Rejuvenation Projects Blog

Rejuvention’s Facebook page asked what treasures we’d found while remodeling. Well, our gut produced this:

Have I mentioned that we're in Virginia?

I’m not sure that it’s a treasure, exactly. But the crew saved it for us, so I’m keeping it.

When Heather discussed plans for the third floor, she talked about serene retreats and I don’t know what. And I nodded and smiled, but what I was really thinking was, “I’d like something that doesn’t have a lingering waft of elderly-cat byproducts.”

The finished space doesn’t just smell better than the old. It looks great, too. 

This is what you used to see from the top of the stairs.

The view now.

 Do remodels often involve getting rid of closets? In our case, the targeted closet just seemed kinda . . . pointless. I mean, we put things in it, because we had things, and there was a space, but it was never very satisfactory.

The other side of the sitting area.

 I am pretty sure that filing is going to become a favorite activity around here now:

The Kik-Step stool was removed before Heather could start weeping.

 The view from the comfy chair place has also improved. If you are sensitive about really bad light fixtures, you should probably skip ahead.

Close up of that pendant:

Smoked glass is one of those things I just don't understand.

I may have mentioned my love of the Magnolia shade before.

Art glass and more of Dan's carpentry.

I have remained constant in my devotion, and I am not alone. I have looked over at the stairs to the attic and seen what look like headless boys sitting on the steps. Luckily, the reason I can’t see their heads is that the heads’ owners are looking straight up to admire the bottom view of the shade:

The swirl is hypnotizing.

One of my new favorite sources for cool stuff is William J. Rigby, provider of unused antique hardware. We didn’t have enough door plates left over from the old space, but we were able to find something at Wm. Rigby that coordinated with the old stuff, even if it didn’t quite match:

Plate from Cooperstown, knob from Rochester

 The low ceilings in the attic mean that we ended up with recessed lighting most places. (Although there is a Magnolia shade on a Fernhill fixture. I may have mentioned it in passing.) The new sleeping area is still an improvement over the old one.

We used to have a ceiling fixture.

At least, I think it’s better.

No ceiling fixture. I don't miss it.

Aside from the pointless closet, we used to have two closets that shared a wall. Yuri suggested merging them, which made the space a lot more functional. We also got rid of bifold mirrored doors that didn’t close all the way.

Fun house or funhouse?

Now we have a bigger, better closet AND a pocket door.

Napping person can provide moral support to person working at desk.

Oh, and nothing smells like kitties in decline.

P.S.  Heather came over to take photos for her portfolio. She brought accessories, including the designer version of Mr. Pickles:

Mr. Pickles and his brother, Mr. Pickles

 For every pinhole leak or layer of asbestos flooring, remodeling also brings nice surprises.

Greetings from the frozen mid-Atlantic!

I originally agreed to post something every week. My love for our house, however, doesn’t protect me from the demands of work and parenthood and shoveling us out of one snowstorm after the next.

But all the recreational baking I’m doing with our youngest is a lot more fun in the new kitchen, and collapsing exhausted in the master bedroom is very pleasant for the fifteen seconds I’m able to keep my eyes open.

And, as the post indicates, we haven’t lost power.

The other night, on Bang for Your Buck, the hosts evaluated a bathroom that looked a lot like ours. It’s a good thing we like ours so much, because evidently we Did It Wrong.  

Whatever, HGTV. I think ours is beautiful, and not just because the original was such a dump.  

Approach, gasp, run away?

Umpqua, Streamline, Chenowith. Pretty, pretty, pretty.

Outside the tub

Half a wall = more daylight

 The tub and the toilet swapped places, which had repercussions for the ceiling of the downstairs bathroom, but we shall say no more about that.

Ick.

If one is willing to live with ick, does that make one icky?

Aaaah.

Because I love Heather Safferstone (our interior designer) so much, I feel the need to say that neither the clear shower liner nor the tissue paper taped over the window was her idea, and they are not permanent solutions. She is doing her best to class us up. Godspeed, young Heather.

One of the important considerations as we remodeled was being consistent with the original character of the house (shout out to the midcentury modern remodel on this site and the owners’ pursuit of an appropriate bathroom). In our house, the second floor bathroom has a milk glass knob on the bathroom side of the door and glass outside. With the help of Historic Houseparts, the master bathroom does, too:

The knob is from Historic Houseparts; the plate is from our old bathroom, which wasn't all bad. Chrome amid the rot!

Two days ago we passed final inspection (whee!).

There’s still a lockbox on our back porch, but I think the lack of a building permit in our window means we’re done.

Our powder room/half bathroom is about three feet wide, two and a half feet deep, and ten feet tall. If there’s a good way of photographing it, I didn’t figure it out.

I think you’ll still get the idea (the idea being “turn shells and cheese to an attractive if still tiny space”):

It's a toilet seat. Go basic.

The motif continues

The two together

The light in the old half-bath was a ceiling fixture

Now:

The functional part.

The pretty part -- yes, that's a Carlton (in brushed nickel).

Recently, I was talking to a new acquaintance who’s in building, and she asked if our remodel is green. And I was able to answer, proudly and forthrightly, “Well, sort of!”

