Finish Photos of New Upstairs Bathroom

Above Photo Taken Today May 29, 2009.

This photo was taken January 15, 2009.

Finished Upstairs Bathroom Today

Above is a great chest of drawers I purchased at St. Vincent DePaul in Appleton, WI last year. The top is a bit distressed, but I went over it with some Danish oil twice, each time letting the oil penetrate the surface. Then I finished by going over the entire piece with Danish oil. Looks great.

In a house like ours, built in 1893, we have to create storage where there is none. We've added this chest of drawers and a jelly cabinet to the right of the pedestal sink to hold medicine cabinet stuff, shaving, cosmetics, hairdryer, etc. I'll take some measurements of cabinet to add some baskets--to sort/hold those items.

Above is the much needed second toilet in the house. I took up the extra rug from the living room and brought it upstairs to the bathroom. It fits perfectly and looks good too.

Above is a detail of the door trim with the flower design, a feature in all the woodwork in the house both upstairs and down.

Above is a detail of the wallpaper (showing the wallpaper's true color).

I know the other photos taken here make the the wallpaper look golden probably because of the soft white/yellow light of the sconces.

I purchased the bathing beauties from The Dane's Home (Antiques) in Waupaca, WI and reframed it to go with the bathroom colors.

Above is the cinamon colored jelly cabinet, and oiled teak flooring--also a cinamon color we admire against the grayed blue-green eucaplytus colored beadboard, a Valspar latex semi-gloss paint color called Bewitch. We painted a bedroom downstairs the same color. I picked up the jelly cabinet at a second hand store in Appleton several years ago. It was in my kitchen at our former home.

Mom and I finished the wallpapering yesterday. This morning while Jon was finishing work on the clawfoot tub connection, I hung the white lace curtains--which really help cut the bright light reflecting off the aluminum colored standing steel roof. The roof is in amazing condition--it was installed new during the mid 1950s. We re-painted the roof June 2007 right after we purchased the house.

New Flooring Finished in Upstairs Bath

Above is the view if you were sitting in the clawfoot tub. Purposely, we're putting the tub in front of the double windows and a little to the right to provide a view of the old barn. Also, moving the tub to the right of the windows makes more space at the pedestal sink.

Above is the clawfoot tub--at the moment it is parked along the west wall of the bathroom while Jon is installing the new flooring. It was difficult and painful buying a faucet to fit the tub. I'll give you 2 guesses, but you still won't believe the faucet, pop-up drain, and water supply lines cost more than the tub. Mercy.

Above are the connections in the flooring for the water supply lines and drain to the clawfoot tub.

Above is the wallpaper sample taped to the door; a close up of white woodwork and eucalyptus colored beadboard. The green tape ain't bad either, ha. ha.

Above is the west wall. Temporary placement of the tub until the flooring is installed. The door shown here is a wedge shaped storage closet (huge). There is a matching wedge shaped closet on the opposite (east) wall--where I have the laundry room.

Above - The east wall during installation of flooring. You can see east door here to wedge shaped closet housing my laundry room. Just enough space for a little person like me to wash, dry, & hang up clothes.

Here is the south wall with double windows. The tub will sit in front of the windows, but a little off center to the right (west).

Above is the west wall, and temporary location of tub during floor installation. The doors are sanded, primed, and ready for top coat of semi-gloss latex. I'm sticking with white to go with the white tub, pedestal sink, and toilet.

Above is the south wall of the bathroom with the double windows where the tub will be located. Not much chance of anyone seeing the bather in the nude, due to the roof line. The room is photographed a bit dark, but I took these photos at 5:30a this morning.

Above--I'm still on board with selection of wallpaper. The gray-green in the paper actually matches the walls--however the wallpaper has a rich background of eggnog cream.

Above - is the east wall (left) and south wall with double windows. You can see the plumbing for the pedestal sink is ready to go.

Discovering The Previous Owners - The Qvien Family

Allow me to introduce the Thomas Qvien family, second owners of our 1893 Victorian. Thomas Qvien purchased the house in December 1917 from Osina (Wrolstad) Johnson and her husband N.H. "Nels" Johnson, and her sister Mabel (Wrolstad) Westgor and her husband E.H. Westgor.

