I've recently fine tuned my bungalow snobbery with the addition of the American Bungalow Magazine message boards to my list of time sucks.
We're currently faced with a quandary. Two, in fact, but both revolve around the same theme: kitchen and bathroom restoration in light of my burgeoning old house snobbery. Today, we're talking about the bathroom, however, which we will call the Bung Hole Bathroom. Originally, when we first looked in the bathroom before buying the house, we were kind of disgusted. "Ugh," Erik's mother and I fizzed in union. We scoured bungalow and craftsman books and resources to try to get ideas for touching it up. The sad part is that only a few things have been modified from the original 1929 bathroom. The wall tiles are still there, the hex tile floor is perfect, the pedestal tub is original and the medicine cabinet is still there.
Why is this sad, you ask?
Well, a previous owner "remuddled" the bathroom fixtures a little. They replaced the sink, but just spackled in the wall mount holes in the tiles.
They replaced the faucet, shower head, and soap dish in the tub/shower. In doing so, I'm guessing, they weakened the tile and it has eventually formed giant cracks pointing down in a giant evil V shape towards the new soap dish and what have you. The tile will need replacing, which is good because dudes, it's pink tile. It may be original, but that doesn't mean the bathroom designers in the late 20s and 30s had good taste.
We have always, always had our little hearts set on a claw foot tub. You know, with one of those metal pole shower heads and curtain rails. I even found a perfectly cheap one on craigslist and am so close to making a deal. However, despite my general disagreement with the direction bathroom style started to go at the tail end of the twenties and into the thirties, I don't know if I can bring myself to rip out the tub.
Like I said, we are keeping the floor. It's beautiful. We will be retiling the walls up to the same height with white glazed "subway" brick tile.
picture from subwaytile.com
It is highly doubtful that there would be hex tile beneath the existing tub. We had considered this, and decided that we would build a small riser, a pedestal step thing, cover it with subway tiles (to match the walls), and put a claw foot tub on there. A tiled riser would look something like this step:
picture from subwaytile.com
What would you do? I love the claw-foot-tub-on-a-tiled-riser-idea, but it just seems so traitorous to 1929 and our original bathtub. Also, keeping the original bathtub will save us many pennies. TALK ME DOWN.
We got the house. A 1929 Craftsman on a large corner lot in the Morley Field area of North Park. Hot damn. Walking distance to our favorite restaurants and coffee houses. One block away from Balboa Park. Beautiful unscathed and unpainted gumwood interior trim and built-ins. An old four chime doorbell with the chimes hanging next to the door. Fugly kitchen and bathroom. Even fuglier 70s addition room with bright green carpet and wood panel walls.
I always felt like such a poser at all the Craftsman heritage weekends and tours we go to, fresh from our 1998 condo. Now we can actually buy fixtures and cabinet hardware from the booths and sellers in the convention halls, rather than just walk by and dream.
Our first post-closing, pre-moving project will be to restore the bathroom to it's original end-of-the-Craftsman-era glory, with mini unglazed hex tiles on the floor and sweet little latches on the sleek white cabinetry. Then there'll be a kitchen to restore, and by restore, I mean, completely rip up the 60s remodel monstrosity and start over. The project list is very long but not at all daunting. And believe you me, you'll be hearing all about it here. Good times.
But still, daunting project list or not: holy crap. Hold me.
Thursday, August 25, 2005
