Category: bathroom

little luxuries

When I raised the ceiling in the hallway upstairs, I created a small closet to access plumbing and electrical stuff. This space used to be accessed by climbing through the attic space.

I made a custom little door to fit the opening (out of an old door).

Because it’s me doing this, I have to make it a bit more complicated. So I was trying to figure out how to make the door as flush as possible. I found something called “hidden hinges”. They fit into routed slots on the door, and because of some very clever mechanism, they allow the door to open 180 degrees, and the hinges fold up into themselves when the door closes. My mistake: I chose not to pay the $20 to buy the pre-made jig (I figured I could just make my own). There goes a weekend!

I bought a marine door latch that sits flush with the door. It’s not completely invisible, but I’m quite happy with how it came out.

oh, and I love the patterns the lights make on the other wall…

I never thought about them before, but I’ve come to really like towel warmers. They sound like such a luxury: Warm towels! But they are also quite useful because they help to dry wet towels faster, so they don’t go moldy smelling. The only difficulty: They need a plug.

Originally, I had put just a regular towel rail here, and a towel warmer in another corner of the bathroom. Even though I went to architecture school, I’m still surprised by how I really need to live in a space to know how it will work. I had assumed air from the heating vent would dry things. Didn’t really work, and the towel warmer was in an awkward place. So I decided to move it.

Mole caught a photo of me as I was closing the wall back up. I often forget to take photos.

We bought a new litter box for the girls with higher sides: Arwen! Modcat are value added: They include a game for the cats with the litter box packaging.

oh, and upstairs: I also put that towel warmer in. There’s no heating upstairs (yet?) so I got a larger one, hoping it will help to warm up the bathroom a bit in the winter. Same process: I need a plug.

This time, instead of tearing off the finishes inside the bathroom, I took off the drywall outside. I’d been planning this (ten+ years ago), so never plastered the walls.

Here it is installed. It was a bit tricky because the thickness of the wood wainscot below meant I had to add little spacers where it attaches at the top. I think eventually I’m just going to remove that wainscot below: Too fiddly for such a small bathroom.

Purrrrr. Now it’s nap time.

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it was a stressful, tiring, crazy weekend…

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(left) mathew doing some last minute work on the kitchen (right) while my parents, older brother jason and uncle winston helped move boxes from my grandmother’s house to our house. we tried to get others to help but because it was halloween, no one else was able to…

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(left) as the moving continued throughout the day (right) mathew worked his way around the kitchen finishing things up.

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(left) they put in a long hard day but you wouldn’t know it from their smiles. i think because they were ready to go home! they left before it got dark and made it home in time for trick-or-treaters. (right) mathew and i worked that night. mathew is very proud of this cable/telephone junction box he created and organized in the garage.

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(left) the butcher block my mom refinished, how nice it looks in place. (right) mathew scrubbed the kitchen floor until it was reflective.

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on sunday mathew and i joined my parents for another day of moving. (left) here is a view from my grandmother’s old apartment. (right) that night we went back to work finishing projects. here is my grandmother’s bathroom with a new mirror above the sink and a medicine cabinet to the right. we worked as late was we needed to then had dinner at midnight.

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monday was another day of moving. my parents helped move more stuff over and professional movers brought the large furniture. it was a challenge trying to fit furniture from a 2 bedroom apartment into a 1 bedroom apartment, especially after all the boxes had been moved in! i did not take photos of any of the mess or chaos. even my office was completely filled and climbing was required to find things. (above) my auntie em, my grandmother and my mom unpacking in the kitchen. for anyone who questioned the bright pink we painted the bedroom, notice what color my grandmother is wearing…

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i was worried because my grandmother’s first night was also the night of the annual day of the dead (dia de los muertos) parade. (left) it consists of hundreds (thousands?) of people dressed as dead people holding candles, dancing, music and drumming till after 11pm. it’s a celebration of those we have lost and our street becomes completely filled with adults and children in costumes. everyone ends up in the park one block away, where there are altars and photos remembering the dead. we have a great view from our front steps. we wandered around a little bit but it was so crowded. this was the first year where we weren’t working during the parade, we enjoyed being able to sit outside on such a warm night and take it all in. (right) our neighbor created this dead light sculpture, a woman in costume poses beside it.

