The New Bathroom

I gave you a tour of our loathsome bathroom a while back, remember?
Well, now I can give you a tour of the NEW bathroom, yes, I can! Adam and our friend Joe worked oh-so hard while I was out of town last week, and they truly gave us a brand new room. When I'm soaking in the tub and gazing around at the view, I don't even feel like I'm in the same room.

That's a before-and-after of the vanity area.
Below is a before-and-after of the corner near the vanity.

 
We haven't finished the light fixtures in the room, so right now we only have that floor lamp. I rather like the soft yellow glow it gives everything -- very soothing. But it does take up space. Soon we'll have a light above the vanity and the lamp will go back to the living room.

new tub

old tub

Oh my goodness, the difference in tubs cannot even be described! The new tub is so very deep. We are great bath-takers and tub-soakers, and this is a feature we will nearly every day. Plus, it's clean and mildew-free, and has a very nice slope for reclining.

I love the new shower surround.
I love the beautiful vanity, and
I adore having a medicine cabinet
to keep stuff in that used to
clutter up the vanity top.

 Somehow I was able to replace the three huge cabinets and the entire dresser with this narrow shelf unit behind the door -- you hardly know it's there! -- and a little cubby in the other corner. I threw out some stuff, decided to keep my sheets elsewhere, and simply reorganized. I'm so happy with the result: a cleaner, tidier, prettier room.
Many thanks to Adam and Joe for all their hard work! The house is (mostly) put back together, and life as we know it can proceed ... with a bathroom.
I only had to use the composting toilet in the barn twice :)

Stripping the Bathroom

Before I get to the ugly pictures, I'll show you this:

 Our early azaleas are blooming fully in the county. On the farm, we have NO azaleas, which seems impossible in the South, but it's true. Maybe we need a few.
Meanwhile, back on the ranch ...

The wallpaper is coming off!!!

 Adam shares my loathing of the old wallpaper. We agree that the room already looks bigger and brighter. It helps that he ripped out the three ugly cabinets! Now the wall above the toilet is open.

 I can't wait till this goes away:

 Every time somebody took a shower yesterday, Adam noticed that the wallpaper came off easier afterward. It's a rather moist room, especially because the fan hasn't been working for years. One of the first things to go in will be a working fan to keep the moisture out of the room.

Keeping moisture out is one of the more important things in a home in this waterfront county. Steady rains, hurricanes, rising rivers -- sometimes it feels like a rain forest. More updates on the bathroom will come later this week.

The Loathsome Bathroom

Later this month Julia and I will got away for a few days' visit with my family in West Virginia. While we're gone Adam will (hopefully) gut the bathroom and give it a total do-over. We planned to do this last fall when I left for a few days, but frankly, we were unwilling then to cough up the necessary cash to make it happen. Let me give you a tour of The Loathsome Bathroom. It's the room Adam and I both hate the most!
It's a tight spot. You can easily sit on the potty and fiddle in the sink, wash your hands, or brush your teeth.

I did not clean before taking these photos. It wouldn't have made any difference!
Immediately to your right as you enter, you have this crowded corner. The dresser gives me necessary storage. It's the only bathroom, so all bathroomy things must live here.

Ugliest wallpaper ever. Ugliest light fixture ever. And the mirror is almost bigger than the room itself!

Yes, I confess, I've begun ripping random pieces of wallpaper off the walls. It makes me feel better. And ... how could it make the room look any worse? Every inch of that paper that disappears is an improvement.
Okay, this is embarrassing, but ... in the interest of honesty ... here's the tub. The walls around it are not a solid surround, and not tile. It was some other type of wall they used for a while, but it has seams. And seams leak. Adam sealed the seams, but then mold grew on the sealant. I can't scrub it off or bleach it off. It's too soft. I've tried scraping it off with a razor blade, which is helpful, but I can't remove ALL the sealant or the walls will leak. This is the bathroom element that needs replacing the most desperately.

Above the tub -- high above, since it's a 10-foot ceiling -- you see a slightly bulging wall, moisture, and some mold there too. I'm afraid when Adam starts stripping things away, this redo could cost more than we anticipate. Oh ... and notice that horrific border!

