New Kitchen Coming Soon!

Out with the old, in with the new! Finally, we have our permit and the dumpster was delivered today, so demolition of the old kitchen will start next week. It's been a busy few days getting materials ordered and of course I'm still trying to get furniture & stuff moved away from the walls for the whole house rewiring. It's amazing how many little details need to be coordinated, making sure materials will arrive when needed, but also not having too many things taking up room inside when we need to knock out walls and move debris out of the house. It's going to be a crazy month. Hope to post lots of pictures along the way.

Bathroom Window Valance

I finally got around to finishing & hanging my bathroom valance. We renovated the bath over a year ago and a few months later I can across a remnant at Joann’s Fabrics that matched the tile I used to repair the windowsill. I originally planned to make a horn & swag valance, but the pattern showed it was cut on a curve, which didn’t go with the square background on the print. I put it aside for awhile and after passing by the fabric so many times in my craft room, I finally decided to just go with a traditional pleat. It was easy to construct and it really does go perfect with the tile, so I’m glad I finally knocked it off the ‘to do’ list.

Renovation Existing Tile

When renovating a bathroom, most home improvement sites and books will recommend completely ripping out all the fixtures and tiles and updating everything. They say that you will usually recover the cost when you resell the house. That’s fine if you can actually afford the thousands of dollars in demolition and replacement. Many of us don’t have those resources. And with the current housing slump and home values having dropped dramatically, sinking thousands into a renovation may not pay off.
I have updated both the bathrooms in my home without replacing all of the tile. I have redone just portions of it. I did it myself, and it does involve some delicate precision and hard labor. I’m not sure tile contractors would like my approach either. Hiring someone to do this work may not be easy as they most likely feel it’s easier to tear it all out and then cover a clean flat wall.
Easy doesn’t always mean best for the environment. My approach is to preserve as much vintage tile as possible and to add as little as possible to the waste stream. Where does all that old tile end up? Probably a landfill. Maybe if it were being recycled for some other use, it wouldn’t bother me so much, but most of the time, you see large amounts of construction waste just packed up into dumpsters and trucked away.
Here’s what I did with the 1st renovation. We had broken tile on the windowsill, some edge tiles at the floor that were cracked, a broken ceramic wall mounted towel rack and worn out ceramic soap dish and toothbrush holders above the wall hung sink. After removing the sink, we also found holes through some tiles and cracks in others.
I loved the 50-year-old tan speckled tile but knew I probably wouldn’t be able to match it. The room had black edge tile, so I had to come up with a pattern to insert black tile to fill in the spaces where I removed the broken stuff. It required placing black tiles where the new towel bars would attach to the walls, black tiles on the new windowsill and a few rows of black behind the sink. It also involved preserving at least one tan tile to fill in a spot where one towel bar was removed. Getting tiles off in one piece is the trickiest part & mostly comes down to luck.
Here’s a few links on how to replace a broken tile…

http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/how-to/intro/0,,20051584,00.html

http://www.ehow.com/how_114958_replace-cracked-tile.html

perhaps I’ll post more about my own repair work at a later date as this is already getting too long winded.

Upcycled Bathroom Heater

We recently renovated our main bathroom. I chose not to demolish the existing tile (unlike most major renovators would recommend). First of all, I liked the tile, secondly most of it was still in great condition and thirdly, I prefer to add as little as possible to the waste stream. The problem with preserving 60 year old tile is the fact that they no longer make it and new tiles are not available.
We had an old recessed wall heater just below the window. It was no longer working and with new central air and heat, it was no longer needed. But since it was recessed into the wall removing it would have left a hole that would have required new tiles to cover. Since it was located on the wall right next to the toilet and the center opening provided a good size, I decided to convert it to a magazine rack. I removed it from the wall and unscrewed the face from the part that held the heater coil. I then cut some pieces of craft wood to line the rear and sides of the recess in the wall. I stained them to match the dark wood color we were using for our sink vanity. I then built a wedge shape out of some more wood and stained & polyurethaned it. I screwed it on through the same holes that had held the rear part of the heater on. I also stain some strips of wood to go behind the beautiful cut outs, because the edges of my inside frame now showed through . I chose to leave the original label and toggle switch on the face to give it some character. It works great and I didn’t have to add any more problems to my tile renovation (more on the subject in a future blog).