Bob: Yet another little ding in the wall. This house was full of them, this one is where a long-missing soap dish used to hang. The sink is basically new, as is the medicine chest, which is upside down. The bottom half of the walls are all textured on top of many layers of old wallpaper, but it's staying put and not curling off, so we decided to leave it be. The top half was another matter...
(05/2010) Nan: I seldom remember that this hole was there. What a difference two years can make!
Bob: This is a close-up of the wallpaper damage above the medicine chest, and the site where the vanity light goes. We've already removed the one that was here, and plan to use it in the upstairs bathroom, as it matches the one up there already. You can see there are other layers of wallpaper underneath the top one; just how many I didn't know, until I started...
Nan: Damage? This wallpaper wasn't just "damaged" it was a disaster! I love wallpaper, but after this, it might be hard to get Bob to ever agree to hanging wallpaper anywhere in this house.
Bob: I attribute the loose wallpaper to the long period during which this house was unoccupied.
The lack of heat allowed moisture to penetrate all the downstairs rooms from the outside and
collect behind this top layer of vinyl. There was a considerably large ammount of loose wallpaper
in the living and dining rooms, too, as you shall see.
Bob: Many layers of wallpaper later, I found plaster underneath. This is the vanity wall, sans medicine chest and part of the chair rail. I should've taken a picture of the DRIFTS of wallpaper that ensued when this really got going, as I removed multiple layers of wallpaper with a long-bladed stock knife, a little like peeling a potato. Some came off easily, other didn't, and most revealed many past indiscretions done to the plaster walls.
Nan: A bit like peeling a potato? It took MANY hours of tedious, meticulous work to
get that paper off the walls. The one thing that this web-site cannot really show is how
long each step takes. It's nearly unimaginable.
Bob: Fortunately, this was the only major wall damage in here, a nasty big patch from ages ago, since covered over so many times. I suppose a real perfectionist wouldn't have settled with anything less than stripping everything to the studs and starting over, and believe me, we would've loved to do that, but time and money count, too, and that clock is still ticking to move in, so, in spite of the extra work cleaning this mess up, it is still far better than starting over.
(05/2010) Nan: One of those "some day" projects would be stripping to the studs and rebuilding
the entire bathroom.....some day, someday...etc.
Bob: A close-up of the wall over the toilet, showing many of the layers embedded into the wall. It was a fascinating hodge-podge of styles, covering the years and renovations this house has seen. I liked the swans, but the one that was most interesting is barely visible, a dry parchment brown with india-ink-like drawings of buildings on it.
Nan: There is no accounting for someone else's idea of style. I hope that many years from
now, someone doesn't bemoan my choice of style for this bathroom.
Bob: Here, you can see my process for developing a new chair rail level on the walls. I started next to the entry door, and ran two lines around the whole room a quarter-inch apart, the top one being my cut line, and the bottom line being a reserved mark to recreate the top line, should I make a mistake and lose it (which I did in a few places). The floor was not level in here (just like the rest of the house), so I relied on the trusty two-foot level that Nan bought at Wal-Mart. I set the level to be equal to the height of the chair rail in the dining room, to which this room is adjacent. You can also see my stock knife inserted under the wallpaper between the old and new chair rail levels. I ended up making all new chair rails, because parts of the original were broken or missing.
Nan: I'll do my level best to keep this comment short.
Bob: You succeeded, Nan.
Bob: After all that wallpaper got stripped off, I had to rinse down the walls to remove the last bits of paper and glue that remained. I'm just glad I removed most of the wallpaper while it was dry, or else I would've had a REAL mess on my hands! Fortunately, both dry and wet methods worked with a minimum of resistance on the walls' part, leaving me a fairly clean surface to repair.
Nan: This wall looks like a mortar round hit it! Plug and Patch is the order of the day.
Bob: And, oh the patching I needed to do! The holes needed filled and the corners needed filled and the ceiling lines needed filled. Old patching material was removed (everything from spackle to plaster to something resembling chewing gum) and those holes repatched, too. It took about four trips around the whole room with some sanding in between, and then some, to get these old walls level.
Nan: When Bob was doing the sanding in here, he'd come out looking like the Pillsbury
Dough Boy.
Bob: It seems like it took forever, but, FINALLY, a coat of primer shows what a lot of loving work can do: restore these old plaster walls to a condition resembling their former glory. That double line for the chair rail turned out to be extremely fortuitous, because cutting the wallpaper and priming and painting the upper walls obliterated the top line, and later, painting the bottom half obliterated the bottom line. I just redrew whichever line disappeared and went on.
Nan: Smooth as a baby's bottom.
Bob: Meanwhile, this door needed a replacement, and I found the perfect candidate: the door from the dining room to the pantry, which was unneeded there, would do perfect here. The pantry used to be a porch, so this actually was an outside door originally. Here, you see that door leaning against the wall, while I rout out the door frame to accomodate hanging it on the dining room side. I couldn't move the woodwork because it extends all the way up past the transom. The two-by-two screwed to the door jamb serves as a router guide.