“Don’t just cry mournfully over the individuals, dreams and influences that have helped make you what you are. Dance for them; sing for them; honor them; leap into the air and kiss the sky for them.”

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(left) during a really great musical portion of the parade i went inside to check on the noise level. my grandmother was talking on the phone, sharing her new phone number with relatives. she had no idea anything was happening outside. those new windows were expensive, but worth it! (right) my auntie em unpacked and organized all day and continued that night. we are so thankful that she could stay for a few days to help unpack and ease the transition for my grandmother.

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on day 2 my parents were back to move more of my grandmother’s things and my uncle gilbert stopped by for a visit. i expect to enjoy many more family visits in this new kitchen.

oh, i almost forgot to explain the title: turtle + mole + mole. my grandmother, like me, doesn’t enjoy the sun either, but she is more extreme, she likes curtains closed during the day and rarely leaves the house. but she loves visitors so let us know if you’d like to drop by, we’d love to see you!

another post?! aka the final lap

okay, so this doesn’t really have much to do with the house. except to prove that we do actually get out and have some fun occasionally…

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last friday we went to see ingrid michaelson play at the great american music hall. (i bought tickets back when we thought we’d be done with the house by now.) ingrid’s one of my favorite artists. we even had dinner there before the show! mathew calls her “ingrid michaelperson” he wanted that to be the title of this post, but that makes no sense.

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(left) this is a photo of the ceiling. this is one crazy, ornate building, built in 1907. (right) the opening act was matthew perryman jones, all by himself with his guitar. we’d never heard him before but we loved him unplugged, impressive guitar skills with a voice that sounded like bono. during the break i wandered downstairs to meet him and tell him i liked his performance. he was very nice.

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and then ingrid and her band played: THE MOST FUN CONCERT EVER.

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lots of audience participation, stories and zany performances. mathew and i were cracking up the entire time. we can’t wait till she’s back in town. here’s a taste of what she’s like on youtube (but a little more subdued since it’s a morning radio show.)

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the next morning we had brunch at jennifer and doug’s. sorry no photos! but they made us yummy breakfast burritos and smoothies and we stayed a little too long, talking and catching up. (left) that afternoon our friend mae came over to help with some paint stripping. she didn’t want her photo taken. i was going to blur out her face but it’s so small, it’s already blurry. (right) mathew buzzing away with the sander in the kitchen.

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that night after dinner mathew went back downstairs and tsp’d the kitchen ceiling. (left) here mathew is showing how dramatically different the ceiling looks when cleaned. (right) so shiny! doesn’t that make you want to get up on a tall ladder and bend awkwardly backwards and clean YOUR ceiling?

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on sunday the parentals were back to help. (left) my dad filled around the new outlets with grout he tinted with yellow paint to match the “vintage” grout. (right) my mom, big surprise, did more sanding.

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(left) mathew stained doors in the garage. (right) i sanded in the kitchen. sanding seriously goes on forever.

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the kitchen coming together… outlet cover plates! when we first moved in, this kitchen counter had one electrical outlet. ONE. and everything in the house was on this circuit, so if you used the toaster the lights dimmed. if you used the coffee grinder the lights dimmed. you get the idea.

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whenever i think i’m going to take a spontaneous photo of mathew doing something, he moves! (left) classic mathew working photo. (right) please hold still. thank you.

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that door that mae and i stripped has a big glass window that mathew wanted us to avoid with our heat guns, for fear of cracking the glass. he used chemical paint stripper on one side. not only is it a gross, smelly, toxic mess, but it doesn’t even work that well. mathew is thinking we’ll risk it and use heat guns on the other side.

