Monday, January 25, 2016


a  Tale of two
            Toilets.....                   

This is where I left off, the other weekend, or there about.  I hate leaving the weekend without a finished project, as it always takes that little more effort to get back into it when arriving on a friday, so I generally try not to bit off more than I can chew over a weekend. This was not the case here....



A little closer up on the tile process.  For those of you that don't know, tiling is pretty easy if your patient, accurate and can use a trowel.  This is what the "glue" looks like going on.  Acrylic tile cement is its name and your trowel it on then scrape over it to create a good bed for the tile to settle into.  Wear something old as it gets everywhere.


Lets skip to it all done.  This is the satisfing part. I am really happy with the way that the whole space is coming together.  The chase for the upstairs pipe actually adds a little more architectural detail to the room and the bath surround is exactly like I imagined.  Think Mrs Patmore's scullery.  Or the below image that i have no idea where I got it from, its in my "bathrooms" folder images that I have collected for years....


I toyed with the idea of the moulding but decided with keeping it simpler....



I hate grouting.  No two ways about it.  You've put the tile up, measured and cut all that you need, got it all level.  Then you let it set for at least 24hrs.  By now hours, days have passed, and you can't use the shower. I also took the toilet out.  I wanted it to be done by this point.  Then you have to scrape grout all over it, pushing it into the gaps and it gets really messy.  It goes everywhere.  Which when its in the bath tub all good but when its all over the floor it gets annoying.  You get the picture. I was tired....


This is a great shot.  So whilst I was at it I thought I would put a new loo in downstairs as well.  But as is the nature with old houses one thing leads to another.  For almost a year I have been able to see into the basement by the toilet.  As nice as that was it was time I ripped up the floor behind the toilet and replaced it. Up top here got a new plank and then also down in the basement as well so its nice and solid again.  No money pit scenes unfolding here (the bathtub in that film, i had visions of the toilet crashing through.)  Also re ran the cold water pipe as it was old copper that condensed and exasperated the moisture problem.  Replacing it with pex and a new valve solved that. 



Now the fun part.  With the tile down and sort of grouted,  it didn't go that smoothly but for this post lets imagine thats the way it went.  This is one of the few floors in the house that is relatively new and I have been wanting to paint it.  After a solid sanding to get the old varnish off I applied a coat of dark stain.  This is the wipe on wipe off variety so it only takes it down a little as its not raw wood.  What was great with the old toilet out it was easy to tile and paint. I have obsessed over the geometric style floor tile but as always there is budget constraints so I came up with a solution...


My slippers are getting there own blog. Essential renovating footwear as I have mentioned.  I now take my slippers to my friends house, I have become that person.  Here it is in progress.  Using a stencil to get the basic layout out first.  Its a little messed up here and there as I should have spent more time cutting a more accurate stencil but we have established by patience level in previous blog post...


The first layer is the black side of the "T" then you go back over with a different shape stencil and (try) and match it up.  At 11 pm on at Saturday night this get a little dicey, the red wine maybe didn't help but i was praying for a snow day on Monday (didn't happen)


Then I am going back in and hand painting in shading and finessing the shape. This close up shot it looks a little raggedy but once the hand painting is done it looks much better.  I promise.  Anyway nobody should be this close to the bathroom floor.  This is just for the magic of blogging..


The stencil.  I just cut them out from paper and then gave it few coats of clear varnish to help them stand up to the process of stenciling through them.  Gosh do you think Martha would be proud?



Many many many hours later (and cups of tea) its starting to take shape.  Still needs to go back over and add more details in.  Its really important to get the shapes all touching in order for the 3D to work.  Also its important it goes right over the edge, you can see along where the bath is there is a shape missing so that needs to be painted in.  Also adding a degree of shading in the grey top "V" really gives dimension.  What also really looked great was going back over and sponging on a random layer of wood stain and blotting it off so it all looks like its been there forever.  When I put a final coat of varnish I will use a tint so it pulls it all together even more.


I went back to grouting at this point as the tile that had been added to the shower wall needed grouting.  This is when it would be nice to have all the time in the world so your not grouting and paining a floor at the same time.  Not ideal but it worked out.  


Weekends start at 7 30 by shoving some food and a giant mug of tea (and 4 cookies) into my mouth and then off to work.  Hence the glasses, wild hair and homely cardigan.  Camera ready as i like to say...