I received this beautiful family photo from Barbara Osen great granddaughter of Thomas Qvien (pronounced Ka-veen'). We are so honored to show this photograph in our home.

Front: Thomas and Maren (Gurholt) Qvien. Standing are their children: Bessie, Gusta, Peter, and Ragnhild.

Barbara brought me other unmarked photos. I found one or two which I thought might be older photos of Bessie and Ragnhild. To get a better look I scanned the original family photograph, then made detail images of each person. I began with the "known" photo of Bessie, a detail image from the family photo, and reversed the detail image.

Above is a reserved image of "known" photograph detail of Bessie Qvien.

Above is the "unknown" photo of a woman I believe is Bessie Qvien.

Above is an overlay transparency combining both photographs. Really cool, eh? A friend named Theresa did the overlay for me.

Recycling - Making a Hat Rack Out of a Piano Front

Every once in a while, you find an old item--like this piano panel--100 years of elegance. A 100 year piece of art.

My husband Jon found it. His sister was throwing out the old piano that no longer worked. What a good eye Jon has. He sees it recycled into a functional piece of art as a hat rack for the 12' x 12' foyer. I think it is a stunning piece.

Right now you see it sitting here in our summer kitchen, leaning up against the wood cookstove. I'm afraid it will be sitting there quite some time before we take it to the foyer. The foyer has some structural problems. Under the floor is an 18" crawl space. During the lifetime of this house now 116 years, dampness and black ants chewed the joists into porous wafers. The floor joists must be replaced and the only safe way is to open up the foyer floor like a can of peas to get access.

Last summer 2008, my husband Jon and my Dad Gale deconstructed the front porch, finding the same damp decay and insect damage eating away the porches, railings, ballisters, spindles, and columns. Also we removed the ancient tree on the east side of the house--it too was so hollow in the main trunk that it could hold three basket balls. The tree was extremely damp on the inside and full of black ants. I hope the black ants are gone for good.

Fitting Tub Fixtures

Above is the bathroom wallpaper. Looks good next to the painted beadboard.

Jon dry fitting the pop up drain.

The main faucet fixture.

We purchased new flooring--the color and style is called Oiled Teak--a cinnamon color. After dry-fitting the tub fixtures, Jon will tear it down again, move the tub out and install flooring. The floors upstairs, especially in the bathroom have been opened up many times to add plumbing and electrical.

Our choice is a durable and maintenance free floating laminate floor over the original pine boards. In the future others can restore the floors as they wish (and repair them too). At this point, I remember a Rolling Stones tune, "you can't always get what you want." So we'll do what we can, finish what we can, and then move along to the next project.

So far, we've done every bit of the restoration by ourselves. This work is not for the faint of heart or procrastinator. Sometimes it seems we've had to lick every inch of this house personally with our tongues. There's always more work to do.

In a couple weeks, summer weather will be upon us and we have to work outside. My summer project is to finish painting the exterior of the house. And, Jon has been checking out stock trees from differnt stores. I'm interested in grand spice viburnum. I heard about its great fragrance, and hope it is Zone 4 perfect for us.

Selecting Color for the Upstairs Bathroom

A thrift shop find . . . bird lamp. The theme for the bathroom and for the foyer are"birds". I've been collecting bird prints (small and large ones).

To the left and right of the middle windows are two closets (wedge shaped). The closet on the left is the laundry room, and to the right will become out of season clothing storage, luggage, etc. In the laundry room at the left is a long credenza shoved up tight against the wedge. The credenza is where I store bed linens--a thrift shop find.

I painted the primed beadboard last night. It went from pickled white (primed boards) to a deep rich grayed blue-green color called Bewitch. I'm not sure how I feel about the color---its dark.

It looks very good against the wallpaper I pinned temporarily over the door.

I remember when I was in gradeshool. I selected three sheets of colored paper, one was black, one deep tan, and one a grayed blue-green. I looked at the sheets stacked on top of each other, slightly adjusting the corners building one color on top of the other, like matting on a picture. Now, look at me, I'm arranging the same colors again for this bathroom--some 50 years later. I'm aware of a pallette of colors I've enjoyed all my life.