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mathew took tuesday off work and worked on the house. (left) i found him in the garage polyurethaning 3 doors. i tried to get a photo of all three at once but couldn’t fit them in. (right) the bathroom door in place. it is possibly the narrowest door i’ve ever seen.

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(left) really pretty ORIGINAL door knob plate that was hiding under 95 years of paint! sorry, the photo is blurry. (right) mathew filling and putting the finishing trim pieces on this kitchen window frame. looks like there was some sunlight after a crazy, rainy morning.

test run

there was a heat wave last weekend and we thought my parents deserved a weekend off. so mathew and i avoided the heat and spent saturday down in the garage stripping paint, sanding, staining and polyurethaning doors.

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(left) mathew staining the downstairs bathroom door. (right) yet another door that i paint stripped. i think this one will go on the downstairs bedroom. or is it the closet?

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(left) original 1914 hinges that mathew stripped and cleaned with a heat gun. it’s magical that something so pretty is hiding under all those years of white paint. (right) mathew painting the hinges and screws with black enamel. i find the process humorous. mathew uses an old 2-by-4 with lots of random leftover holes to hold the screws while he paints their heads. it’s funny because it’s a long 2-by-4 and the screws are placed randomly throughout it, individually and in clumps. maybe it’s not that funny… guess you’d have to be there, reminds me of badly planted trees.

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besides my grandmother moving in, we had an even more pressing deadline: more house guests! mathew’s godfather sebastian and his wife eva were visiting from scotland and we wanted to have the downstairs bedroom and bathroom ready for them on monday. we worked late sunday night installing the toilet, sink, faucet, vanity top, lights, window privacy film, temporary medicine cabinet, sealing the shower grout, adjusting the shower door, hanging curtains, towel and t.p. bars… phew! we got it done and our guests got to do a test run for us.

a colorful weekend

last weekend was labor day weekend. and how did we celebrate? with a house full of people and plenty of labor!

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saturday morning started with quiet picture rail filling and trim masking.

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(left) then the plastic door went up and mathew started painting the walls. (right) mathew’s brother misha is visiting from new york! he put his clothes on inside out and helped with painting.

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(left) i spent the entire day painting kitchen cabinet doors in the garage. when the sprayer noise finally stopped i ventured upstairs for a peek. i was shocked by how pink just the reflection of the wall color was. and when i walked into the room it was PINK. it’s actually darker than the photo (if you can believe it.) my grandmother loves pink. last year we painted the living room a very pale “i love you” pink. the plan was to paint her bedroom a slightly darker “valentine’s day” pink, but for some (insane) reason we decided to be bold and paint two walls “pretty pink.” my parents say that my grandmother painted a house this color years ago… we hope she likes it..!

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misha’s friend aja is also staying with us and she’s a personal chef! so, you guessed it, we’ve been eating yummy food. we appreciate her sunny presence and patience while misha helps us and we work late into the night.

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on sunday my parents arrived. my mom was raving about the new cabinet color and wondering if they needed sunglasses in the pink room.

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(left) my dad sanding the wood surface in the built in hall cabinet. (right) mathew priming the picture rails.

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(left) while laughing uncontrollably i took this photo of my mom, amazed at her dedication to the project. i certainly hope no one will ever lie down and check to see if the underside of the swivel cabinet door is painted, but if they do, they will be impressed. (right) painting the cabinet doors with a roller and latex paint (instead of oil paint and a brush) makes the project fly by! i even felt a little guilty for keeping this fun and easy project all to myself.

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(left) my dad admiring our new porch lamp. (right) here i am painting my “sistine cabinet.” it was now my mom’s turn to laugh at me.

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(left) misha, back with inside-out clothing to give the cabinets a second coat. (right) mathew cleaning the shower tile, prepping it for grout sealer. another late night.

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(left) monday morning. my mom, up a ladder painting picture rails with semi-gloss. (right) my dad touching up trim paint while enjoying a cool breeze.

