Tag: details

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Upstairs Bathroom Details: Structural Support

Christine

You may have noticed that the new bathroom looks a lot bigger. That’s because it is.

We bumped the wall where the door is out into the hallway. This gave us another 16″ or so in the bathroom, and we didn’t really loose anything but dead space in the hall. We considered it carefully, too. We didn’t want to find that we’d made it impossible to get furniture in. This didn’t impact that at all, mostly because the chimney stack was already there. That’s another plus. The bathroom doesn’t have heating, so by moving the door wall, we’ve now got two sides of the chimney in the bathroom. And when the hot water is running, like when you’re in the shower, the chimney gets hot enough to warm your towel! That nice structural beam had to stay, but I don’t think it looks out of place. Or, maybe I’m just telling myself that so I feel better.

Another place we gained space was the ceiling. Bill started to level the old ceiling when we had the bathroom gutted, and he realized that it was going to be a lot of tedious work. He asked me if it would be okay to take the framework down and start from scratch. I’ll bet Bill got nervous when he saw the gleam in my eye. I had an idea. Since we had to tear it down anyway, could we raise the ceiling? Pretty please? At only 7′, it always felt claustrophobic, and Lewis’ hair grazed the light fixture. So Bill agreed that would be best all around, and I couldn’t be happier.

One last place we expanded was the knee wall. As it turns out, there was over a foot of dead space between the bathroom and the back bedroom’s cubby. Just dead space, not being used for anything. Of course, you can’t actually stand there, because of the slope of the roof, but I got my longed-for shampoo shelf and plenty of extra elbow room in the shower. It really makes all the difference. The whole bathroom feels so spacious, even considering its size.
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Great Dimmer Switches

Christine
One of the small upgrades mom insisted on were dimmer switches. She loves them. At the time, I thought I didn’t care much one way or the other. I knew I hated those stupid round plastic buttons that would pop off and bounce across the floor when you were in a hurry. That’s where our fabulous electrician Jeff stepped in. He understood my dislike of the button style dimmer switches, but he’s also a smart guy, so he knew we had to keep mom happy. One day he turned up with these:


The one on the right is a normal switch, the one on the left is the special dimmer switch.

They are pretty great. Mostly you don’t accidentally catch the little sliding adjuster. They were a good compromise. And, yeah mom does know best. I’ve grown to really appreciate the ability to dim the lights, particularly in the kitchen with its six bulbs!

Don’t get me wrong, if I could afford them, I would buy these gorgeous push-button reproduction switches. They even make them for dimmers now, did you know?

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"& Trust" It’s in the Details

Christine

Most of the time our POs do stupid stuff. Quick fixes, shoddy work, it was never done to last.

Every once in a while, you get something neat, quirky, like this:
This is the door jam between Oliver’s room and the kitchen. At some point the door was removed, and they filled in the hinge spaces with bits of yardstick.
You wouldn’t belive how many yardsticks we have found while working on this house. They seemed to be tucked into every nook and cranny.
When Jack stripped this door frame down, and discovered this, he called me over to show me. You couldn’t tell before because the paint was glopped on so thickly that it filled the little grooves. I was so surprised. My first reaction was, drop jaw, “what on earth…”, then, “oh, brother, stupid POs”, and then… I smiled. It’s kind of cool. It is just something neat about the house. “Let’s leave it.” Jack said he would try to get all the paint off, but not sand it so much that you could no longer make out the markings. I think he did a good job. It isn’t something most people would even see, and most of the time I forget about it, walk right past it. But sometimes it catches my eye. And it makes me smile.