Nan: I objected to a door with a window. Who ever heard of a bathroom with a window in
the door? But actually it is not a problem. With that fake frosted look, and curtains on
the door, the window is never a problem. And it is quite handsome.
Bob: Meanwhile, this window needed assistance, as do all the windows in this house. You know. Storms left open, etc. Sill rot, and so forth. Some more scraping and priming. They'll all have to be reglazed someday. In the meantime, we've got them sufficiently protected to keep them from deteriorating any more than they have already. This one has a hinged sash, and it needed reinforcement and alignment. Nice morning shot, here.
Nan: This is another of those some day projects. Every window in the house needs renovating.
If we ever get this house to a point of done, which is relative, we'd like to start rebuilding
all the windows. In the meantime, this window is decent looking...
Bob: Now you can see the color scheme we have in store: bright yellow, above, same white below, same creamy trim as in the rest of the house. We're starting to come together, finally...
Nan: I would not have dared mention wallpaper and these walls in the same breath to Bob.
Bob: That hole behind the shower gets a custom removable patch, just in case we have to get back in there to work on pipes or something. That slot at the top will be covered with chair rail. Lower panel was also reworked with some new trim pieces and stiffners to tighten it up.
Nan: I never notice this panel. We painted it to match the rest of the wall, and it just
disappeared.
Bob: Meanwhile, this vanity cabinet needed attention. The great whoever slapped it in here without so much as cleaning the wall up first: you can see wallpaper and damage from removing the original baseboard in here. Tracks for the drawers have gotten rusty, too. I decided the cabinet needed some TLB (Tender Loving Bob)...
Nan: And TLB worked his magic on this vanity. The ugly mess literally disappeared.
Bob: This is my way to fix this without having to remove the cabinet. I quickly cut some pieces of mucho thin plywood to sheath the wall with, cutting around the drawer guides. Another piece on the bottom in back hides most of the damage from stuffing the pipes through, foam filler covers the rest. This all got primed and painted white, and it makes it a nice cabinet now, much better.
Nan: I never notice that this was once a nasty-looking mess. It's just "not there".
Bob: Now you see why I held off on the closet door reveal. It would've given away the color scheme. Closet shelves can be seen inside. These doors work beautifully now!
(05/2010) Nan: Two years later and they still look great!
Bob: That lovely refinished bathroom cabinet gets rehung, this time right side up! This makes all that work worth it.
Nan: This little cabinet is astounding. From extra toothpaste to soap, shampoo and
first-aid supplies, they're all hidden away. It's beautiful while being so utilitarian.
Bob: Oh, to heck with it, let's just skip a few steps, OK? This is all the replaced vanity site stuff: medicine cabinet, vanity light, towel racks and chair rails all reinstalled. The vanity light is the one that came out of the kitchen (we reuse everything), and it certainly looks better in here than it ever did in there.
I custom built the mount from scrap OSB, building it out with a few blocks of wood to give the "shadow" effect. We found these two black iron racks on the side of the road, originally for supermarket fliers, and they now will work beautifully for towel and/or other storage. The chair rails went up with super-stick building mastic, made for this purpose, and didn't need any other fasteners. We bought lengths of it pre-primed, I cut them to fit, and Nan gave them two coats of trim cream when she painted the quarter-round for the baseboard mouldings. The door is mounted and painted the trim color, this side being the original outside (note medallion on one of the bottom panels). The little brown shelf came from Goodwill. We'll paint it trim color someday...
Nan: I have looked and looked, and I don't see a shotgun in here.
Do you? But the finished effect is nice. And I get to call this my bathroom.
Bob: Here's a few finishing touches to give some idea about where this is going. Nan's curtains adorn the door window which opens into the dining room now. You can see the curtain on the window as well, and her lamp on the dressing table, which fits nicely in front of that window. We'll be doing more with it, I'm sure, but, as you probably know by now, that urge to get other rooms further along has decided to instigate a wholesale retreat from here and into the sewing room, upstairs. We'll get back to this later.
Nan: I made these curtain panels in 1992 for my sewing room. They serve well here
to finish off the bathroom door. We're still looking for a more appropriate door knob.
I'd love to have a cut glass knob for this door.
Bob: Well, now we see a few more things that have changed here in the last year and a half. The little shelf above the sink got painted, and we added a plant hanger and plant. Nan's dressing table got repurposed as a new knitting table in the computer room, and our grandson-in-law Bernie Lopez donated an old desk that had fallen apart. I rebuilt it as this dressing desk, resizing just about everything. It gives Nan much needed storage space for all kinds of things.
Nan: We reduce, reuse, repurpose EVERYthing. If it's ready for the dump, bring it to us,
we'll find a use for it. Thanks Bernie!
2:57 PM 5/24/2010