!), but we all had to learn this in grade school. The worst offender is "it's" as opposed to "its". It seems as though people have completely forgotten which is which. "It's" is the contraction for "it is"; "its" denotes ownership. As in, it's not fair for its usage to be wrong!

I don't know why, but the pronunciation (or butchering) of the word "height" gets me more than most spoken errors. Maybe because it's become so ubiquitous that I'm afraid whole generations are growing up not knowing any better. It's pretty clear; width, breadth, depth, length. Those dimensional words all end in "TH". And I don't know why it's an exception, but height ends in a "T". So let's say it, people! Please don't say "heigTH". That would be wrong! Nobody says "weigTH"; think how silly that would sound, and you'll hear how odd the mispronunciation of height is to us sticklers. It should rhyme with "might". Give it a clipped little "T" at the end, just as you would in choir when the music director tells you to use those ending consonants. It may not seem important, but if you say it wrong, think how much harder spelling it correctly will be!

P.S. Please note, I recognize the irony and deep responsibility in writing a post about correct writing! You can bet I double and triple edited to ensure I didn't embarrass myself by committing obvious errors. They certainly come as easily to me as anyone, so if you ever see mistakes in my posts, please feel free to let me know! It may just be a typo, or it may be a habitual grammar faux pas on which I can improve.

Blind No More

Finally, after more than two years in our old farmhouse, the last of the aluminum blinds are down from the windows!

The whole house had the exact same old blinds throughout, so I could at least appreciate the symmetry and continuity of the effort. But the blinds were dingy, dusty, often bent, and noisy when operated; and they did very little to accentuate the beautiful wood windows. Due to drafts and light control needs, I couldn't leave the lovely windows bare, but I did want to highlight as much of the molding and wavy glass as possible.

I've tired of seeing the same fabrics and styles of window treatments everywhere, so I went a little vintage in a few rooms. The quality of materials and workmanship in older items often can't be surpassed these days, and what's old is new again in the design world. So why not step back from the mass marketed products of today, score a deal, and keep things out of the landfill by reusing some quality items of yesteryear? In particular, I used 1950's barkcloth panels in the downstairs guest room and retro fiberglass shorty curtains in the gable sewing room (both sourced on eBay).

Here's a sample of the window treatments throughout the house.

Dining room before:

After:

Living room before:

After:

Guest room before:

After:

Study before:

After:

Gable room before:

After:

In the rooms with white trim, I still need to paint all the interior window sashes and muntins, but first I must repair a few of the sash cords. That involves prying off the stops to get to the weights in the pocket, so you can see why I have an excuse to wait before caulking and painting!

DIE Lots

Yes, yes, I know. It should properly be spelled "dye" lots; as in, those batches of manufactured goods that are processed at the same time so they are the exact same color, shading, thickness, etc. But when you're really frustrated with poor quality control, it feels like it should be DIE lots!

Our bathroom remodel is coming along very slowly, but we aren't being helped by Chinese outsourcing. Namely, I discovered that all my boxes of glass mosaic tile must be from disparate dye lots. It became strikingly clear when I noticed one set of sheets was a good 1/8" smaller than another set. That doesn't sound like much, but over a one square foot sheet composed of one inch tiles and scant 1/8" grout lines, it means the joints won't line up!

As I frantically started comparing all 70 square feet of tile, I began to realize there are some pretty dramatic shade variations going on, too. Each sheet is composed of three colors; an icy seafoam, a medium blue-green, and a taupe. I now have five boxes with about six different permutations! The palest color may match between two boxes, but the taupe will be off. On others, the taupes look the same but the blue-green shade is very different. Overall, some of the boxes have a much bluer hue and some a greener. I've now spent hours on my hands and knees trying to figure out exactly how many tiles I need for each wall of the tub surround and finding enough similar ones for each surface. If the tiles weren't such a good deal, they would definitely be going back!

The camera doesn't capture the variations well, but you can probably see the far right box doesn't look much like the middle and left boxes!

