Let's Potty! Part II - A Water Closet Renovation

As home remodeling projects tend to go, this one ran into some obstacles which made it take a bit longer. The biggest obstacle was simply that we ended up having to order our new toilet, because they were out of stock. Luckily, they had some coming and we got our name on one! Yeah... we're considering ourselves lucky to have our name on a toilet. Phases A-E are here. Below are the long-winded phases!

Phase F: Install new, modern, low-flow toilet

I forget about good ol' WD-40, so was mentally preparing myself to have to take a hacksaw to the various metal bolts holding all the parts of the old toilet together. Pulling the old beast (tank dated: August 14, 1977, so still younger'n both of us) out of that tiny room was still a hassle, but less of a hassle than feared.

You know you're a reeeeeally grown up grown-up of a certain stripe when things like fancy toilets and endless storage space with thoughtful design are part of your lottery-winner fantasies. This toilet is not fancy, but was rated highly-enough and the price was right. In fact, simply by pulling the old toilet out myself, I probably saved the cost of the new toilet! And by installing that myself, I saved the cost of disposing of the old one and buying a new flange... plus some. So this is essentially a free new toilet! Or something.

We picked up a new trash can - one with a lid, because a certain member of our family likes to eat things out of the trash can. I'll let you determine which one of us that is. Ahem. Not sure we'll be keeping the rug-thingie. This is the only toilet in my life that has ever had one and I'm not convinced I want one. It's hardly been used and it seems like a thing no one is going to want to buy used, so the idea of generating waste by not keeping it is bothersome. Yeah, I'm that person.

Bummer: I ordered the toilet on August 8 with a pick-up date of August 24. When I didn't hear from them on the 24th, I called on the 25th. They had no real idea when to expect it, but since it was a stock item they guessed August 31st of September 3rd. I got the call on               . I called again on September 5, and was told it was there! This situation was more frustrating than I expected it would be,  because having any clean running water with indoor toilets is pretty great and we have two even without this one.

Phase G: (Reprise): Install that TP holder... with a modification.

I had to move the holder to the far right of the crate to make room to replace the roll, because the whole kit and kaboodle needed to be installed closer to the door than I expected.

Phase H: Refinish and hang cabinet for TP or make/buy holder-storage combo.

So, I decided that I needed to go with the make/buy option... which became the make option.

The toilet is not centered, so I had to decide how to hang the cabinet: centered over the toilet or centered on the wall. The difference between the center marks was about an inch and I roughly split the difference.

I've already been down the special-toilet-paper-for-a-particular-bathroom-due-to-storage road and I am over that crap. (heh)

It is a bummer not getting to reuse that perfectly serviceable cabinet and that the TP holder wasn't going to do. I donated both pieces to the local used building materials warehouse. I did look there for replacements for both of these pieces, but had no luck. All this means that I ended up making a little cabinet! I had purchased a pair of these little bi-fold doors at a thrift store years ago and am glad to finally actually use at least half of them. The wood* for the carcass came from shelves we removed from the master bedroom shortly after moving in. I was also able to use stash for the shelves, shelf pegs, and paint. And the knob is an antique door knob we brought with us that had been in Eric's basement in the old 1911 Craftsman in Portland! I did buy the plywood for the backing, new hinges, and some supplies to make the doorknob into a cabinet knob.

Another bummer: So. The carcass. Well, I hadn't remembered we had those 1x8s stored in the rafters of the shop and when I was shopping I decided to save on budget and buy some MDF. Well. Sigh. Let's just say that didn't work out for me. The bummer is exacerbated by the fact that scraps of MDF 1x6 and 1x8 aren't nearly so useful as "real" lumber. The bummers just keep coming: the door was too heavy for the hinges I bought, which were pretty much the same as the hinges that had been on it if the "scars" were any indication. So I ended up buying continuous (i.e. piano) hinges. And then procrastinated installing them, because I was scared that they also would work, but they did!


Part III:
Handmade & vintage decorations!

Taming the Monster in the Closet: I

A project in which the closet itself becomes a monster.

I tell ya', full-on occupying these spaces for almost 6 years means that these rooms and their closets are full-on filled up which is adding complexity to this flooring project in that it takes not a small amount of time to move stuff around repeatedly.

