Monday, July 28, 2008

I want to live here


Here is a very interesting site on bathroom fixture design. It is not every day that a showroom embraces minimalism, rather than cramming every sample down your throat.

Down to the last details in two bathrooms.........






I visited my mom and sister in Indiana over the weekend, and it came to my attention that I have not posted the progress on the powder room in the entryway and the bathroom in our guest bedroom. So here is a the powder room with lights, mirrors, towel bar, etc., all installed..........


The to-do-list for this bathroom is down to patching the grout in a couple spots, and there is a carpenter that will start on the pocket door this week - yay, finally!

And here is the replacement faucet for the guest bathroom, flanked by my exciting find - - - glass soap dish and water tumbler mini-shelves (ordered from www.atgstores.com) that are such a fine match for the sink. You can get a better sense of the iridescent quality of the backsplash tiles in this picture, too. I bought the last of the tiles from www.naturalstoneoutlet.com, so they no longer have them on their website.

And notice also the sleek drain pipe. It takes something that is so functional and turns it into a sculptural detail. I never thought I would be so admiring of a piece of plumbing. My plumber has temporarilly connected the water supply lines with brass fittings, but has ordered chrome, which he will install the next time he is working on another project. The sink, faucet, and drain pipe are all from ModernDanish.com, so if the hot links to the individual pieces don't work, just go to their homepage and browse. It is so worth it.
Here is a picture of the light fixture. There is a new exhaust fan with ceiling light, too, so now there is more light overall in the room. That ceiling light allowed me to turn off the lights in the 3-light fixture so I could get a decent photograph. The only things left to do here are 1) install the toilet paper holder, 2) finish the floor, and waaayy off in the future we will replace the shower with a real shower pan and tile walls. When we do that, I want to cut a small window to let some light into the bathroom from the adjacent closet, which actually has a window in it.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Time out to welcome readers of LiveModern

Welcome to my blog! I found LiveModern when searching for shogi-screen doors. This is a saga about renovating a house that was modern in 1978. But just like that space odyssey mission to Jupiter that was due to arrive in 2001, the place was freeze-dried soon after launch. It has been revived from that state, and is slowly reanimating as I move from room to room renovating the life back into it. It is a great house on a splendid lot in a pleasant neighborhood in a sleepy little university town in beautiful part of western Virginia - in a word, it is worthy. While out-dated now, it will live on eternally modern if I have anything to say about it. . . . . and I can't shut up!

Please take a bit of time to go back to the first entry where I launched this operation so you will have the context for what I am doing here, and I hope you will find it interesting and maybe even inspiring. My philosophy is that the world would be a better place if we would all get busy retiling our bathrooms, kitchens, and any other appropriate surface we can find. Stone and tile are among the most beautiful materials on the planet, so earthy and organic even when shiney and synthetic. These materials will play a major role in my renovation as it evolves over the next few years.

So browse or study as your schedule permits, and feel free to send me your comments, questions (even if they start out with "why in the hell.......") or suggestions, because this is my new obsession in life.

Thanks for your time!

p.s. every surface is or can be made appropriate!

Saturday, July 12, 2008

The One That Got Away

On a recent trip we had chance to see what the new owners of our former residence has done to the kitchen. Gutting that sucker was long over-due, and something I wanted to do everyday that I lived there, but the list of projects there was way too long and I just never got there. This is not exactly what I would have done, but I think they did an outstanding job. Tiles, cabinets, appliances, everything is new. These are cell-phone pictures, so the quality is not the greatest, but I think it is still clear that it was well-executed.
The new counter-tops are concrete, and the cabinets are all a nice matte black. I love the in-cabinet lights. The wall tiles are black with red and black glass accent strips.
The microwave is the same one we had, but the other appliances are new. I love the hardware on the cabinets, too.












Here is a close up shot of the glass tiles on one end of the room.....


And the wall tiles with strips of glass as accents......








And this is the floor, which is the same tile as those on the wall behind the range.......





Looking from the kitchen into the breakfast nook.......
Not a fan of the table and chairs, or color scheme, but again I think it is very nicely done. The light fixture is the same one we put up, and they even made that nasty paneling look good by painting it.
All in all, an outstanding job.









Thursday, July 10, 2008

A Busman's Holiday

So what does someone who is obsessed with tiling her way through a home renovation do when she takes a long-weekend vacation to a restful cottage on a beautiful lake in Northern Michigan?

She tiles something, of course.


Now that I am home again, it occurs to me that I should have taken pictures of the 3 previous tiling projects I did at my aunt and uncle's summer cottage. Here is a picture of them, standing outside the front door. Aren't they cute in this picture?


I did those other projects years ago, back when I was just getting my start - a kitchen back-splash and 2 bathroom floors. I was worried about how these would hold up in the extreme environment of deep solid freeze every winter, but there is nary a crack anywhere in all 3 of them. So when I got there and saw the raw concrete of the recently repaired fireplace/grill, I knew it needed some embellishment, and no one could stop me.

Here it is, in context: and up close:











My sister and her husband had repaired the concrete on their recent visit. As soon as I saw it I thought about tiling the top of it and knew just what tiles we needed to get. Home Depot, 1"x1" slate tiles in 12"x12" sheets. They are perfect matches for the stones in the structure of the grill. Plus, the uneven surface of the grill would be a real challenge if I tried to use anything larger than 1x1's. Some of the tiles have a coppery glow, and some have a slightly quartzy look, just like the stones that came from the lake and surrounding dry land areas. You can see the same stones on the lower facing of the cottage.


First I painted the iron collar that my aunt and uncle had made at a local welding shop. Then I scrubbed the concrete with a dry brush and dusted it off with a rag. Then I cut the tiles into strips 3 tiles wide and laid them out to make sure of spacing and placement. If it was mine, I would have covered the entire top. But my aunt just wanted a border around the iron collar, and I decided to please my client rather than myself. I didn't want to have to cut any tiles, so I shifted them around until the spacing was just right.

To keep things neat and clean, I used painters tape to mask the dry paint and also the concrete. Then, I spread the adhesive on the backs of the tile strips, rather than the concrete surface to minimize clean-up. (Adhesive that went outside the application area would have been extremely difficult to remove from the rough concrete.) The adhesive was a type recommended for shower floors and other areas that would be exposed to standing water, since this will definitely be exposed to the elements.

I let it set for 24 hours, even though it was very tempting to grout it later that day. It seemed dry, but I have learned the hard way that it is not good to start grouting before the adhesive is dry. My aunt chose a beige color for the grout. We bought that at Lowe's so we could get the brand they carry that has matching sanded caulk. That way it is a really good match - I hate it when the caulk is distinctly a different color from the adjacent material.




The grout is also sanded, since the grout lines are fairly wide. The sand makes it a lot stronger, and there is no concern about the sand scratching slate tiles.








The next day, I was ready to caulk the edges, but sadly, it was raining. So I had to drive back to the airport after giving my aunt instructions about where to caulk. Here is the un-caulked-but-otherwise-completed project, somewhat wet on a rainy Tuesday-after-the-Fourth-of-July morning. I will be curious to see how it stands up to the elements in the years to come.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

The Disappearing Sink

As I said before, the faucet is going to have to go (too tall, splattering water everywhere), but the sink is great. It opens up the space nicely, and has a bonus shelf underneath, which was a big plus compared to a pedestal sink. Still need to finish the grout, still have some painting to do, and the floor tiles will go down last. But I am taking another day off to enjoy the sink and think about alternative faucets. Here is another before-and-after comparison. See the last post for intermediates.






















Here is another view of the sink................