Hey presto! We have an almost completed bathroom.  The background is there anyway. The floor needs some more work, but the new toilet is in, the tile is done and I can take a shower.  By Sunday afternoon this was pretty imperative...



Naked men wrestling, thats what was missing, so obvious....oh and an odd bras thing...


The tile still has the haze on it, which is just the dye from the grout.  You have to let it all dry out and then you can scrub them down one last time and they will be good to go.  One more weekend, always one more weekend...


This was the faucet I already installed back in the summer but it still looks so handsome.  Take a look online at it, you can't beat the prices, its just from a vendor who lists on eBay but its all new items from good old china.  I have dabbled with vintage fixtures, but the success rate of them is so uneven that if you can find a new version (this is rarely the case I say this) then get it. It makes installation so much easier, remember the vintage kitchen taps.  I replaced the washers and everything but after a while its just easier to go new, and this was $120 all in.  Saying that i do have these amazing taps (faucet) in my eBay watch list for upstairs, and its not a mixer.  So impractical but i do love the look...


Oh and then this was what was happening upstairs.  The miracle of the second floor toilet happened last weekend but the wall was missing.  Not a problem when its just me but friends may disagree to this open plan WC.  I wanted to do ship lap up the wall and I was going to continue it along the back but it turns out I think I will have enough wood from the wall I took out to clad it in that.  You can see I have started to place it in the pic below.  Anyway we will see what happens..


I used the back side of the ship lap as its all bumpy and textured (love) and it will be white washed or greywashed, or the more daring options stained black.  I like the idea of it looking charged but I'm worried it may be too dark for the bathroom, thoughts?  Then back into the old wood I think.  I need to put some more thought into it but I'm thinking this will be more black fixtures than brass so it can be a little darker in here and woodsy.  More for another weekend.  Another triumph was running the new electric up to to this room so now it has a heater and is cozy.  All i need is a new sink, shower tray, shower fixtures, lighting, more tile, more lamps, more plumping, more bits and bobs ......(sigh) 

That is it for the weekend update. Next weekend is some much needed relaxing and tinkering with the "stuff" to go in the downstairs bathroom.  Also I have more antlers for the hallways, I can't wait to get them up and take some pics....

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Oh my gosh, i can pee upstairs....bathroom update edition


So this is my idea of a wild friday night.  All this pipe is going to replace the old cast iron and then some.  The plan was to run a new soil pipe from the second floor through the bathroom and connect it to the existing soil pipe.  I thought whilst I was at it I would replace most of the cast iron pipe as well with PVC just for good measure.  There is one little piece left that connects to the vent pipe and is basically in the stone wall foundation so i had to draw the line somewhere, I mean i only had 3 days...


This is where the new WC is to be installed.  This is what is affectionalty called "davids room" as my friend always stays in this room.  There was a wall here, as you can see in the photo below.  This is directly above the bathroom below and was the logical place for the toilet.  I bit of planning went into the down pipe as I didn't want to have to move the bath and what not downstairs and I can't go through the wall as all the giant beams that hold the house up are in there.  That left me with the option you will see.  The toilet is in just the right spot (as long as your not over 6ft) to be able to stand under the eaves.  Any one who is tall will have to sit down :-) And yes this post deals with poop pipe....beware



This is my second toilet.  The first delivery (from amazon) was smashed.  Top tip, don't order a toilet online if you don't have too.  It turned up like a smashed vase with no chance of it being put back together!


My "heres Johnny" moment.  Not the first one in this house and probably not the last!


I find herringbone slippers totally appropriate working footwear.  Yes I know its right next to the circular saw.  When I post that I sawed my toe off you can all say i told you so, until then i will have cozy feet and multiple toilets..


Wow i felt so accomplished on Friday night when I got this far, little did i know the next three days of grunt work...


Remember in the summer when i redid the down stairs bathroom, well I started to undo all that good work.  This is the wall where the pipes need to run up in to the second floor. I decided to build a bump out to house the pipes and create it as if its an old chimney or something like that.  I have always had a bunch of inspiration images of completely tiled walls and loved this idea. The hope was that this would look like that.


This is the old "poop" pipe that nobody wanted anything to do with.  I did a balancing act of getting it down with the use of a step ladder and the old shelf unit.  Funnily enough the thing I was most concend about was cutting this out and that was one of the simplest parts.  I made sure to get the diamond cut blade made for cast iron cutting, I actually got the right tool for the job.  Also it was clean as a whistle inside so nothing gross to report there, take note David and Malcolm.


