Master Bath Progress

Yesterday, George Ramos came and installed the medicine cabinet door.

Then today, Eric and Jeff went ahead and installed the sink faucet.

And some more pretties!

The toilet is operational!

Misc. Projects

I have no idea what to call this post. I spent about 3 hours last week updating Wunderlist again and getting my To Do list caught up. So that sent me and Jeff on a flurry of exciting activities, like cleaning the furnace filters and Vent-a-Hood fans. Super exciting, non-photogenic stuff. Though, I supposed I could have shown you how gross the screens in our air handler had become after too long between cleanings. LOL

I've made a lot of progress selling the huge piles of tile. We have almost a manageable amount of boxes now. And once we are really, truly done with our bathroom, I will donate or liquidate what's left. We've also sold some big, bulky SCA gear. Our basement is looking much emptier, though still an unphotogenic mess.

I've actually managed to raise most of the money I spent on rugs last month, so I'm feeling less guilty for making those purchases. Though my new living room rug still sits unopened in the package. I bought a rug pad for it, but I want to repair the chewed woodwork and paint the wall before I move in a larger rug.

I finished sewing my quilt bindings. And now that I'm looking back thru the blog, I see it took me more than 3 years to finish these bindings. That's really embarrassing. I haven't taken pictures of the completed quilts, but you can see the posts about when I made them here and here. I built them so quickly at the time, but then they just sat there unfinished for way too long. :(

And, I finally gave cutting a stencil a try. I was able to plug my Mac into the Copam cutter and they talked to eachother!! Though, it's hard to show a picture of etched plastic, this is what I was able to cut.

The dragon etched onto 7mil mylar

The original 1910s dragon tile

The cutter didn't cut through the 7 mil mylar but this time I have faith I can eventually get it to work; I just need to figure out the right settings, the right blade, and the right thickness of mylar. I am excited I finally made significant progress on this stencil project. Solving the problems, however, will wait until later this summer.

Tile Progress

Barrett actually managed to make it out to our house before noon yesterday and stayed until a reasonable time, so he got quite a lot done. Now we just need to figure out the accent tile. We're still waiting on the test firing, which I hope will be done on Monday.

We have a week to hustle to figure out the accent tiles before Barrett has time in his schedule to come back again, so hopefully we'll be ready for him.

Jeff just needs to install the supply line and the toilet seat and we'll have an operational toilet again! Yay!

Bath Woodwork Stained

I spent the last few days staining the rest of the woodwork for the bathroom. The door is stained and lacquered. Today I put on both coats of stain on the medicine cabinet door. We're waiting for the beveled mirror for the medicine cabinet door before we install it.

I took this photo before the second coat of stain on the small pieces.
I actually finished both coats today.

Barrett came by and finished the shower floor today.

Weekend Update

We had a little bit of movement on our bathroom remodel this weekend. Jeff and I finished staining, lacquering and installing the molding back in place. I also stained and lacquered the windows.

Today I'm finally working on sanding and staining the door. I finished paint stripping this door way back in September and it's been kicking around the garage ever since.

The tile in this bathroom has been a headache ever since we started this project. Our latest problem is that DalTile doesn't carry solid 2x2 tiles so I've been looking around for other options. I ordered samples from a couple commercial outfits for decorative 2x2s, but I am also thinking about just glazing my own.

I went to Georgie's Ceramics over the weekend and picked up some bisque tile and I've glazed them. Now if I could just get back there during their business hours to have these fired, I would be able to see if this is a workable option. (Jeff has a temporary job gig right now, so the car is always gone during the day.)

These are unfired glazed bisque tiles; these are not the actual colors. The glazes will change color when they're fired. The final colors are actually glossy gold, rust and dark green.

Well, back to my sanding project. At least it's beautiful outside today.

Interiors in Colours 1912

This 1912 book, 120 Interiors in Colours Designed by Modern Artists, was a pretty wild find. It includes some really beautiful interiors, as well as some weird ones. I took screenshots of the ones I liked the most. There were a lot of white interiors I didn't save. If any of you are interested in seeing the original book, it can be downloaded here.