Before we started remodeling, we had an energy audit. When I’m finally able to post “Before” and “After” pictures, you will see blue tape where we had air leaks. There was a lot of blue tape. 

Once we started remodeling, we got off to what I thought was a good start, using a company that disassembles houses instead of demolishing them. The workers were able to remove intact the backsplash tiles, which are rich in history if not something we want to look at.  And they were able to take off the trim carefully enough that most of it could be reused in the new space. They took out the cabinets in intact, so we could donate them to Habitat ReStore. Then again, they left the water running for a day, so that part? Not so green. But we tried!

Our contractor is a green builder. We are now insulated to the hilt, and we have a new, very efficient air conditioning unit.

Does a trellis pattern on an air filter count as a green element?

We didn’t replace our windows (see above, blue tape, abundance of), but we did get them refurbished, so now they open easily and close tightly. If you can’t find a window refurbisher in your area (they are all over New England, much rarer in the Mid-Atlantic), you can always paint your windows shut, which one refurbisher told me did a pretty good job of stopping air leaks.

We passed on adding photovoltaic cells to the roof.  The solar hot water heater is still under consideration.

Most of our lights are from Rejuvenation. Yay Rejuvenation! But, again, we missed on Ultimate Green because the dimmable compact fluorescents dimmed just fine, provided perfectly good light, and hummedhummed HUMMED. I couldn’t take it. We still have some fluorescents, but if I’d wanted to be irritated by my house, I could have skipped the remodeling.

I’d also looked into green options for countertops. Butcher block has the usual caveats for wood as far as sourcing and maintenance. Stainless steel’s big ecological pro is that it can be recycled, so the green points will go to whoever buys and remodels our house. Plus I came upon an article mentioning that the manufacturing process for stainless includes a mineral mined in a country with an appalling government. Can something be good for the earth but bad for the humans on it?

The counter in the master bathroom was going to be an ecofriendly quartz. It looked fine on line, but when I saw it in the showroom, I was not happy. So granite.

My sink -- see how clean I'm keeping it?

If the greenest house is the one that’s already built, I am hoping that the greenest remodel is one that you love enough never to redo.

But just in case you’re not buying that rationalization: Dear Mother Earth, consider my lapses payback for mosquitos. Dear everyone else, consider my lapses evidence of my mortal weaknesses.

I suppose this is the part where it seems as though I have a heart too soon made glad: some of the things that make me happiest about our new spaces are things most people wouldn’t even notice. And I wouldn’t have bothered fixing them, or trying to, if they weren’t part of a larger product. But here they are, and they delight me.

The air conditioning vents in the attic used to blow out on either side of the bed. I like sleeping by an open window, but an icy Freon-based blast is not a good substitute.

Bed goes between vents. Occupant with XX chromosomes freezes.

Now the AC vents are in the ceiling. The patronizing previous owner, who kept pointing out that warm air rises, never  mentioned that cold air sinks. I don’t know why; it certainly wasn’t because he thought we’d be able to work out that particular corollary. Still, I’m excited about next summer’s climate control.

If I sleep standing up at the end of the bed, I guess I'd feel a draft.

I used to keep knives in a drawer across the kitchen from where I did most of my chopping. I’d seen some nice butcher blocks with knife slots, and then I saw this arrangement (scroll down). In our kitchen, there’s some dead space in the corner of the counter run near the fridge, so I bought an insert and Dan Stone, Wondercarpenter, made it happen.

Reach over, grab knife, cut what needs to be cut.

The work on the bathroom has not only given us a place where we can brush our teeth without falling through the floor, but a place where both the air and our towels will be warm and cozy:

It's a towel warmer and a radiator. And shiny.

Ignore the toilet, ignore the TP. That little screen is the display for the tile thermostat. The thing tucked behind it is not a tiny newpaper, it's the directions. I thought we were ignoring the toilet, anyway.

I’m looking back at the things that make me happy, and I’m realizing I must be part lizard, because I don’t seem to be able to regulate my own body temperature very well. So although the photo above seems kind of film noir to me, maybe it should be something with a little more of a science fiction vibe to it.

But, at least, a “We have our kitchen back!” post.

Today I handed my punch list to Lou and he sent the cleaning service to make our remodeled space habitable.

The punch list seems epic to me, who has never done a remodel before. And I don’t know when the furnishings for the third floor will arrive, so moving in there has to wait, but still. Cooking! We redid the kitchen, and it became a place where we can cook. Cook food. And then eat it. All in our very own house. It seems amazing.

Not the first time it's been in the niche, but this time it gets to stay.

Until we cook that food, we can store it here:

Ever tried to find a large fridge that doesn't have ice and water through the door?

As much as I missed cooking, what I really missed was having a kitchen sink. This, however, was definitely worth the wait:

Only the finest liquids will be dumped down this sink.

Not every item on the punch list is the result of workflow. The decisions keep coming. Our electrician thinks we should have a black line painted on white switchplates. My middle child and I like the plain black. All opinions are welcome — vote now!

Remodeling allows you to become someone who cares a lot about switchplates. A LOT.