When the room is too narrow to get frame the photo well so you rotate it in Photoshop and then realize that the shelf was level before you rotated so you leave the background weirdness to add to the overall non-fun house effect.

It also means that I am taking this as an opportunity to attack these closets by adding some shelves and getting a fresh coat of paint in there. I had a gallon of paint that was a bad choice for the guest room's neutral, but a fine choice for inside a couple of closets.

What are those cutouts for? Only the left-most is over a stud.

On both ends the closet has room for shelves; on one end they're deeper than is practical for storing clothes, but the only clothes we store in here are costumes and they are hung on hangers. So that means that we need some hanging space for costumes and I want to have some for guests should they want to hang any of their clothes. On the other end where the shelves are shallower, we have an access door to the shower plumbing, so the shelves work around that and will store something easy to unload.

Of course, the doors and base moulding will be reinstalled, but after the new floor goes in.

What follows is the long path, riddled with obstacles, that lead to this unremarkable closet:

I reused what I could from the closet as it was when we moved it; parts of the closet rod and shelf, as well as the drywall-textured and painted-over rod/shelf brackets. The condition of the brackets really bothered me, but the idea of wasting them bothered me more. I decided to soak them in a Simple Green & water solution, scrap/rub off the paint and texture, then spray paint them to protect them from rusting, then reuse two of the three. I also drilled holes in the rod holder parts, so I could keep the rod stationary when sliding all the contents to one end.

I'm sure I'm not alone in that when I am remodeling and find something... er, unusual... I wonder about the history of the processes that went into the existing situation. I had always assumed that the knock-down/brocade drywall texture had been added sometime after 1976 when the house was built, but when I removed the base moulding, I saw that it covered all of the drywall. However, apparently they had installed the closet hardware before texturing the drywall. Curiouser & curiouser. And it seems that they had an issue with the plumbing in the shower at one point and cut through this drywall to deal with it.  Fair enough, but when they patched the wall that wasn't the access door, they didn't remove the shelf that was on top of these brackets. Funny thing is: the shelf was not attached to the brackets. Just resting on there. The whole thing is even more puzzling since they aren't installed level.

Black was not what I was imagining, but it is what I already had on hand that wasn't a just-plain-wrong color or a color that might be better saved for more visible projects.

I used scrap moulding from the front door project to make a support for the rod/shelf part in the center of the closet. Despite all the extra steps in getting the brackets cleaned up and adding these supports, the was the easiest and most direct part of this project.

Just to get every inch out of that closet rod, I put some stops on the ends. I used some funky cabinet knob escutcheons that came off the upstairs bathroom vanity. They're definitely weird and probably gauche, but I think they're funny and... they work! So at least this section of the closet is no-cost... except the screws. GEEZ!

The access door to the plumbing for the shower on the other side of that wall is oddly fancy with it's angled trim and it's not-just-a plywood-square door. It also has a way more secure latch than did any of the three screen doors when we moved in.

I used this as an opportunity to take a whole mess of stuff we've removed from the house or that was left here to Home ReSource in Missoula for donation. I was hoping to get materials for building the shelves there, too, but they had none of what I was looking for. It would have felt good to use something that might have otherwise ended up in the landfill and to nurture my inner cheapskate by not paying full price. At least I was able to keep 6 light fixtures, a ceiling fan, a stainless steel kitchen sink and faucet, 3 curtain rods, some curtains, a couple-few dozen switch and outlet covers, and various other bits of hardware and some paint/stain out of the landfill with our donation.

[I had intended to take a photo of the stuff all loaded up, but forgot. It would've gone here] 

I decided to at least use what I could from our scrap wood stash to make the shelf cleats. Most of this is what was left from building the wood shed. I tried to buy 3/4" plywood from the local lumber yards. Yard I doesn't have a way to rip a 4x8 sheet into two 2x8 pieces so I can actually haul it. Also, the "new" guy there is almost-subtly patronizing and a blatant mansplainer... he once actually mansplained to me how I should feel about the weather. So yeah. Yard II simply didn't have any 3/4" plywood. I didn't have the heart to further inquire about the smoothness of the 3/4" that usually carry and to ask again if they could cut it - the poor trainee seemed to be really struggling with the phone call already. Well, dammit! I tried to do good, but had to drive back into Missoula to a big box supplier.