On the left side of the room above the toilet are three large, ugly, necessary cabinets. All linens are stored here. One is a medicine cabinet.

We will keep the toilet, but it must be reset and sealed because it wobbles.

If you look up, you'll see perhaps the only thing in the room that I've decided I like. Maybe. I call it the flying spaceship light fixture. We will keep it and replace the fan that doesn't work, plus put a new fixture above the sink. Problem is -- the light switches for this overhead fixture and for the fan, are behind the door. How inconvenient is that?

 And the floor? Ugh. This is what the threshold looks like right this minute:

Now you know why we're so eager to get this room redone right away.
It's just an awful, ugly, snug little room. But Adam will do what he can to make it more comfortable for us, and cleaner and prettier. This is the BEFORE -- I can't wait to show you the AFTER!

What Adam Did Inside:

We had those horrid shower doors in our bathroom. Adam and I wanted them gone. We feel they make the shower a bit claustrophobic. We prefer a shower curtain. Adam took out the doors and installed a nice rod, and I hung the curtain.

Our bathroom is small, and we have just the one. We like it this way. We want a small house -- easy to heat, cool, clean, and care for.

There are such conveniences to a small house, and a small bathroom too. From a seated position, one can reach everything. One can wash one's hands, straighten the vanity, reach all the drawers and the trash can. One can begin drawing one's bath water, swap out the toilet paper, flip on the light, brush one's teeth, comb one's hair. Ah -- the conveniences of a small bathroom!

This morning I woke at 4:00 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep, having too many troubles rumbling around in my mind. This made for a groggy morning and a long afternoon. I was a bit downcast. When I arrived home after 6:00, Adam and Julia had been busy making me happy. They painted the living room this afternoon!

They moved all the furniture to the center, removed the rug, taped all the doors and windows, cleaned the edges and sills, painted, and returned everything to its place ten minutes before I got home. Whew!

The room looks lovely. And it did make me happy :) At last I have a room with pretty walls ready for pictures. They say Julia's bedroom is next.
Wasn't that a particularly nice thing for them to do? And then Adam made us delicious French toast for supper. I have a very sweet husband.

At Last! A Storage Building!

I can't tell you how very proud I am of my hard-working husband. He has single-handedly taken a derelict, vine-clad, termite-damaged building, and made it into a livable, usable space. He finished the roof, the floor, and (almost) the ceiling. Anna scrubbed and painted the walls.

You can't see the color, but it's called Pineapple Upside Down Cake -- a pale yummy yellow.

Back inside the main house, our contractor has been working on that little hallway to the office. Today he put sheetrock on it, after framing it in yesterday.

And here's the door that will go in that opening. It will open into the hall, against the right wall.

Now we won't need to use this door from the bath into the office. I'll put a dresser there for bathroom storage. I like having a spare dresser in a bathroom.

The bathroom floor is in bad shape. You can feel it give and sag as you walk there. Our contractor also put down plastic vapor barrier under the house today.
What does that little L-shaped hallway look like, from the other side? It's kind of odd. It took out most of the closet in the middle bedroom, leaving only a slice of closet, about enough space to hang 8 dresses.

It'll look a bit better when he's done, but it is what it is. At least it gives good access to the corner office, which was necessary.
All this happened on Wednesday. I have a backlog of posts, so I end up posting them a few days after the fact. Now it's Friday night, and we've begun moving lots of stuff up to the property. More to come, folks!

Up-On-A-Roof and other Scary Sights

Adam had his head in the clouds Monday afternoon.

After wrangling with the out-building floor and ceiling for a few days, he decided he needed a distraction, and worked on the roof instead.

Repair work is messy! Look at all that stuff in the yard.

He used a product to seal the gaps where the water was blowing in when the wind was from the wrong quarter. One long strip of metal roofing runs along the ridgeline from front to back. Its edge was curled up in some places, and that's where the rain would blow in.

