Showing posts with label tile. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tile. Show all posts

Ikea Kitchen Update

Here is where the new kitchen stands. The tile is now up to the middle of the window-the walls were too scarred to leave them bare, but I think it has a nice charm. I'm still working on painting the cabinets and we could use a replacement stove but there's no rush.



















The oak countertops are my favorite new thing- I never thought wood was something appropriate to my messy, sometimes grungy kitchen. I used 6 coats of Waterlox, a tung-oil and resin-based finish. Spills wipe right up, even a day later, and there are no white rings or dark rings. Nothing soaks in. The finish dulls a little when water is left standing for a day, but you wouldn't even notice unless you peered closely. We treat our countertops roughly- though no direct cutting on them- and they haven't chipped yet. If they did, it's easy to recoat or touch-up.

So far we've probably spent 2800-3000 on this kitchen, for a complete re-do. I kind-of regret the new steel-look appliances- they seem cold and not very vintage! How do they look so great in period kitchen magazine photos?

Jason paints!









The pot rack.






The Tubby Ticket-Finder and His Bakery

This is my construction paper kitchen design. We watched a holiday broadcast of the newer Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and I decided on the scheme of the German bakery where the tubby ticket-finder meets the press. It had cream walls and pale blue tiles. We only had this brown paper, so this picture isn't accurate. I don't want a yellow sink. But, it's fun anyway. The chance of finding affordable pale blue subway tile is low, so unless some comes rolling my way off the back of a truck on the freeway, it will be Home Depot white.



















Here is what we're really going to do, but in a more, dollar-store, version.

Spelunking..ugh

I took no less than 44 photos during a recent trip under the house. No, I don't use drugs under my house. These photos here are the glamorous, beautiful cream of the crop. They are small in case you are eating.

This rusty thing I found under the bathroom. It's about 8" long and could be mistaken for a faucet except that, it's rusty and the "spigot" hole goes all the way through. Both ends look round but are actually a hex shape. Perhaps it's a bracket of some sort, maybe for the toilet?











Here, it looks like the bathroom gas heater (radiator?) was installed underneath the sink. Does this mean the house had a wall-mounted sink, not a pedestal? Our inspector did say the white PVC should be replaced with the less-likely to freeze CPVC. Luckily this year it was 29 degrees at the lowest, for about 3 hours. And it was a warm 29.









This photo shows rotted wood torn away revealing a 2-3' length of original mesh and mortar tile floor. Glad to see it's so very supported from below. I don't know how much will be salvagable. I would totally try to find green reproduction tile, or if not, buy a kiln and learn to make it, and then sit there and piece the tiny tiles together. I will not give up my obsessive quest. Perhaps American Restoration Tile would know something.








But here are some newly found hex and black tiles from below the floor, once buried in rubble and now back together with their mosaic tile friends. I bet the green would be prettier if it was sealed. It must be a border to the hex. The tops of the black baseboard tiles had whisps of white paint, possibly making a match to the scored false-tile plaster board pieces in the rubble, also painted white, meaning there was no water-repeling wall tile when the bathroom was built. I think the white subway tile was installed in the kitchen.













And some mischief with a sleeping cat. If we could train her unconscious to hold a pencil, maybe she'll learn to write!

Bathroom mystery solved!

When I first looked at the marble chunk, "threshold" crossed my mind but thought, it's way too thick to waste as a threshold, and it's also set in wall plaster. I looked at the marble threshold in my sister's bathroom, c. 1926, 6 blocks away, and realized that I could see rough plaster around her doorframe edge. This morning I removed my modern wood threshold, and under the floor layers was a broken bit of matching marble still stuck to the 1" deep plaster threshold base, and also a gouge in that threshold to match my plaster/marble chunk. Most of the plaster surface is flat even with the hallway wood floor, but below the level of the green and white checkerboard tile. I'll guess because the marble chunk is 7/8" thick, it was probably beveled at the sides. I'd probably trip over it frequently. Perhaps people did and maybe that's why it was removed.

Bathroom mystery

In the crawl space below the bathroom is a big pile of bathroom remodeling rubble. The stuff was probably swept down there while the built-in bathtub was removed during two different remodelings in the 1950's and 1970s, because most of the original checkerboard tile floor is still intact. In the pile are large pieces of sky blue, black and creamy white tiles. The white tiles are probably of the time of the checkerboard floor; they are stuck to a thick mortar base and, although not intact, could be of subway tile proportions. Perhaps the sky blue and black are from the 50's. Also, there is part of an old wooden door frame which could be the medicine cabinet or a vanity.

Anyhoo, during one hasty trip under the house, from this pile I recovered a broken chunk of fat whitish marble, 3x4-ish with a smooth face, securely stuck to a full thickness of wall plaster. There seems to be a very thin line of limey white between the plaster and marble. What could this be? We live in a very modest house, barely 1000 sq ft. I can't imagine a marble sink back splash or tub surround here. The thickness of the marble makes me think it was once a much bigger piece and I should try to find more of it, but even that can't convince me to go spelunking in the bombed-out ditch under the house. I'd rather go to the dentist. I'd rather x-ray the walls to see where the patched spots are.
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