Roberta’s 1953 bathroom — with its gray tile walls and yellow Crane Oxford plumbing fixtures — was chock-full of charm — and high quality, too. It just needed a little bit of un-remuddling to prepare it for another 60 years of happy service. Read on for Roberta’s sunny Buttercup story, which includes “cue music” a pilgrimage to see Chippy at World of Tile, who, of course, delivered the goods –>
Roberta writes:
Hi Pam!
We are now delighted by our gorgeous, nearly-all-authentic 1953 gray/yellow bath! We removed a grungy shower door and added the shower curtain rod, painted (the trim color matches the original Crane Oxford Buttercup tub and toilet) and removed the Formica vanity and plastic sink with which the previous owners (aka, Those Morons) had replaced the old sink. The sink is white, and a compromise, since we have not found an original Crane Oxford sink in Buttercup to match the tub and toilet. The backsplash they had put in was literally glued to the tile, so it remove it we had to break eight of the original tiles.
That is when I discovered Retro Renovation, and through it, The World of Tile. I spoke to Chippy on the phone and was about to send her a piece of the broken tile to color match when my fiance, Michael, suggested we drive to Springfield, New Jersey, instead. It was an hour-long drive complicated by heavy rain most of the way up and back, but it was well worth doing. When we gave Chippy a sample piece of tile, she disappeared into the mysterious back of the store. While she was collecting possible replacement tiles, we explored the rest of the store — it is simply an astonishing place. I was particularly excited to see a large selection of vintage style ceramic soap, toothbrush, tumbler and paper holders in great colors.
We also struck up a conversation with a couple who were there to replace the 1960’s pale blue accessories in the bath they are restoring. When Chippy returned, she had five possible gray tiles from which — with considerable difficulty since they were all close matches — we choose the one we felt was the best fit. Meanwhile, the other couple had an equally difficult time picking from several pale blue options for their project. When we had all made our decisions Chippy looked over our choices and confirmed that the Stylon tile we had picked was indeed from the 1950’s, and the blue the other couple had chosen was a 60’s color. This made us all feel like geniuses, so the $12/tile price did not hurt a bit.
We had to cut two of the replacement tile (they are the ones directly under the soap and tumbler holders), and although I researched how to do it we were terrified to try. I found a local tile store — Del Val Tile Distributors, in Langhorne, PA — who cut them for us while we waited.
The actual tile installation was amazingly easy. Once we added the new pedestal sink it really is nearly impossible to tell the new-old tile from the original-old tile, even for us. I also took a piece of tile to Lowe’s and had a quart of gloss paint made as a color match. After I filled them in with spackle, I used the paint to touch up the cracks and chips in the old tile as well as long cracks in the floor and the holes left in the tub-surround from removing the shower doors. Worked great!
Thanks for all your help; Retro Renovation saved us a lot of time and trouble and is the main reason we were able to keep the wonderful old bathroom we love! We are currently doing the same restoration to a Mamie pink bath and hoping this time to get the (god awful) plastic sink out without breaking any tile, but if we do now we know that Chippy will be there to help us out!
Thanks,
Roberta
When I was reading Roberta’s emails, I see she is an artist and writer, and I ask if can include a link to her website. She quickly responds:
I’m delighted to share my story with others, especially since (just like all my novels) it has a happy ending.
Yes, sure, links to www.RobertaLeeArt.com are always welcomed. My Suburban Sprawl series of novels include a female character as obsessed with the charm of the old and DIY as I am, as well as a great old (and haunted) house based in part on mine, but it’s bigger and the plumbing is in better shape. So I think a few of your readers may be kindred spirits.I’m sending a recent photo of Michael and me with two of our dogs, Bungee and Mugsy. Michael is an attorney, and never knew the world of DIY existed until he met me 2 1/2 years ago. Now he jokes that if we don’t show up at Lowe’s by noon on any given Saturday, they send a car to our house to get us. He’s been a quick study and tends now to be the optimistic one who says, “No, wait, I think we can still do this,” when I get all, “Oh shit, I think we’re doomed.”Thanks again for your wonderful websites. Our house is in a neighborhood here in Cheltenham PA (a suburb of Philadelphia), that was developed in the 1950′s, and I have so far talked two neighbors out of ripping out their gorgeous old bathrooms. I just wish I could save them all…… sigh.Roberta
Great job, Roberta and Michael. I love your idea of taking tile to a paint store and getting a high quality paint match to fill in cracks. Another idea, if your tile is high-gloss (not matte): Nail polish, which is available in so many colors today. Maybe go to a nail salon so you can test their multitude of colors, and buy the bottle from them… Either way: Great tip.
