Apparently Ernest Hemingway had the best taste ever in bathrooms. Here’s another one from his home in Key West, and one from his Cuban estate (in which he recorded his daily weight on the wall beside the scale). Look at that shower curtain!
Photos by Patrick and Kerry (top) and DBarefoot (bottom).
My poor kitchen pantry! Just a few days ago it was looking cute, happily storing shelves of goods. Now it looks like this:
The old lead waste pipe (and all of the pipes, for that matter) coming from the upstairs bathroom (which still looks a lot like this) needs to be replaced, and because it runs through a chase in the back of the pantry (around which all of its shelving was built), it was necessary to demolish the entire pantry. Of course we will rebuild everything and make it more functional and space efficient than it was before, but right now it all feels a little bit sad.
Our plumber came by last night to assess the overall situation, go over our choices for bathroom fixtures, and formulate a game plan. He pointed out to us something we hadn’t noticed—the lead drain pipe coming from the bathroom sink had been resting against the steam pipe leading to the bathroom radiator for many years, and over time the drain pipe had literally melted itself into a crescent shape wrapped around the steam pipe. Scary stuff! It’s kind of amazing that there weren’t leaks all over the place, but since we’ve never really used that bathroom, it’s possible that we just never got a chance to have something horrible happen.
Some cool discoveries that came from our demolition are the decorative tin (?) brackets that were welded to the old lead supply lines to hold them in place. It’s pretty wild to see the kind of details that were used in old houses for even the most mundane of behind-the-walls details!
This is the goofiest photo ever! We both look like we just spent a weekend eating buttered croissants and rubbing our heads with balloons.
The original plaster medallions that surround the ceiling light fixtures are still intact in most of the rooms in our house, but the one in the bedroom was removed at some point (or else covered by drywall; it’s one of the few rooms without a plaster ceiling). You can buy polyurethane replacement medallions, but thanks to someone infinitely smarter, more skilled, and more patient than us, we now have a new plaster medallion in place!
He used the underside of a polyurethane medallion as a mold, then carefully and tediously carved out the small details in the hardened plaster. We attached it to the ceiling using Liquid Nails and three long wood screws going into the ceiling joists. A little caulk around the top edge, and it’s done.
I still need to paint the medallion and the lamp canopy so they’re the same color (and to hide the bolts), but here it is in action with the Double Dip pendant lamp from CB2. The imperfections in the plaster really add to the appeal—you’d never know it’s not original to the house!
(Thanks again, B. It really looks great!)
