Lately, everything I covet is grey.

Chest of drawers from Knack Studios.

Molto sectional from CB2.

Togo sofa from Ligne Roset.

Paige ankle boots from Frye.

To get to my job in Manhattan, I travel 60 miles from my house in Newburgh. It’s not a short commute, but it is a pleasant one (most of the time), and I don’t need to use a car. The first part of my daily trip takes me across the Hudson River on a ferry. I get to do this on the way home, too. It’s a pretty great way to start and end the day.

Looking south, I can see Bannerman Castle off in the distance. Later, on the train, I go right past it.

There’s still more to do (electric, plaster patching, wallpaper, medicine cabinet, window film, etc.), but we have something that really looks like a bathroom now!

Doesn’t the radiator look great? I’m so glad we kept it and had it refinished instead of going with underfloor radiant heat.

We still need the escutcheons for the sink handles, and a properly fitted drainpipe (the holes in our sink is are weird sizes, unsurprisingly).

I don’t love the new toilet (Toto Eco-Drake), but it is very efficient.

The plumbers are on a lunch break, so I snuck in to take a few photos of the progress. So far things are going smoothly, with the exception of the sink faucet, naturally. Apparently the old holes for the handles are square and small, and all new new fixtures need a hole that larger. And round. Uh oh! But maybe they can enlarge the holes with a drill. We’ll see. More finger-crossing is necessary!

The bathroom looks so much smaller now that a huge tub in in there! Imagine it with a sink and toilet, too.

My, what nice claws you have!

No pictures, because my camera hates me. (A new one is coming tomorrow. Phew!) Okay, here’s a picture—it’s of me 30 years ago, but I think the expression on my face is appropriate right now. 

The clawfoot tub has been redelivered with six layers of powder coating, and it looks awesome. Yay! I actually climbed into it and lay down. It’s so deep! I haven’t taken a bath since I had a great cast iron apron tub in my old apartment in Yonkers, which I’m pretty sure was in 1995.

I’m just going to pretend that damage was not incurred to (1) a corner of the marble top on the credenza in our front hall, (2) the fully-restored banister and newel post, (3) the stair treads, or (4) the plaster walls in the process of the tub being carried upstairs. Because frankly, I can’t deal with it all anymore.

The new sink faucet (with smaller escutcheons) was also delivered, and it is HIDEOUS. It’s like some weird, faux-Victorian genie bottle monstrosity. It goes against everything I believe in when it comes to design. I hate it, and it’s going back. Fortunately, I found a source for smaller escutcheons that will work with the original faucet (which I love, thank goodness I hadn’t gotten around to sending it back yet), so it’s just going to be an issue of having to switch out the escutcheons ourselves when the replacements arrive. Escutcheons, escutcheons, escutcheons. I never thought I’d be using that word so frequently. Escutcheons!

Wow, I am soooo ready for this bathroom to be done. The plumbers are coming tomorrow and Friday to finish up their parts. Here’s hoping everything goes smoothly!

In other urgent news, Project Runway started back up tonight! We had a friend over to watch the premiere. So exciting! I loved Korto’s yellow dress, so pretty.

After six long weeks of waiting, our refinished cast iron corner sink and clawfoot tub were finally delivered to us! (You can see a before picture of the sink here, but that photo hides how bad it really was.) The sink looks amazing. Unfortunately, the tub had a few flaws in the new finish (that’s bad—any entry point for water will quickly lead to rusting), so the powder coating guys had to haul it back to their shop again. This, of course, was only discovered after they had hauled it up to the second floor of the house. (Don’t get me started.) Cross your fingers that it will be back to us by Wednesday, because the plumbers are coming to finish (!!) the job on Thursday and Friday.

The Bindweed wallpaper I ordered from Ferm Living also arrived, and it is even more beautiful in person than I imagined it would be. The white areas match the wall color in the bathroom perfectly, and the gray tones pick up on the color of the veining in the marble floor tiles. I’m so excited to put it up, but I have to wait until the electric work is completed.

We had day-long period of horror after we discovered that the handle escutcheons for the new faucet we ordered are TOO BIG for our weird, special-needs sink. Uh-oh! I was able to place a rush order from Vintage Tub this morning, though, so the replacement should be here by tomorrow or the next day (again, cross your fingers for me!).

Today we went to pick up a pretty credenza we found on Craigslist (you can see a detail photo of the woven front here) for a great price. It’s in just about perfect condition, and has obviously been well taken care of over the past half-century. It’s such a good feeling to bring something home that doesn’t need any work done to it! The color and grain of the wood is very nice—unfortunately, this photo is dark and grainy and doesn’t show it off very well.

We stopped at a few yard sales on the way home, but didn’t find anything interesting other than this sweet little yellow vase. I’d been looking for a yellow ceramic piece to put in the bathroom, and I think this will be just right.

Just a little inspiration from Orla Kiely’s bedroom, in honor of the fact that she now has a U.S.-based outpost for her online store. Hooray! (Thanks, Holly!)

I’ve had no time to post updates lately because I’ve incredibly busy. Lots planned for this weekend, too! While I’m busy being busy, how about you take a look at these three new-ish blogs that I love:

→ Chez Larsson Benita has been posting photos and describing all of her organizational and storage techniques, and it’s all so inspirational! She makes me want to move everything out of my house and then move it back in again, fully organized. She also makes me want to buy every clear plastic bin that Muji sells, because they are apparently the keys to a better life.

→ Haus Maus Holly from Decor8 has a new second blog, and she’s using it to document the process of setting up a whole new second home for herself and her husband in Germany. Great stuff! I’d never really thought about how much is involved with an international move, especially when furnishing an entire empty apartment is involved.

→ Verhext Tamera just moved into a new house in Oakland, CA, and it already looks beautiful. She has amazing style, so I’m excited to see how everything comes together.

Maybe it’s because I spent the entire 3-day weekend repairing a 125-year-old window in my kitchen, but lately I’ve been fantasizing about having a second house. A vacation home! Now, if I were to have a second home, it would have to be the opposite of the one I already have—in other words, the architecture would be contemporary and it would be in a rural setting.

What about this one?

It’s a couple of hours north of here, with views of the Catskill mountains. The main house is 900 SF, and the studio/converted barn is an additional 1000 SF. It sits on 15 acres of land (surrounded by 10,000 acres of protected state land!), with its own spring-fed pond. Really, it’s perfect. It’s cheap, too, but unless it suddenly drops in price by about 75% (which I suppose could happen in the current real estate market!) it will remain a fantasty.

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Um, I thought I had chosen just the right light fixture for the bathroom, but it’s possible that I was wrong. This glass globe pendant from West Elm is just so beautiful (and affordable)! I can really see the gray glass looking perfect in the bathroom. I’ll take a look at it in person on Friday and see if it’s as amazing as the photo makes it appear to be.

Speaking of glass light fixtures, I can’t stop thinking about Sofie Refer’s Bulb Wall Sconce and Bulb Pendant Lamp. Maybe in the downstairs bathroom (when the time comes)? The sconce is on the pricey side, but oh…so pretty.