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(left) mathew and my mom attaching the bathroom vanity door after it has been painted. (right) misha and mathew carefully moving the (HEAVY) glass shower walls and door up from the garage.

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(left) my mom chipping away at thick ugly grout where it shouldn’t have been. (right) here i am continuing the painting of the picture rails where my mom left off.

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(left) misha installing the window hardware. (right) mathew and the completed shower enclosure. it was another late night. i was in the garage giving the cabinet doors a second coat and then stripping paint off the bathroom door. for the first time in the two years since we’ve been working on this house, mathew came down to tell me he was done for the night while i continued working.

i hope everyone had a nice long labor day weekend!

2 years, today

today is mathew’s mum’s birthday, happy birthday sue! (well, technically, it’s no longer the 24th in england but it’s still her birthday in california for another 6 hours.)

it’s also the anniversary of the day we bought this house and it marks two years that we’ve been remodeling/restoring this victorian!

i was going to create a before and after gallery but i realized it’s going to take a lot more time to look through all the photos from the last two years. so you’ll just have to wait for that. in the mean time here is what happened this last weekend.

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on friday mathew started installing the floor in the downstairs bathroom. first the water barrier paper, then the cedar border with walnut feature border.

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the flooring continued on saturday. (left) mathew used MY technique for cutting holes into multiple pieces of tongue and grooved wood! (right) here’s a tricky bit near the shower base, a corner going around the border and a narrower strip.

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(left) here mathew is showing how he used the router to cut the wood to fit around the corner (i’m sure there’s something more technical he’d like to explain but i don’t know what it is!) (right) fitting and nailing the last piece! it gave him pain when the router ate the edge of the wood but it was the last good piece of cedar he had so he had to make it work and filled it later.

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there were 3 holes that the previous owners drilled in the bottom of the bathroom vanity for the plumbing (odd, shouldn’t the plumbing have come through the wall and the opening at the back of the vanity?) i drilled wood circles to fit the holes then attached them with glue and screws to a piece of wood on the underside and filled them with filler.

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(left) my dad filling the holes where the old kitchen cabinet handles were. (right) my mom cleaning the cabinet. mathew kept walking in wondering if the music was bothering her. i thought it it was funny how she mentally tuned out the led zeppelin and billy idol that kfog was subjecting her to!

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downstairs my dad sanded the cabinet doors and then painted them with oil based primer. normally we use water/latex based paint but mathew bought oil based primer this time because he was worried about the paint sticking well to the old cabinet doors.

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(left) “mathew’s learn-by-doing home remodeling school” introduced my mom to the power sander. (right) and i spent practically all of sunday up on my ladder chipping away paint from the picture rail.

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this is what i’ve been spending hours chipping away at. (left) gloopy with years of paint and filler. (right) i couldn’t take a photo that really showed what this looked like. the raised bits are metallic gold and the background is a gradation from medium blue to a light teal blue. we’ll be repainting this white but it’s fun to see what it originally looked like and the details will be a lot sharper once painted again. plus the groove at the top of the picture rail has now been cleaned out so it will be ready to hold pictures soon.

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(left) here are my filled holes at the bottom of the vanity. (right) and here my mom is becoming a pro at the power sanding, sanding the filler and surface smooth. when she and my dad work on their rental property remodels they usually sand by hand so she was amazed by how fast the power sander could finish in minutes what might normally take hours.

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after my parents left we proceeded to poison the air. (left) mathew stripping a closet door frame. (right) while i stripped baseboards.

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how the bathroom cedar floor looks after 3 coats of poly.

fast flying weeks

how is it already saturday and i haven’t created a post for last weekend?

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(left) this is what mathew’s thursday night looked like. (right) this is friday morning.

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(left) at first we’re always amazed by how great the plaster instantly looks after weeks of cracked plaster, plaster washers and mesh tape. and then we immediately forget how bad it used to look and we take it for granted as just another wall. remember all the hours spent chipping paint, steaming wall paper, attaching plaster washers, mesh tape and plaster weld paint? (right) mathew demonstrating how smooth and reflective this plaster is. he says this was the most satisfying wall in this room. or maybe he said it was the most satisfying wall of his entire plaster career.