And yes, so sad but so true: The plumbing is always better in fiction.
It looks just beautiful and you should be so thrilled with its restoration! Can’t wait to see your pink bathroom when completed!
Just thinking about the dilemna of finding a matching toilet seat for these obsolete colored toilets. I like the acrylic ones with the different items embedded in the material and think they are a good solution to this problem. A friend had three of them on the toilets in her business bathroom, and I love them, except the barbed wire one kind of made me woozy! I just googled clear bathroom toilet seat and there are alot more of them than I remembered, even stainless ones and pearlized ones. I like the yellow duckie one, the seashell one, and the butterfly one the best.
I googled and found a discontinued grey toilet seat.
Has anyone tried to paint one to match their fixture?
You can paint it if it’s wood, just do it right before you walk out the door for a weekend away — otherwise, you’ll forget and get paint all over yourself in inconvienent places.
Kate H
No problem-o at all actually. Google ‘custom colored toilet seats’ and you’ll find a few companies that can help you out, such as Bemis. You buy the kit it comes with about 100 color samples. Match your color, fill out the form, send it back to them then presto! Blam-o! New matching seat comes delivered in the mail!
I ordered a new seat in “Ming Green” from Bemis right after we purchased our house with its time capsule bathroom. It was a little pricey, but the toilet looks SO much better than it did with a white seat. Worth the investment IMO.
Lovely job! The squared sink is a nice match to the squared toilet and makes the white look less like replacement. Up to now, I’ve never been a fan of gray and yellow – but you have shown how bringing in the other colors of nature via your lovely art can make those two original colors sing. I am most impressed w/ the wonderful condition of your shiny shower tiles, bright white grout and like-new looking fixtures. Please share if you did any restoration of those three items as I am in dispair over the condition of our 1965 origianal pink shower tile. I want mine to look as good as yours!
Nancy – Thanks so much for the kind words! We did go over all the tile and grout with a steamer–in fact, I bought a Wagner steamer on eBay for very little $$ because we have so many uses for it, removing the 80s wallpaper with which the house was infested and cleaning. However I think the main way to get the grout clean is to be generous with Tilex and scrub with a nail brush. We were also lucky, the tile & fixtures in this bath were in really great shape.
Would like to see the before pictures.
Another tile-matching option is model paint, as in the stuff that people use to paint things like model trains, die-cast soldiers, etc. I think the most common brand is Testors. It comes in tiny bottles in lots of colors, and is very shiny. You can mix colors to get the exact shade you need. This was what I used to repair some chips and cracks in dark burgundy 1930s tile in our kitchen in a former house. (Similar problem–we removed icky baseboards someone had installed with liquid nails.)
I am very curious about the removal of the shower door! Was there damage on the tub itself? I have a lovely pink bathtub with a pink tile shower surround and a shower door that has seen better days. I’d lvoe to get rid of it but am concerned about the tub. I know there will be some holes in the pink tile from the shower door frame, but those might be able to be patched.
When I removed the shower door in my bathroom it left what I call a ‘perma-dirt’ grungy strip across the ledge where the door sits. I tried and tried to scrub and scrape it off. Fortunately there’s a guy in town that recoats tubs and can do it in any color you like. Great thing is it only cost me $250 much cheaper and less of a headache than trying to replace it.