“The first 90 percent of a project takes the 90 percent of the time, and the final 10 percent of the project takes the other 90 percent” — apologies to the person who said this first, because I can’t find a citation and therefore can’t give you the credit you deserve for describing our remodel so neatly.

We’ve been so close to done for (what seems like) so long that I no longer have any idea what to say when people ask when I think we’ll be done. Even when I run through the list of things of things that are left on the remodeling side, I start thinking about the interior design elements that are yet to come, and the point at which I sink into a comfy chair and gaze contentedly at the Magnolia shade seems very far away.

That said, tile is providing more joy than pain these days. We have a backsplash. Or two, depending on how you think about it:

The brown paper looks a lot like the butcher block underneath. OK, a little.

The stove went in a while ago, but it came out again so Orlando could work his magic :

Wood, paper, stainless, plastic, lizard, Spock . . . .

 I keep heading into the kitchen to admire the backsplash, one tile at a time.

Waiting for grout, once again.

Unfortunately, Orlando’s magic did not extend to getting all the tiles right side up. I caught some of them, but a few hours after he left, I saw that the garlic was upside down, with a clove floating at the top of the tile. I tried to pry it off, but astonishingly, that didn’t work. Then I moved on to figuring there was nothing I could do about it right then. I am confident it can be fixed, and I am confident that I am not the person to fix it.

I knew roughly what sort of tile I wanted in the kitchen and bathroom before we’d even signed a contract. You might think that would simplify things, which in turn would speed the process up. I didn’t do a controlled study, so I can’t prove that my advance work didn’t help, but it’s hard for me to see how the tile part of the project could have gone any more slowly.

Timeline:

Some time in the 90s: I see a tile I like in a magazine. I think about how nice it would look in a backsplash.

Winter 2008/2009: I spend an evening going through about twenty years’ worth of Bon Appetits. I find the tile. I get on the Internet. It is no longer available.

I move on to spend vast quanities of time on the Intenet looking for tiles I love. I even go through every page of tile on CafePress.  CafePress has about 15,000 tiles. I look at all of them, finally finding something that is almost right, except the tiles have words on them. I write to the artists, asking if they have given any thought to making them without the words. And, because the world evidently revolves around meeee, they have.

So I order these tiles. I don’t know who will be installing them or what else will be with them, but these will be the highlight of the kitchen backsplash.

Spring 2009: I spend a lot of time designing the backsplash, blissfully unaware of the realities of available tile sizes and such.

May 2009: We sign a contract with the man who will eventually accuse me of being a Russian spy.

First week of June 2009: The contractor’s in-house desginer and I go to the contractor’s preferred tile showroom to meet with their preferred tile designer. She hates my tiles. She hates my proposed symmetrical backsplash design. Eventually, she suggests we move on to discussing the bathroom. That goes better, but it doesn’t resolve the kitchen issue.

Most of the rest of June: I e-mail the tile designer a few more times. We make no progress.

End of June: The contractor’s in-house designer goes to the beach and I go to another tile designer, who produces designs I like much better. When the beach vacation is over, I fax the designs. In-houser attempts to get designs to work with contractor’s preferred tile place. No go, because they don’t have the sizes and shapes we need. And the place that produced the tile designs I love doesn’t meet the contractor’s standards.

I remain calm. I have faith.

Mid-July: In-houser and I eventually go to a place owner by a friend of hers, and we manage to put together an OK plan.

Late July: At least I think it’s OK, but then it turns out that I can’t get a cove or sanitary base there. And in-houser is going out of town again.

Clearly, this is a job for Heather the interior designer who is too good for me. She hooks me up with her woman at Waterworks. Tile in the right sizes! And colors! And shapes! And a five-week lead time.

Beginning of August: In-houser and I meet at Waterworks. Everything goes along tickety boo until I say something about wanting the mud base. Waterworks says we probably want a cove base, because the mud base tile is only for bathrooms that are getting a mud base floor. In-houser says we’re not. Waterworks gives us a list of the colors and types of tile we’ll need for the kitchen and bathroom.

Middle of August: Tiling subcontractor provides list of what he’ll need.

Middle of September: First batch of tile arrives. It does not include the cove base, so nothing can happen yet.

End of September: Second, final batch of tile arrives. I meet with contractor and tile subcontractor. When I show the cove base to the installer, he tells me that it is the wrong type to use with a mud base. Which we are having. I announce my intention to kill in-houser and throw in a Bad Word, just to show how understanding and collaborative I’m feeling. I am sure he is impressed by the rationality and good nature of the homeowner he’ll be working for.

Now it’s the beginning of October. We still don’t have the backsplash up; we’re waiting for a countertop. But once the tile came in, the bathroom tile got done in a week, including grout. And it is lovely, even if the Streamline soap dishes and towel rings haven’t gone up yet. Now for some plumbing . . .

Hers and his

I took the next photo before the tile was grouted. I keep getting barred from my own bathroom while something cures or sets:

Tub/shower enclosure, with niches for our various toiletries and suchlike.

We’re going to need quite a threshold from the bedroom to the bathroom:

Our bathroom is on a higher plane.

They can call it a mud base, but it looks clean and white to me.