Woohoo, Stencils Soon!

Just a quick post because I'm excited! I finally took the time to figure out my cutter software. The last two times I looked at it, I didn't immediately get it, and I didn't have the patience to figure it out.

I found this tile photo at flickr. It's an Art Nouveau tile from 1908. I love dragons, so the appeal to figure out how to cut this one out is obvious. I'm sure there are easier ways to get to the finished product, because my technique was tedious as hell, but I have a stencil file!!!

I haven't cut it out of mylar yet, but I think I finally have the file ready to try. If this works, it's bound to send me on quite the stencil spree this year. (It's amazing what you can get done when you're procrastinating taxes. LOL)

Update: I've been having a lot of fun making stencil patterns from period catalogs today. I'll have to go find my mylar and see about cutting these this week. :)

Bathroom Wainscoting

OMG, Barrett has finally started the wainscoting! I was beginning to wonder if this day would ever come.

The shower floor is also ready for tile. Barrett said he had to order more of the white mosaic floor tile, so that project is now waiting for the order to arrive.

So, I changed our wainscoting plan again. Sigh. When we measured the bathroom the other day I realized I have exactly the right amount of the tile border as we need. Now, normally, I would be happy to have just the right amount, but if there is one wrong cut.... And worse, we wouldn't have any extra to play with the arrangement so the pretty tiles don't hit in stupid spots. So we went back to my original plan.

There were a number of bathroom tile pictures in the Trenton catalog that show two levels of decorative borders, so this design seems reasonable.

It turns out DalTile doesn't carry the shiny ceramic tiles in anything smaller than 4x4, so I am currently on a quest to find attractive, but not too expensive, 2x2 accent tiles. I found some options, but getting the tile makers to respond to my inquiries has been a challenge. These are the top two options we are currently considering.

2x2 Morning Glory accent tile single color  $7.50 Canadian

2x2 Geometric Triskelion $17

Ugh, I am also trying to get our 2015 taxes finished, printed out and signed tonight so we can mail them tomorrow. Yuck.

Mueller Mosaic c1920 Tile Catalog

This will be the last tile catalog I include this time around. This is a Mueller Mosaic Tile catalog from approximately 1920.

New Carved Secretary

I clearly have a weakness for carving because even though I already had a secretary, when I saw this one on craigslist I couldn't resist the temptation.

I bought this from one of the most difficult sellers I have ever dealt with. Had I not wanted it so much, I definitely would have walked. It has some issues we were not aware of when we bought it, but I think we still got a good deal.

When we bought this the seller had the door uninstalled and wrapped up separately. She said it was because she was worried the glass would break, but it became clear when we unwrapped it why she didn't have it out.

Somebody glued on 1/2" quarter round. They needed to use 1/4" quarter round. I'm not sure why they bothered since the glass was not in danger of falling out since it still had stops on the long edges.

To remove this quarter round, I tried soaking it in vinegar as some websites suggested but that didn't work. Finally, Jeff just tried hammering the thing off and it worked, mostly. We've actually got some 1/4" quarter round leftover from our leaded glass project we can try once we get this cleaned out.

Also, the door binds really badly. I think the door joints have expanded and it's now too wide for the space. I thought about sanding it down a bit on the hinge edge, but for now I've just forced it shut. Luckily, we don't have to open the door very often.

I think this looks much better than the old secretary, which was a family hand-me-down. I think the old secretary was Colonial style. The folks who bought it from us on craigslist were very excited to have one of their first pieces of real furniture.

The new rug arrived a few days ago already and Jeff's been too busy to help me shuffle furnishings.

Minton Tile 1909 catalog

I've been digging thru period catalogs again. I ran across a color Minton Tile catalog from c. 1905 that is quite stunning. Here are many color pictures from it.

Mott's 1914 Plumbing Catalog

Mott's Iron Works Modern Plumbing catalog from 1914. They had some pretty nice tile designs in this catalog.