 
Ask Abuzz 
Letters to the Magazine editor:
|
|
|
  
|
Refined and refreshed
FOR SEVERAL YEARS, the pictures that would serve as my aesthetic blueprints for the upstairs bathroom remained on the refrigerator door. The pages from the home design magazines showed bright, simple rooms filled with ceramic tile, woodwork painted white, and tasteful lighting. The look - traditional but with the clean contemporary lines that I liked - would fit well into my Queen Anne Victorian home. The bathroom would be my second major interior renovation in the century-old house. In 1995, I gutted the kitchen and an adjoining half-bath and salvaged many components, blending the old with the new in reconstruction. After that, I needed time to regroup - mentally, physically, and financially. I learned the hard lessons of the do-it-yourself school on that project: Despite all your planning and enthusiasm, everything will take longer and cost more than you thought. I also learned that some things are worth saving and some things simply are not. For the bathroom, I saved only the 1924 claw-foot bathtub, a four-panel door, and some treasured blue tiles. Everything else - the handsome but deteriorating moldings, the original double-hung window, the big iron radiator - would go. The 6-by-7-foot space on the second floor in the rear of the house is small, but it has a window that allows the morning light to stream in. It has an 8-foot ceiling and is so nicely laid out that there was no need to reconfigure the floor plan. If the right design decisions were made, this somewhat diminutive room could feel much larger. To keep a lid on costs, I tried to do whatever I could, but the kitchen project also taught me to leave the most difficult tasks to professionals. Still, I tried to lay the groundwork in order to make their work as simple as possible and minimize the time they would need to do their jobs. However, my do-it-yourself approach went beyond budget considerations. By involving myself as much as possible, I gained more control over the outcome. This project would disrupt my daily life. Besides the dreaded layer of plaster dust that it would spew, it would mean setting up a makeshift shower in the basement. If I worked nights and weekends and took a few days off from work, I estimated I could complete the job in a month. Right. All told, the bathroom took about 10 weeks to finish. After the kitchen renovation, I should have known. I thought that project would take three months; it lasted nine. Demolition is always an adventure, and this job was no exception. The ceiling came down first. When I pulled down the ceiling laths, a huge pile of leaves and paper fell on my head. Our neighborhood squirrels had used this as bedding when they roomed under the attic floor some years ago, after gaining access through a rotted corner of the house that has since been rebuilt. A huge cast-iron wall-mounted sink and the silver-painted radiator were tossed next. I dragged the bathtub into the hallway and tore out all the room's horsehair plaster. Next, I tackled the floor: First, I ripped out a recent layer of vinyl, followed by some tough 1-inch-thick spruce and a layer of original wide planking. Reconstruction began with Korky, my plumber, rerouting pipes under the floor, moving them from one end of the room, where the bulky old radiator had stood, to the other, where a slim new white Runtal wall-mounted heating unit would be installed. This allowed the entire left wall to remain open and uncluttered, which would give the visual illusion of a larger room. I rebuilt the floor by reinforcing all the joists with 2-by-3-inch lumber. For subflooring, I used 4-inch-wide tongue-and-groove spruce boards. On top of that, I laid a layer of cp9.5GAFcp10.5 Weatherwatch leak barrier (a sticky rubberlike product left over from a roof repair) and a layer of thin plywood. Half-inch-thick cement board came next. This system may seem a bit elaborate, but I wanted the strongest foundation possible for the mosaic floor tiles and the cast-iron tub. While I hated working with the cement board - it is heavy and coarse and difficult to cut - it seemed like the right product for the job. As backing for the wall tile, I used Dens-Shield, a much lighter product that cuts cleaner and fastens better than cement board. After studying Home Wiring, a Time-Life book, I felt I was ready to do the electrical work. I rewired the existing switches to the new brushed-nickel and white-glass sconces, installed two recessed lights, and hooked up a ventilation fan with a timer switch. The Dewalt reciprocating saw (an excellent tool for demolition and cutting in difficult