Dumb mistake: I had the audacity to assume a wall that is longer wider than 16" would have a stud somewhere between the two ends. This is not the case for the shorter front walls of this closet. Of course, I didn't check until I had 3/4 of the cleats cut... from a 2x4 ripped into thirds. What a waste of time and materials! Maybe at least some of these very specifically cut lumber will be suitable for the studio/office/sewing room/auxiliary guest room close when I get to that?

Sigh. And so. Thinking about what we had already:
-Standards and brackets, but what sizes and in what quantity are out there? And were exactly are they out there? Not the right sizes. In the two places I thought they were.
-What is there that would not be best used in another place, sitting unused for even more time until then? All of it would be best used elsewhere, unfortunately.
-What about all those wooden brackets removed from the master bedroom way back when? Nope. Too small.

You can see that I haven't yet gotten the top shelf installed. That's because I'll need to get more 1/4" AC plywood, so next time I'm in Missoula and near Lowe's I'll get it. Then I'll already have materials for the next closet!

Anyway, that's the deal with the pine-board brackets; they're screwed to the corner studs and to the cleat on the back wall. The shelf is screwed to the brackets. I added a piece of screen moulding to the front for a tiny bit of added stability and to cover the plies.

Something similar will happen in the studio/office/sewing room/auxiliary guest room when I tackle the floors in there later this year, but hopefully it will go much more smoothly, quickly, and unembarrassingly.

Springtime In The Rockies: Rabbit-based Decorations

jazz hands!

I've been focusing on trying to use up my rather... let's say "thorough"... stash of craft supplies. I've already completed a few rather intense sewing projects (not shown) with my cotton print fabrics, but what I feel compelled to share here are a couple of seasonal decorations I pulled together entirely from various supplies stashes over the St. Patrick's Day weekend.

First, Easter T-rex dares you to hunt Easter eggs.

Second, weird pile of bits arranged in a bleached & dyed bottle brush tree sprouting out of a rabbit head mug.

Third, I repaired this yarn doll rabbit that Betty roughed up once in a fit of separation anxiety... within hours of my finishing making it. Now that Betty has left this mortal coil, I guess it is safe to bring back Mr. E. Rabbit.

Before the "accident":

What was left:

Post surgery:

I added a hat to cover the sprung eyeball situation.

I couldn't face making new polymer clay eggs, then painting them. So one row of felt grass and one large egg from a box of wee bits & bobs I scored at the 50-mile Garage Sale last year.

With the doe rabbit the inspired the project in the first place, made my my grandmother.

Finally, this super cool jackalope ornament that was a birthday gift from one of my besties over at Fizzy Party!

He fits right in with the faux chocolate jackalope I made last year and Dale, our resident jackalope, but he doesn't fit quite right on the cabinet handle. I'm still on the search for just the right spot.

A Loads of Fun Laundry Room

The next steps for updating the guest room and taking care of some other projects upstairs are kind of intimidating - they're just big and/or uncharted territory, not really difficult. So, I decided to do some other, simpler projects that I have had in mind & partly sourced for awhile... to decorate the laundry room. Well, it's really more of a glorified closet than a room. Now that I think about it, it's probably smaller than the master closet which is big, but not glamour-big.

I actually painted this room in the first couple of weeks of our moving in five-and-a-half years ago. It had been a sort of 1970s baby blue with hyperlink blue on the fuse box and washing machine outlet box. Why someone would want to call attention to those things is a mystery to me... especially if they're going to do a sloppy job of painting them. So I made sure to cover it with an equally distinctive, but more contemporary color that is more my jam before we got the washer and dryer in there. Sadly, I didn't have the time to replace these 1980s looking peel-and-stick vinyl floor tiles, but I do have a plan in mind when I feel up to disconnecting the water heater for a day and struggling with shoving around the stacked washer/dryer.

Oh, hey, look! There's also some probably-original, 1976, faux brick-ish, sheet vinyl under the water heater! Sigh.

