Here’s one of a pink kitchen (to the right). 

Reminds me of our cupboards.

I don’t think the cabinets were metal.  Also, I wonder what that faucet-looking thing is to the right of the faucet.  A soap dispenser?  

Lovely blue matching fixtures! I have mixed feelings about this bathroom. With the right tile and some cleaning, I think I'd love it!

 And you thought your bathroom needed cleaning?

Here's another bathroom, not as colorful. The tub had a shower riser coming from the tub spout, somewhat like in our house.Just an old, abandoned bathroom.

Great refrigerator!

There was a refrigerator like this that came with our house.  It’s in our basement awaiting use again.  I like the wood cabinets too.  And that wallpaper is interesting.  I forget what that backsplash area was made of. 

Finally, here are two pieces of wallpaper I liked. 

Duck, Duck, Goose!

Reminds me of a combination between Mission and Deco styles, or something.

 

My plan was to re-do the bedroom without the wife knowing.  Risky undertaking!

First, I gathered bits and pieces over time.  I knew we liked the blue-and-brown combination.  I splurged on a comforter cover at Pottery Barn, a Nouveau-looking turquoise-blue and brown, with some white and orange in the pattern.  I found sheets and a bedskirt to fit our odd-sized bed on Amazon and Target (discovered later, the same sheet set being used on the set of my favorite TV show, “Pushing Daisies”).  I had seen a pair of cool, retro-looking light blue lamps at an antique store, and while I was there, I picked up a small table/cabinet to be an alarm clock stand and book overflow depository.  We read a lot of books.  I wasn’t able to find a pair of nightstands, which was OK for now.  A small wool rug was found on eBay for a quite reasonable price.  I had also planned to make a headboard, but didn’t have a specific enough idea or the time to do it. And I ambitiously wanted to reorganize our sad little closet, but found myself without the time or plans to do that either.  Have to save some projects for another day!

As far as the wall color, I found that choice difficult.  With all the warm-toned woodwork in our place, I have trouble finding colors that don’t clash too much with the trim.  The Pottery Barn catalogs always have such nice uses of wall colors, but the vast majority of those scenes show painted trim.  We won’t paint the trim!  I settled on a gold-ish color.

Removing the wallpaper border was the worst part of the job.  I only had about 8 hours to do the entire room, and the border took up more time than I had thought it would.  I used wallpaper remover spray stuff, and a scoring tool, but with our bumpy plaster walls, those didn’t seem to help much.  Then again, since our walls are bumpy, the border wasn’t too stuck on in a lot of places.  The rest of the job – painting, etc. – was uneventful.

Here are the results:

I still have to hang up the picture rail, and get some pictures on the walls.  We always have trouble deciding how large the pictures should be, or even what they should be.  But, for about $300, I think it turned out alright, compared to before anyway.  The wife isn’t so keen on the wall color, but that can be changed easily enough.

The kitchen faucet is marked “Standard” and  “Re-Nu” at its base.  We suspect that perhaps the curved part of the faucet, coming out of the base, may have been replaced at some point, but we really have no way to know for sure. I know the Standard company at some time turned into the “American Standard” company we know now. The sink was manufactured by the Standard Sanitary Mfg. Co. of Louisville, and appears dated 5-27-38.  The dimensions are 42 x 25 and the model is “Hostess.” (I think our radiators were also manufactured by the Standard Company).

The only “Re-Nu” references I’ve found online all point to bathroom faucets, with different appearances.  It might be the Re-Nu label refers to the method of washers or valve seats the faucets use — more like a feature, than a specific model.

The bathroom faucet handles are marked Kohler, with H or C on each handle.  The handles are cross-shaped, and the escutcheons are octagonal (with rounded sides). I have Kohler looking into it, but I don’t know if that company will be much use for info on faucets that old.  The house is from the 1930s, and we found a paper stating that Kohler faucets were to be used.  If I remember right, that paper was dated in the late 40s or early 50s.  The bathtub has the same faucets, only coming out of the wall.  Originally, the tub spout had no provision for a shower, but we replaced the spout with an exterior shower riser.

Any information would be appreciated!

P.S. Incidentally, if anoyone has any good tips on cleaning vintage chrome faucets (obviously ours need a good cleaning!), I’d love to hear about those too!

Towel under tank to catch leaks

Since we bought this charming house in 2007, we’ve been slowly fixing problems identified by the home inspector.  This time, it’s the rocking toilet.  Besides wobbling, the flush handle had to be jiggled or held down in a cerain way to stop the water from constantly running.  Having to explain this to guests, and checking the handle each time the bathroom was used, was annoying.  Another feature of our old toilet was a leak from the tank which slowly got worse. We were worried that the leak might have rotted our subfloor, causing the wobbling. Sometimes, too, there was a slight odor.

We did not set out yesterday to install a new toilet. Actually, we were going to hang the picture rail molding that has been hiding under our bed for more than a year, and maybe look at microwaves. Our microwave broke a week or two ago — it buzzes and lights up terrifically inside whenever we cook anything.