Another glamour shot of of the basement.


As always with these projects one things leads to another.  That being, moving a hot water pipe, disconnecting the run from the kitchen and the bath, re routing the cold water pipe.  I did and do have this idea of a grey water system (if anyone has any info on that let me know). The washing machine dumps so much water in the to the septic system is seems silly to have it going through here, but for now I reconnected.  In the future I would like to have a grey water well out the side so the WM can go into there.  There was never a machine in the house before I moved in so I'm always concerned about the amount of water washing into the system and removing all the good bacteria needed.  I won't bore you with more septic talk !


Whilst I had the wall all cut up and decided to run a new electric line up to the new bathroom from a very underused electric run from the basement.  This way when I connect the heater up there it can have its own line and not trip or over stress another electric run.  Let me tell you threading this line into the basement was a pain.  I went up and down about ten times before i finally fished it through.  


Once the pipes were in it was full force on the frame out.  I also wanted to clad the side of the tub in tile so it all felt built in.  Funny story here, saturday evening around 4:45 I was all done with the pipe, had ran the cold water up to the second floor and was all ready to install the toilet.  There I am screwing in the toilet bolt to the flange ready to drop the toilet on.  Then I dropped the bolt down the soil pipe.  Thats when you just have to laugh.  After all that work I had to then take a sawzall to the pipe to open it up again to fish out the damn bolt, mainly because I didn't want it causing a block in the future.  Then i had to re seal the pipe up again.  And then i drank....


Sunday was a little more productive and felt like it was really coming together. Some days it just flows and you feel like your achieving a lot. Drywall, toilet installed and flushing.  Bingo! Sunday night at my usual 4 am call to pee, I didn't have to trek downstairs.  Not as liberating as i had hoped, but come summer it will be great when the house is full again.



The lip on the bath surround going in.  Again as in the last post I still never manage to fully clean out the room.  Also by Sunday I really wanted a shower!


Tiling full force on sunday.  I also managed to re do the cement board in the ceiling between the beams.  I had done it in a bit of a rush in the summer so I wanted to do it properly this time.  Sliding insulation in between the layers and around the new piping so that it is sound proofed and insulated.


Learning my lessons as I go.  I always rush tiling but this time I made sure to mark out the wall with levels and really figure out the placement and properly cut the tiles.  This wall is front and centre so it has to look good.


This is how for I got by Monday.  I have the perfect old brass wall light for here and then a mirror to go below it.  Im going to continue the tiling across the whole back wall and then have some sort of old brass shelves or something.  Thats the fun bit..


The beast of the old pipe.


The new view in the basement.  Doesn't seem that much after all.  All the joints are glued and then silicone taped for extra measure.  I feel the floors sighing again as some more weight is take off them, that old cast iron weights a ton.


Really pleased with the way its looking, bring on next weekend when I want to finish up the tile and hopefully dry wall the upstairs part and then also paint the floor in here...stay tuned
B



Sunday, January 10, 2016

All I want for christmas is a finished bedroom.....

Over christmas I had a couple of choices, either do this project or start the plumping for the new bathroom.  Seeing as I had a house full for most of the holidays, I thought this maybe the safer option.  My room has always had this admittedly very useful walk in closet (probably one of the many children that lived in this house's bedroom) and a nook in front of the window.  As charming as they were it made it tight when the bed was in the room and I wanted the light to come in across the bed, I know I know I sound ridiculous, but who doesn't want to lay in bed and have the light streaming in, you know drinking tea and generally being lazy...


Above is how it looked before, perfectly reasonable and in fine shape, I could have just painted and called it a day.  To be honest I think the house wouldn't have had these originally, there is so many little cut up areas, and the granddaughter that I met who's family used to have the house since around the 1900's was telling me that as they had children they just added another sleeping nook.  I would imagine these walls were put in around 1920-40 when they had the 8 children.  As I pulled them out I kept finding little parts of old wallpaper, I love these little discovery.


Every time I start a demo I'm in complete denial.  I always think that I'm just going to cut the wall away in one piece and carry it out, hence the curtains and the furniture still in the room.  You would think by now I would have realized this is never the case.  This house is not made of dry wall sheets.  Every wall is old lath and heavy plaster.  Therefore the dust and mess is intense.  But for some reason I seem to block this out whenever i start a project, you think i would have remembered the living room ceiling demo


See I finally admitted it was messy and took the curtains down.  I kept the desk in, I always need somewhere to put my tea down. Also take note of the beam all covered up in plater that runs along the bottom of the window. Im sure ill find out there is some terribly important reason that the beams are meant to be covered in plaster but until then I'll be busy exposing them...ALL.