I had picked up these vintage flash cards at various vintage markets over the last few years with intent to frame them using thrifted frames. But digging around in thrift store frame piles - and aren't they usually just horizontally oriented piles? - is something I find really easy to put off until next time... the next-time-that-never-comes, apparently. So I set out to look specifically one afternoon and luckily found three that were close enough at one shop and for under $8.

Not sure why I am so attracted to these things, but I am. Obviously, because I made these xmas decorations with some, too.

I'm still committed to trying to use up stash materials whenever possible and feel like what I got from my scrapbook paper stash worked pretty well to mount the flashcards on, both for colors and for sort of a fabric-inspired theme.

Here are the frames with the glass and "pictures" out, ready to be refinished. On the two oak ones I used the old pickling treatment and the black and "cherry" I used house primer and paint. Spray paint probably would've been faster, but I'm not a fan of how spray paint looks on oak and I already had these other materials on hand, anyway.

Once they were dry, I thoroughly cleaned the glass and got them all put together! 

The reason I chose white? I painted them all white to coordinate with... this laundry soap jug diorama! I had saved the pin that inspired it years ago and was able to make this whole diorama with materials in stash and on-hand.

The washer/dryer set is vintage Fisher Price Little People stuff... which I LOVE!

Most of this is "merely" assembled, but I did make the little clothes rack and the wee hangers on it. I'm trying to come up with just the right thing to sit on the shelf, but am considering this done-enough.

YAHOO! This is where we're at now; just a bit cheerier and a lot less plain. It will feel a little nicer to go in there now and it feels quite nice to have a couple long-simmering project complete.

And now for some REAL TRUTH! The photo below is closer to the Real Laundry Room Situation (RLRS)... at least the RLRS after a good cleaning and de-cluttering. The Real Real Laundry Room Situation (RRLRS) is TOO REAL for public viewing.

Light Control

In an effort to further update the guest room, I've made a few more things.

1.

An accent lamp.

That's right another vintage thermos lamp and I used the same tutorial linked in the first post. This thermos was the first acquired specifically for lamp-ifying and I finally came up with a suitable lampshade idea for it, so finally made it.

This time I painted the hardware, "flat black." Hmmmm. Well, the only way this paint would be flat is I'd painted a pancake! This did not do what it says on the tin. Oh, well.

This is a plain, chandelier shade from Lowe's, covered with fabric recently added to my stash - ahem - and trimmed out with black twill tape.

2. 

Replaced the ceiling fixture with a repainted fixture.

Originally I thought I'd paint the existing bright brass builders' boob light (BBL) that was in there when we moved in. Then it occurred to me that we have a small stash of fixtures we'd taken out and stored in the shop with the intent to donate them and that I should have a look to see if there was something suitable that would be better than a repainted BBL. And I think there was!

From before the 2016 kitchen remodel started.

I think of this as 1970s (and earlier?) version of the cheap, utility light and it came out of the kitchen. I never liked it in there, but always found it more charming than a BBL... at least it looks vintage. So I decided to clean it up and give it a quick paint job: both the chrome base and the glass globe.

Of course, within the 40 years I assume that thing was up it had gotten paint on it from sloppy ceiling painters. Luckily, it was all latex paint and came off pretty easy with rubbing alcohol and a little attention from a razor blade. After some simple, but thorough, masking, I painted it in the woodshed and hung it to dry in the bathroom (door shut, heat & fan on).

The globe has a little paint and some dust, so I cleaned it up and did two quick pinstripes on the side. Inspired by the schoolhouse look, even if not really replicating it because of the different style.

I bet you can guess what's coming up next just by looking at this next photo. It ends with "t" and starts with pain. That's right... PAINT!

Question: Does the angle of this photo make the ceiling fixture look off-center?

Answer: No. The ceiling fixture being WAY off-center makes the ceiling fixture look off-center.

I used the same two 60-watt-equivelent LED light bulbs that came out of the boob light in the "new" light and it's so much brighter! Just goes to show you how much the fixture can matter.

_________________________________________________

Our supplies stashes were integral in these projects, but perhaps a little less so than the shelf backers. 

    OUT OF POCKET COSTS:
    LAMP
      $  5.98 - lamp shade
      $  2.39 - twill tape
      $  6.49 - bottle lamp kit
      $  0.49 - rubber grommet
      $15.35