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(left) saturday, the last wall to plaster, it gave him some pain. even though i think he’s really skilled with the plaster, there’s still more to learn.

i visited my grandmother with my parents that afternoon. she has been in a really good mood lately. my mom thinks she’s happy about having decided she will live with us,… again. but i still wonder if she will change her mind,… again.

(right) picture rail i’m stripping by chipping the paint with a putty knife. i’ve found that this is the best way to preserve the trim with all of its victorian details. the heat gun seems to melt the details right off and chemical stripping is just plain gross and evil. i should take some close up photos so you can see what i’m staring at for hours at a time…

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on sunday my parents came by to help. they’ve decided to devote their weekends to the house until it’s done. since they are both retired they say they can work hard for two days then rest for five. (left) my dad is removing all of the kitchen cabinet doors and labeling them so we know which ones go where. (right) my mom and i are putting one more coat of paint on the bathroom ceiling, walls and wainscotting. although we look like we’re just standing around talking…

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(left) mathew’s sister eva dropped by to help too! she walked in sipping a fragrant mug of philz coffee (an extremely popular coffee shop nearby.) she has just moved back to california from minnesota. we’re happy to have her help and we’re happy to have her back in the bay area! here she is sanding the old vanity drawers that will be repainted and put back into the bathroom. (right) my dad happily cleaning dozens and dozens of kitchen cabinet doors, removing years of someone else’s cooking grease.

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(left) when mathew wasn’t taking photos or managing all of our projects he was running up and down between the garage and bedroom to re-fit the window trim to the new window. (right) eva in the garage priming the vanity after sanding it.

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(left) my mom sweeping up little bits of paint that i keep making as i chip away layers on the picture rail. (right) mathew’s window trim in place. it was a bit tricky because the new window is slightly different in size than the old one, so replacing the trim involved some piecing and extending. this trim has been paint stripped with a heat gun and will be sanded and painted again.

i’ll do my best to get this weekend’s post up before next weekend rolls around!

hope everyone is having a good summer.

our generous volunteers

last saturday i started my weekend by going to see the new harry potter movie with my childhood friend, marisa, who i hadn’t seen since october 2007! i returned to find a house full of busy bees…

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my dad was drilling holes for blow-in insulation. my mom was priming the bathroom walls and ceiling. mathew was working on electrical wiring. everyone was very engrossed in their projects. i walked to the local store to buy paint then helped my mom with the primer.

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on sunday mathew continued with his electrical work adding new outlets and networking cables. this usually starts with cutting holes upstairs (above left) then stringing wires through to the garage downstairs (above right.) it sounds simple but it can be very frustrating if the wires don’t behave and have trouble moving through the walls. last weekend mathew says he spent 5 excruciating hours on one outlet trying to pull wires through at an impossible angle.

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meanwhile my parents and i worked on installing the cellulose insulation into the walls where my dad had drilled holes in the downstairs bedroom, kitchen and office.

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in the garage, my mom and i were doing the noisy, dirty work of filling the machine hopper with the insulation material while upstairs my dad had the peaceful job of filling the holes and working the machine through a remote control.

his job did have some drawbacks as the reducing nozzle is only an inch wide so it would often get jammed and the whole process would have to stop. and it wasn’t often easy to un-jam the nozzle. also, sometimes there’s confusion with the switches on the remote control, if you turn off the agitator but not the blower, when you pull the nozzle out of the wall, you will shower yourself in snowy, grey, dusty recycled fibers. mathew and i have both experienced this and i think my dad did too.

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in the late afternoon i heard a loud noise coming from the kitchen. what i found was mathew cutting the countertop. this downstairs kitchen is HUGE, possibly twice the size of an average san francisco kitchen, with way more cabinets than anyone could ever need. our plan is to eliminate some of the cabinets and bring the refrigerator closer to the stove and sink, then add a built in bench to create a dining area near the window.