areas) I bought for this project was ideal for cutting a hole in the side of the house to accommodate the wall cap for the ventilation system. With the wiring complete, insulation installed, and the subfloor down, it was time to find a plasterer. For $650, the room got new plasterboard and a fine skim coat. Once the plaster had fully dried, a coat of Benjamin Moore Ocean Air paint was applied. The light blue color makes the room feel bigger and reminds me of the cloud-pattern computer screen saver in my windowless office. The woodwork was primed and painted Super White, also from Benjamin Moore. The room was starting to look like my vision, but my enthusiasm began to wane when I realized the new subfloor was slightly uneven. I had no experience in leveling floors, and, at this stage of the game, I was getting impatient. So I asked Guy Catallo, my tile man, what he would charge to do the job. His $150 price seemed a bargain. I never considered doing the tiling myself. I had a large investment in high-quality tile, and this was not the time to be learning on the job. Fitting together the four elements - baseboard, a field of 3-by-6-inch bricks, rope molding, and chair rail - was a job for an experienced professional. For the floor, I had chosen a beautiful light gray and black tumbled marble in a spiral pattern mosaic that fit in well with the rest of the room. Part of the fun in a project like this is discovering new suppliers, especially of hard-to-find items. Consider the new door and window casings. I wanted them to match, or at least complement, the woodwork in the rest of the house, but I didn't want the expense of custom millwork. Anderson & McQuaid in Cambridge had a fine mahogany product that fit my needs perfectly. It is a bit narrower than the original, somewhat heavy trim found in the rest of the house but nearly identical in style. Anderson & McQuaid also supplied the bull's-eye corner blocks that I needed as well as the grooved molding for the window. The windowsill was cut from inch-thick mahogany. Four round tiles, original to the room and fired in the 1890s by the Low Art Tile Co. in Chelsea, were returned to their rightful places in the corners above the door and the window. The 27-inch-wide Memoirs pedestal sink and toilet came from the Kohler catalog, and the Sigma chrome lavatory faucets are made by American Faucet & Coatings Corp. The claw-foot tub went back to its old resting spot, the exterior stripped and painted a slightly darker color than the walls, only here I used oil-based paint. Korky and I dressed it up with a good-quality chrome shower and plumbing set. I had planned to buy all the plumbing supplies myself, but Korky took my list and got a hefty plumber's discount. With that as an incentive, I asked for a discount when I bought the tile and, to my shock, got 20 percent knocked off the bill. To replace the old double-hung window, I purchased a six-over-six wood window that pivots for easy cleaning. I chose the wrong time to install it, however, an October night just two days before I was leaving for a vacation. I was tired and stressed and could have used another pair of hands. For a while, I thought I'd be leaving for London with just a plywood board protecting the new bathroom from the elements. I built a chase to hide two thick plastic pipes that run down one wall of the room. I wanted something simple, so I cut a dado into 2-by-2-inch poplar boards to accept -inch birch plywood panels. A conventional medicine cabinet would have taken up too much space in such a small, busy room. But a place was needed to stow toiletries. The solution lay between the studs, where I sank glass shelves into the wall near the corner - an easy reach from the sink. The cabinet is shallow and just 10 inches wide, but it's 44 inches high. I hung a simple mirror, 18-by-32 and -inch thick, and a glass shelf over the sink. The finishing touch was a blue and white dotted shower curtain bought in a hurry the day after the job was done. I couldn't wait to get home from work and take a shower in the new bathroom. Resources: Journals that I have found useful resources for my renovation projects are Fine Homebuilding (www.finehomebuilding.com; 203-426-8171), This Old House (www.thisoldhouse.org; 212-522-5015), and Old House Journal (www.oldhousejournal.com; 202-452-0800). Metropolitan Home (212-767-6000) provided inspiration. Here is a partial listing of materials and suppliers I used for this project. M. A. Peacard Richard Pennington is a member of the Globe staff. To comment, e-mail [email protected]. |
|
|
||
 Extending our newspaper services to the web |
Return to the home page
|
|
|