I couldn't stay outside when he was up on that metal roof ... so back inside, I was gradually shelving books in the office. And the first piece of our furniture went into the house!!! A rickety bookshelf - haha :)

Now this is cool, for those of us who know nothing about being a contractor. Lookit what he does with a 5-gallon bucket!

On Monday a great ripping-out occurred. Here's another shot from the dining room, looking through the bath, into the office (where Adam is standing). See that wall with ripped wallpaper and the square vent return opening? A new door will go there. A small L-shaped hall will access the office.

The current door from bath to office. These are big doors. I love the panels.

In the middle bedroom, the new door/hall will have to pass through this closet and will cut it down to a very tiny, itty-bitty closet. The hall will come from the dining room (behind that metal vent box) and will go into the office via the side wall of the closet.

That side wall:

This wall in the office will be busted open for the access. This box -- maybe a security alarm box? - will have to go too.

Later ... I came back to find this in the living room!

The great ripping-out! Our contractor cut out the opening from the dining room, took out the vent box, and cut out a new doorway into the office.

Now we can close that bathroom door and have some privacy in there :)
On Tuesday, the contractor should frame in the hallway. Making progress!

And Adam hopes to finish the out-building ceiling and roof repair on Tuesday too. Then he can give his aching muscles a rest.

On the Right Side of the House

(To view an aerial shot of the farm, or to see a rough blueprint of the house layout, click on the 'plans' page above.)
Now I'll briefly take you through the bedrooms. They run, 1-2-3, along the right side of the house from front to back. The largest (ha!) is immediately off the living room.

The carpet in four rooms was this blue-green, quite old and stained. I do not like old dirty carpet; I like hard wood with rugs. So we pulled up all the carpet and hauled it outside.

Here's what the floor looks like:

They need sanding and cleaning, but they will be cleaner than old carpet!
I noticed a dark hold in the carpet in the front bedroom where the old man slept. At first I thought it was a utility line of some sort. While pulling up the carpet I discovered it was a burnt spot. I suppose he dropped a cigarette on the carpet one night while lounging in bed. Yikes! It burned through into the floor.

Here's a close-up of the living room floor (bottom) and the dining room floor (top). Not too good. The wood needs stripping and sanding and finishing, and the ancient gray linoleum squares in the dining room are so ugly. Still, I prefer them to green carpeting. We owned an 1870s Victorian home in Mississippi years ago, and we attempted to pull up this kind of flooring in a bathroom. Horrible!

 The sellers also left us two oil heaters! I love these things. I'm wondering if they're telling us, "Just wait till you feel how cold this house is in January!" haha :)

 Closet space is sparse! This is the "master" closet, tucked into a corner with two outrageously inaccessible cabinets above. I pulled out the carpet and liner today.

 On to the middle bedroom -- it opens directly off the dining room. Please note the hideous wallpaper and accent strip that will most certainly be gone. Each person has his own taste!

From the corner of the dining room (which you see in the above photo, on the left side), you enter the bathroom. And from there, you access the 3rd bedroom in the back of the house.
Here's the view looking from the dining room, through the corner of the bathroom, into the back bedroom:

And here's the view from the back bedroom, looking through the bathroom, into the dining room:

This arrangement must change for the sake of our daughter who will be using the back bedroom. The contractor will make a new passageway, cutting through the middle bedroom, bypassing the bath, to give her a private entrance. I'll close off the door that joins the bath and bedroom, which will give me space in the bathroom to put a dresser for more storage.

Last but not least, the bathroom. Not a fabulous bath, but serviceable. I do wish it had a window; I love a bathroom to have a window. The first thing I did here was remove the paper towel rack mounted just behind the toilet. Such a man thing to do!

And this light fixture -- it's interesting, unique, kind of '70s retro, but not really my farmhouse style. Kind of a flying-saucer, celebrate the space race, fixture. I think it will go away too. 

Oh -- one more fun thing. Get a load of this embroidered panel in the dining room. It had a wooden frame around it, like a picture. Can you get what it is?

It conceals the fuse box! Wow, just wow. We will find another solution for fuse-box-concealment, and the dead sunflowers will find a home elsewhere!

That's it for the house.  See you later!