Growing Girl

Heidi is growing by leaps and bounds. She is over 11 pounds now, she sleeps through the night, and she has learned "sit" and "come" (although not reliably, and the association is helped greatly by little liver treats)!

Who can resist a little foxy face?

To-Do List

December is "get your house in order" month here in the Evans household. We usually try to do a little of that every year, but we're really hitting it hard this time. We plan to analyze our budget and banking; review our home, auto, and life insurance policies; cull, organize, and document belongings, update last wills, living wills, and health care proxy forms; and generally check up on the status of all those "just in case" documents and provisions. It's not the new calendar year that sparks the notion as much as Jeff's somewhat more available and flexible time in the dead of winter now that the fall semester is over.

Oh, yeah, and we're also trying to sneak in time to build a niche, hang backerboard, waterproof the shower, tile and grout it all, and lay flooring in the bathroom. Not to mention housebreaking, crate-training, chew monitoring, and otherwise puppy-proofing our home and lives. (But I can't complain; Heidi has been a real love and she's super bright and responsive, so all those tasks are coming along quite well)!

Heidi-ho Neighbor

Since my last posts about our old Arkansas house were brought on by the tenth anniversary of its purchase, I suppose it's fitting we remember another "anniversary" of sorts. It was eleven years ago this month that we brought DaVinci home as a puppy. It was definitely another of those firsts, not knowing what we were getting into (a few photos of those early days were blogged about here). He was adopted right after Thanksgiving when we lived in a little townhouse and I was still working full-time. It was a rough few months, as any new addition is!

We've finally gathered up the courage to start again. We have really missed having a dog around the house, and while we love Schrodinger the cat, those are two very different animals. It's taken us almost a year to determine how we could manage a dog, given that we travel so much and are gone all day at times. We really planned to adopt an older dog, but finding one acclimated to chickens and ducks and cats and farm life was nearly impossible. And we're having a major coyote problem this winter (lost two chickens just last week, in fact), so we needed a breed that could survive and maybe even deal with that issue.

So, meet Heidi, the Great Collie (as Jeff calls her):

Heidi is a 15 week old Collie (or Lassie Collie, as some nickname them)/Great Pyrenees cross. She was raised on a farm by a couple who normally breed full-blooded working Great Pyrenees, but their determined female got out and bred with the Rough Collie at the next farm. Heidi was the runt of a large litter, so we really don't know what size to expect out of her. She's only 8 1/2 pounds right now, but she may catch up quickly, or she may stay small (for a Great Pyrenees, anyway)! Either way, her bloodlines give her great potential as a farm dog and guardian.

Lest you think we went pedestrian with her name and bucked our tradition of scientist-inspired monikers, "Heidi" is derived from Werner Heisenberg and his eponymous Uncertainty Principle. It's rather difficult to find pretty, feminine names in the historically male field, so we had to stretch just a bit!



And because there can never be enough cute puppy pictures:

Reminiscing complete!

As the current bathroom remodeling project is coming along so slowly, it's a good thing I started this little reminiscing series. Since I've been showing old photos of our first house remodel, I had better show the finished product before you think we lived in a wreck. We were so happy in our little bungalow by the end, it was really hard to leave. We felt that first house could have met all our needs for the future, so I'm glad we never saw it as a "starter home". It was just home!

This was no overnight transformation, like they portray on the design shows. The saying in the construction world is "fast, cheap, good; pick two!". I think we only ever got one of those qualities on any single project. It took four years and more thousands than I initially expected to get to the point of the "after" pictures below, but we wouldn't have traded those experiences for anything. 

Exterior before

After

After

After

Living room before

After

After

Dining room before

After

Kitchen before

After

After

Study before

After

Downstairs bath before

After

Master bedroom before

After

After

South bedroom before

After

Gable bedroom before

After

Upstairs bath before

After

No before shots, but carriage house/garage after

Carriage house loft after

Fish pond we added

Front yard in spring