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last weekend felt a bit like we had tag-team volunteers, just hours after my parents left on sunday night, my cousin larry appeared. and as if he had known we hadn’t gotten a chance to go shopping and were running low on food, he brought all kinds of organic fruits and vegetables for us!

on monday morning larry got to work painting around the trim in the bathroom with a paintbrush, later he filled in the walls with a roller, then painted the window trim and wainscoting. he gave the room two coats on monday and another on tuesday. we think the bathroom looks great and it’s exciting to see it becoming finished. the floors are next…

we are so grateful to our generous volunteers. not only do they give their valuable time but they always seem to bring food. THANK YOU!!!!!! we know that mathew and i can be a bit perfectionistic and we sometimes have people working on things they’ve never done before, but we truly appreciate all of your efforts and enjoy spending time with you. with your help we are getting closer to our goal and one day will be able to spend time with you that doesn’t involve dust masks, work clothes or tools.

where were we?

this is what happened two weekends ago.

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on saturday i sanded the wainscoting.

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while mathew was down in the garage cutting and shaping the white marble that will go around the downstairs bathroom window.

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(left) vacuuming, prepping for grout. (right) grouting. notice the new marble frame around the window?

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(left) after grout has been applied. (right) white recycled tile and new marble window frame and sill.

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on sunday i deserted mathew to attend my first of three letterpress classes at san francisco center for the book…

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at home mathew had installed glass in the upstairs bedroom back-door.

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here he is creating trim on the router table he made. this is the last piece needed to finish the upstairs bathroom window, for some reason it wasn’t added last year.

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creating the curve that faces out.

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(left) without lower trim. (right) after mathew added the trim and finished caulking the gaps. nice, huh?

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apparently it was a day of odds and ends and completing unfinished projects. here is the exterior side door on the garage. (left) old, ugly, peeling trim. (right) trim removed.

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(left) this looks like a good piece of wood to reuse… (right) this is what happens when the router decides to get creative and goes astray… [I was learning how to use the router table to make trim, so I figured the garage door beside the garbage cans is a good place to start. I had to set up guides at the side and top of the board to hold it firmly in place as it slides through the router, or it gets the dents shown above. – turtle]

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the new exterior door trim before and after paint. possibly a little too beautiful for an exterior garage door? hopefully the garbage, recycling and compost bins will appreciate the new decor!

…and more tile.

last weekend we were excited to have 3 full days to work on the house.

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mathew started by finishing the laundry room frame and wall siding on the new bathroom window that he made and installed. then he covered the plywood with some of that star paneling that was used upstairs on the walls. this will eventually be sanded and painted white to match the rest of the wall. i’ve almost forgotten that this used to be the bathroom door.

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on saturday all i did was clean up recycled tile. we even got to re-use some of the white tile that used to be in the old (stenchy) pink upstairs bathroom. because the previous owners had used mastic (glue adhesive) instead of thin-set to install the tile, mathew found it was easier to clean using the heat gun in the garage. the white tile looks brand new!

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on sunday i woke up with food poisoning so mathew worked alone for the rest of the weekend. he finished cleaning all the blue tile, cut and installed it to fit around the window, and floor.

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and he even bought a dremel tool to grind out some of the old grout that wasn’t applied correctly. when i wandered down to take photos i was surprised by how much it sounded and smelled like drilling teeth at the dentist’s office. ick.

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and mathew wouldn’t be mathew if he didn’t go one step further with the details. (left) he purchased, cut and corner-rounded some white marble for the window sill. the recycled white tiles are around the inside edge next to the window. more white marble will go around the outside of the window next to the blue tile, to give the impression of a window frame. it took us a while to decide exactly what to do in that space between the blue tile and the window. it would have been impossible (and not very pretty) to cut and install small pieces of the blue to fill that thin space. (right) and he routed and installed wainscoting top ledges that will go around the room. now it’s time for me to sand the wainscotting and make it pretty again.