Remodel - Week 7

The Art Deco Bathroom


We felt like time-travelers this week as we chose lighting, mirrors and plumbing fixtures, looking for all things Deco. We were so succesful with our choices that, should the spirits of any flapper-era "bright young things" (Scott and Zelda maybe?) decide to visit us and need to use the facilities, their ghosts would feel quite at home.

Our inspiration began with finding these reproduction Art-Deco Slipper-Shade sconces - you can imagine our excitement when we found these @ Rejuvenation - they are very close to the real thing (we've actually seen one - our neighbors-to-the-north, Jeff and Mo, lucked into one at Maxwell Street Days):






The sconces will flank the vanity on the side walls. The fit and finish of the sconces dictated the finish in the rest of the bathroom. The mirrors over each sink in the vanity will look something like this:




Next on the agenda was meeting with Steve-the-plumber to discuss faucets and shower configuration. He is an advocate of all things Kohler - says that the innards are better made and longer-lasting than those from the big box stores (whose faucet mechanicals tend to be made of plastic). So in our ongoing quest to balance style with cost, we opted for the Devonshire line for the trim:



The shower set-up discussion was protracted and difficult because of trying to balance the wish-list with cost. I had originally wanted a handheld shower on a slide-bar; I thought that it and the separate shower head should each have its own on/off diverters. Well, this would have required many valves and complicated piping. Long story short: we will have a separate handheld shower on the slide-bar but the compromise is that there will be a single valve/diverter for both. Which is a perfectly fine solution; after all, it is just a shower.

Interesting sidebar, Steve-the-plumber told us several stories of some of the high-end baths he's installed. It seems that on one of these jobs, lady wanted to surprise her husband with a brand-new shower/bathroom when he came back from a business trip. Money was no object. The fixtures for the shower alone cost $25K - that's a lot of body jets!

As most of the week was a rainy, foggy mess, Jason only got to work outside on Monday and Tuesday - he separated the double window and installed the single one - looks MUCH better than a double one would have. Plus we now have room to put a chest or another piece of furniture along that wall. In the pix below you can see that the soffit, rake board and trim have been added to the dormer and the single window is in place on the south elevation (behind the scaffolding and magnolia):



The city inspector came on Tuesday and pronounced the rough plumbing to be a masterpiece (well, actually he just said it passed inspection, but we KNOW what a feat it was to squeeze plumbing, electrical and HVAC in between the floor joists - so to all involved it WAS a masterpiece!)

Steve-the-husband has spent the entire week stringing electrical wires. I went down to the basement after work on Friday to get something out of the chest freezer - it was like fighting your way through a labyrinth of spaghetti! Here he is today putting in the junction box - you can see that he has brought some order to the wires as they are no longer suspended from the ceiling like one of those 1960's-era beaded peace-and-love curtains:



The first part of this week looks to be sunny and warm - Jason is anxious to return to working on the outside and Steve is thinking that he can move his shingle painting to the driveway. Can it be that spring is on its way to Wisconsin? Perhaps, but we haven't put the snow shovels away yet...after all, it wasn't all that many years ago that it snowed in May!