Finishing up the Bathroom

This project has been long with a lot of attention to detail.  The key was to maintain the historic elements while updating and cleaning the bathroom.  Finding colors that worked was challenging with the wild tile color.  I think the room evokes a love it or hate it response.

Cabinet

As you can see from the previous pictures, the existing makeup counter was terrible.  The wood was sticky and was never very nice to begin with.  There were several layers of caked paint and the top was not tiled.  The cabinet had a built in laundry chute to the basement, which was fun.

The cabinet was built into the tile as you can see from this demolition picture. (See the black base tile).  I was able to order exact replicas of the base tile from http://www.heritagetile.com/.  Their product is very nice and is indistinguishable from the old tile.  They were approximately $20.00 per tile.

 

 

I got some prices on custom cabinets (they were a very odd dimension).  They were going to cost $1,600.00 or more without the top, so I decided to make my own.  I ordered the boxes from cabinotch http://cabinotch.us/.  You can order any size cabinet in any variety of combinations.  Then I built the doors and drawers out of Curly Maple.  Here are the pictures of the cabinet construction.

I made the drawers with a porter cable dovetail jig and router.  I cut the faces out of the curly maple, and finished them with 100% dewaxed shellac mixed with antique maple dye (called toning).  The finish draws out the figure of the curly maple, and looks great.  Just don't spill a gin and tonic on it.  As you can see, I built in electrical boxes and rebuilt the original laundry chute.

The measurements were correct and I had to rebuild the tile around the base of the cabinet.  This was tricky.  I had to patch the mosaic tile floor.  I robbed a little bit from the back corner and replaced it with matching black tile.  The change was not too noticeable.  Here are some pictures of the tile process.  As you can see, I affixed metal lathe to the cabinets, which was secured with staples. 

 Here are the installed drawers, doors and pulls.

 Here is the grout.

A nice picture of Patra and Babu.

The Rest of the Bathroom

The cabinet and tile work was extremely time consuming and careful work.  The rest was fairly easy.  I had the mirrors resilvered at Frank Wright Glass in Detroit.  I purchased new light fixtures and installed a ventilation fan.  There was very basic plaster repair and paint.  All of the original brushed nickel do dads were covered in paint, and needed to be stripped and polished.  I replaced the toilet.  Saki scraped the floor about 5 times to get all the glue off of it.  The overall impact is great.  here are the final photos. 

 Black marble countertop for the makeup counter.

 Vicki Slot made the very fashionable curtains... thanks Mom! 

 ( I am still going to replace the sink with a 1954 Crane Diana sink with chrome faucet and chrome legs and towel bars).  The "new" sink is in perfect condition and will look great in this retro bathroom

Here are the photographs of the new sink, which is much bigger and has cool chrome towel bars on the side.  All done in the bathroom, now there is just the rest of the house to do.