However, since we had a rare day off work together (thanks to UIUC’s mandatory furlough day — thanks a lot) we went to Lowe’s to look around. After some discussion, we decided to buy a new toilet.  We ended up purchasing a Kohler Cimarron – chair-height, elongated, ‘WaterSense’ 1.28 gallon-per-flush.  There wasn’t too much selection of toilets that would visually fit in perfectly with our current bathroom sink and fixtures (that were in-stock, and for a price we were wiling to pay).

The California Urban Water Conservation Council has a link to a review of almost any toilet out there (MaP survey, updated at least yearly if not more often).

First of all, toilets are heavy!  And, the large box barely fit through the door opening to our 4-door car’s backseat.

Armed with a home repair book, some miscellaneous tools, latex gloves and towels, we got started.  Our supply line shut-off valve was frozen, and did not turn the water off. So, we had to turn off the water to the entire house. (We’ll have to fix that another day).  Then, we flushed to empty the tank as much as possible.  Actually disconnecting the supply line from the toilet was simple, and a bit of water came out of the line, but not much.  Next, we disconnected the tank from the bowl by removing the three bolts that hold the tank to the bowl.  That wasn’t too hard, and we set the tank in the bathtub.

Paint behind the old toilet would have been a nice touch.

Continuing on, we pried off the trim cap on each side of the bowl to expose the nut and bolt holding the toilet to the floor.  The right side’s nut came off easily enough, but the left side was more stubborn and took longer.  I think wax was holding the nut and bolt together, and the entire bolt itself was wobbly, which made it harder to keep a firm grip on it to unscrew.  But we were successful.  Goodbye, old toilet.  Remove the old wax from the floor and stuff an old rag into the drain hole to keep sewer gas out.

What we encountered next was interesting, and relieving.  We were worried about floor damage, but did not find any under the toilet. 

Flange and old wax ring remnants

 Checked the floor, and it was level.  We did see right away that the flange that the T-bolts go through to hold the toilet down was broken on the left side.  No wonder the toilet was wobbly!  We had purchased a flange repair kit, just in case.  The metal flange included in the kit was too long to fit, and though the directions said to shape and cut [the flange repair piece] as needed, we found we could not cut through it at all.  We used the leveling washers included in the kit, and some wax, to make sure the original cracked flange couldn’t move.

Then, we set the included wax ring on the new toilet base and set the toilet down on the floor, over the bolts.  Be sure to remove the rag from the drain opening before

Almost done.

putting the new toilet down!  We made sure the toilet’s wax ring was firmly seated, and screwed those down.  The toilet was not wobbly at all.  After that, we screwed the tank to the bowl.  This tank doesn’t have bolts protruding through it like our old one, but instead has a pre-attached platform under the tank which is then attached to the bowl.  So we hope not to have leaks from the tank in the future.  Attached a new supply line — ours ended up taking a standard 3/8 ” connection to our supply pipe, and a 12″ length would have sufficed. (We weren’t sure of the pipe size or length needed, so we bought a larger connection in 12″ and a 3/8″ connection in 20″).  We’ll have to exchange the line for a shorter one in the future, when we take care of that faulty shut-off handle.

Finished!

We turned the house water back on. No leaks!  We flushed it. No leaks! We attached the included lid and seat — which have the nice “no-slam” feature.  We sat on it (individually). No wobble, no leaks! We threw toilet paper down it, stuck some to the sides. Flushed right away!  I’m very proud that we did this ourselves.

To make things even better, our 2-year old (whom we’re trying to potty-train) used the new toilet.  She loves to shove lots of paper in there.  No problem, whoooosh, it’s gone!

Mission accomplished.

Bathroom.

Two supplementary notes on water usage.

     1.   If our old toilet, manufactured in ’91 according to the tank lid, used only 3.5 gallons per flush, and we flushed it, say, just a very conservative 10 times each day, we’ll save almost 700 gallons of water each month.  This doesn’t include any losses from the old toilet due to leaking or excess water running.  This also doesn’t account for the new one being more fun to flush.

     2.  Since we will be putting into the septic system only 36% of the toilet water that we did before with the old toilet, I wonder what effect, if any, that decrease will have on our septic system’s lifespan, or required emptying interval.

Excuses:

1. Our daughter, who was just 4 months old as of the last post, is now 2. Keeping up with her keeps us busy and keeps us laughing.
2. I took the Indiana bar exam last summer, which took some time to study for.
3. Started my own law office. Maybe not the best time economically to do that.
4. Got elected to our village board last year.
5. We probably ran out of steam (and money) for non-essential projects.