You can see in this photo the amount of plaster that is on these walls.  Im always surprised by the weight that this old concrete, horse hair blend weights.  I can feel the house sighing as I take it down. Also here you can see a glimpse of the original beam construction of the house in the right hand corner.  These are the little glimpses that gave me hope when i first viewed the house, never did i image how beautiful the beams were underneath.  I also don't understand why they would have been covered up ? 


I surprisingly kept it somewhat tidy as i took it all down.  Notice the window to the right.  That helped a lot as i just thew it all out onto the lawn.  My neighbors think I'm nuts.


Ah my trusty sawzall.  Still going strong, my best eBay purchase yet, do i need to wax lyrical again about buying tools second hand.  Im on the hunt for a mitre saw if you have any suggestions....


Its at this point when all the walls are down, it all looks a bit messy and depressing.  The old plaster really makes a mess and then where it was connected to other walls it really looks bad.  This is were a little creativity comes in to patch what you can back together and also realize that it will never be perfect and that is how it should be.  Here there was a big indentation where the wall used to be, so I put back in a "beam" that was part of the old wall.  I grey washed it later on so that it is more subtle.  Then i just filled and re-plastered around it.  Also this is where there is an odd little door on to the landing.  These are the parts that i love.  All these old details, I think another person would have taken it out and cleaned and re-plastered the whole wall.  Its really important to keep all of this character, every crack and old detail all adds up to what makes it great.  Its all too easy to take everything away and then you have removed what you loved about it in the first place.  In someways thats why its better thats it just me pulling these bits apart.  You see a team go in and rip the whole walls away and put back a generic dry wall and you loose all that great old plaster.  I didn't have this perspective on day three or plastering around all the "character".


Just messing around and putting the bed frame back in, this is what I call "I need motivation" stage.  I think it was day three and I was still plastering areas and waiting for it too dry.  Its so tedious but necessary.  I did find this amazing filler that drys within 30 mins and is rock hard, but you have to use it within 10 mins of mixing it up.  This was life changing if you have ever waited for plaster to dry you will feel my pain.  Oh and notice the beam, oh and the wall colour.  It was starting to come together.


More beam porn....


and more...and a random piece of brass pipe that i corroded with salt and want to turn into a lamp, at some point in the future....


This was again pretty tedious.  Where the old walls were left a mark on the floor.  This is not a job for a hand sander, but needs must. I think when all the various wall are moved or removed then I will get a seriuous floor sander to rework some areas, there too beautiful to mess up and not respect.  For now you can't really notice it, and its actually kinda nice to see where the old walls where.


Ugh this looks like a disaster.  It basically was.  This was during the many layers of plaster to get some sort of smooth transition from where the old wall was back to the ceiling.  You can see the original ceiling is no ice rink, so it wasn't like i had to be a master plasterer.  But just transitioning over the bumps was a pain.  Anyway I got there after a while and then there is a great technique when the plaster is almost dry to sponge it, this way it looks like the old plaster.  This is also where you at some point have to draw the line as you could go on for ever creating the old plater look.  Im still talking myself out of doing another coat, luckily for me there is more projects to concern myself with..


Adding a little water to the paint mix to create a wash for the wooden uprights I put in. This technique is so simple and always works a treat.


Action shot...


Here we go.  Curtains back (don't worry mum they survived) and that great bed frame back in place.  You can see where the walls used to be and then you can also see how the light now goes across the room.  See I'm not crazy ...Also take note the ceiling is still not painted but is somewhat complete...


I added a dog for effect...


This for me is very paired down, just wait until my hoarding tendency gets to be indulged.



The lion and the dresser that were temporarily in the living room were lugged upstairs, thanks David! You thought you were coming for a relaxing christmas break. (Martha please ignore the dust and finger prints).  Also one of my little painting studies, one day i will get around to doing the large scale version of it, i will get back to painting something other than walls!


The old piano desk is right at home at the side of the bed along with that lamp i picked up at the flea market. Also no room is complete at jordan cottage without antlers!


I love these beams, my whole color story is right there in that one piece of wood.





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