House Update: The electrical rewiring finally was completed in summer of 2008. It sure is nice to have outlets conveniently available in each room.  The circuit box needs to be cleaned up a bit, and we’ll probably do some more wiring in the basement to accomodate a shop area and some finished living space.  There still is no power to the garage, though. I think it was in 2008, maybe early 2009 that I had shellacked some picture rail molding to hang in our bedrooms. The molding is still under our bed waiting to be hung…

Garden Update: The 2008 vegetable garden was a huge success.  We had several varieties of tomato, peppers, lettuce, and radishes. The asparagus we planted early that spring flourished. Our cantaloupes were wonderful. But, the raspberry sticks I planted in the back didn’t make it.  They were replaced by wildflowers I grew from seed.

The 2009 garden, on the other hand, was not so great.  The asparagus continued to thrive, but the tomatoes did not fare so well. The peppers did OK but they seemed slow to grow and make fruit. The cantaloupes sucked. Perhaps it was due to the cool and rainy weather we seemed to have all spring and into the summer. We also tore down the chicken-wire fence around the garden and instead used black fabric to block weeds around the perimeter. That wasn’t successful either. The chives I had planted in 2008 made a surprise reappearance — I thought they disappeared and were dead — and grew well.  And, we harvested garlic planted the year before.

In spring 2008, I dug up pieces of the huge hydrangea row alongisde the house and planted them in a parallel row across the driveway. They did well the first year and even better the second.  Last year I added new cuttings to the row to help fill it in more quickly.  We also planted a ‘Limelight’ hydrangea in front of the house, close to the street, and an ‘Endless Summer’ (I think) hydrangea in front of the house by the foundation.  The foundation also got a low, bushy pine (‘Mugo’) and some holly plants.  Most of the lilies were moved to the back of the house. 

Last fall,  I went on a little spree since a nursery was having a good clearance sale. I got a hazelnut tree, a ‘Black Lace’ elderberry bush, a black pussy-willow, and some other things, but a contorted filbert (aks Harry Lauder’s walking stick) was the best find. Getting everything home was one adventure, and planting it all was another. While planting the filbert, I fell into the hole along with the plant since it was so heavy.

The 2010 garden is still in the planning stages. We considered not planting anything this year, to let the ground recover.  I’m not so sure I can really plant nothing though.  At any rate, there will be some big changes.  Sice our daughter loves berry shakes, we’ll be planting raspberries again.  And, best of all, this year we can harvest the asparagus!

Vegetables: there’s enough space for a relatively huge vegetable garden on the south side. I hope to plant two kinds of tomatoes, peppers (sweet and hot), onions, garlic, chives, pumpkins, lettuce, and some herbs. Mostly it’ll save a little money at the grocery store, and hopefully allow us to make salsa whenever we feel like it. As long as the vegetables show up.

In another area, I want to plant asparagus. And in another, raspberries (they are pricey at the store, but the plants are cheap).

The front of the house has to be redone — there’s almost nothing growing in front of it. I was thinking azaleas or rhododendrons, and maybe a magnolia tree somewhere.

The big backyard is fairly empty, but planning is complicated by the presence of several very large trees that create quite a bit of shade. In one corner I thought about the raspberries, and in the other, a prairie-type planted area to attract butterflies and moths. We’ve always wanted to see a Luna Moth in person, so maybe our prairie area would attract some if they still exist in our area. We already have a persimmon tree nearby, so that’s a start.

I’ll be starting most of the plants from seed in order to save some money. Never had much luck with seedlings, but maybe this time will be different.

For the vegetable garden, we’re planning on: tomatoes, red/green peppers, hot peppers, onions, pumpkin, garlic, and maybe some herbs. Possibly some asparagus too. I think we’ll end up using a space of about 20 x 10 or 15 feet maximum. Searching on the internet has led me to some unusual vegetable varieties that I’ve never seen in stores, so maybe we’ll try a few of those for kicks.

At the edge of the back yard, I’d like to plant a few raspberry bushes.

As for the rest of the yard, we have to cut down a diseased pine before it infects another larger pine close by. There’s also a not-too-big persimmon tree threatening our incoming power line that we should probably take care of while we’re cutting. Deciding on trees to plant has been difficult. I do know we want an apple tree, but I keep reading that to get apples, two trees are required. I’d like a weeping willow, and a ginkgo, for some variety.

Last fall I hacked away some invasive mulberry bushes (growing inside other bushes). I’ve got a feeling they’ll be coming back from the stumps, so I suppose I should dig them out before they start growing again.

We haven’t thought about flowers at all since it’s not a priority right now. Although I’d like a lilac bush or two. One side of the house is lines with white hydrangeas, and my neighbor says they’ve been there for at least 40 years. Maybe white lilacs on the other side would be a nice complement to those. But they probably wouldn’t bloom at the same time of year.

Under the huge maple in the backyard, there isn’t much grass. OK, no grass. We were thinking about planting some ivy as ground cover for that bare patch.

That’s enough for my escape from winter. I have to drill some holes and do some more prep work for the electrician today. Hopefully by the end of the weekend, the living room and dining room will be rewired to completion! More than 2 outlets in the living room sure will be nice.