Hi Stacie,
I’ve recently removed a shower door from my green hall bath with great success! See my blog post about it:
http://retroranchrevamp.com/2011/11/06/a-minty-fresh-mini-bath-makeover/
Hooray! Nice to see a success story! Thanks, Kate
I wrote a blog about removing the shower doors; it includes a lot of before photos as well as in-progress shots. The only thing I haven’t covered yet was patching the screw holes in the tile, but that was as described here: spackle & color match paint from Lowe’s. There was a *very* grungy stripe under the door rails; I used XXXX Fine steel wool and Fantastic to remove it. This took some time, but I worked at it over course of a few days and removed 99.9% of the stain. Here’s the blog: http://diymyomy.hubpages.com/hub/DIY-How-to-Remove-Shower-Doors-from-a-Bathtub-An-Easy-Step-by-Step-Guide
Hi Roberta! This is great, and VERY inspirational! We’ve been thinking about taking the doors off of our lovely pink tub! I read your post on your blog but didn’t see a link to how you filled the holes in the tile…would LOVE to read about that, because it would be very hard to replace our tile. Thanks so much!
Nice detail on removing the shower door! Honestly, you would never know it was there. And the before pictures are good to see as well.
Check at the Menards. Last time I was there, they had a brochure hanging in the toilet seat isle where you could order custom color seats.
I especially like your gray and yellow floor tile. Glad that you could match your tile color so exactly with new tile and with paint. Paint does cover a multitude of sins.
I would so love to visit the World of Tile. Am I so slow on the uptake that I’m just now finding the humor in the proprietor’s name, “Chippy”?
Chippy is the very knowledgeable woman who ‘mans’ the front desk as well as handling color-match requests for World of Tile. She was a delight with which to work! If you can, go there, it’s just a lot of fun–like Disney World for vintage bath freaks like us!
Wow, those colors look great together! And that floor is fabulous. I’ve been trolling for ideas for redoing the bathroom in our 1955 home, where the plastic wall tile and linoleum floors were partially removed when the previous owners removed the old tub for a shower. This color combination will be high up on my list now! And oh, how I wished I lived within driving distance of World of Tile! I wonder if any of the vendors selling new tile now have a gray anywhere close to this?
*wanders off to spend hours searching the interwebs*
There are quite a few colors of gray tile available from mainstream manufacturers today — check Daltile and American Olean at your local tile store. Gray is a super hot color right now. I like it a lot for bathroom tiles.
I have very similar fixtures in my bathroom except they are american standard saffron yellow. My bath is about the same size too. I’m happy to see what a white pedestal sink would look like with the yellow. We’ve also decided to go with the gray accents too!
I ordered my matching toilet seat off of ebay less than a month ago for $14! Just search for yellow toilet seat and if it says saffron, citron or buttercup it will work. My ebay seat was actually better than the very expensive beamis one I special ordered at the home store for my ming green bathroom. I have tried to paint a toilet seat for that bath and it only lasted 2 months before it started to wear. But, then again, I have 4 and 6 yr. old boys that are very hard on bathrooms!
Here’s a link:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Round-Toilet-Seat-Saffron-Yellow-/260641561852?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3caf729cfc#ht_1052wt_1163
There’s just about no nicer combination that the grey and yellow. Love it and that you’ve restored instead of …..GASP! horrors, REPLACED!
It must make your hearts “sing” everytime you walk by that room!:-)
The gray/yellow bath is directly up the main stairs, and when Michael & I first looked at this great old house that glorious yellow was literally shining down on me, sunlight streaming in the window. It was like a scene out of Exodus.
My realtor had already realized I wanted a house with as much original stuff as possible, so she said, “Everyone else I’ve shown this house to says they hated the bathrooms but I know you will love them.” “Love them” was a massive understatement. I’m a nightly bath girl, and the Crane tub is just the best, and the colors remain my favorites.
The house also has a Mamie pink bath (currently a restoration in progress), a metallic brown/peach powder room and a maid’s bathroom in the basement from which we need to excavate a really awful *metal* shower stall. If anyone has ever successfully gotten rid of one of these awful tuna can showers, please talk to me and tell me it’s possible!
The bathroom looks lovely, you did a beautiful job. One concern: I have always appreciated the civil tone of this blog. I would prefer that former owners of homes not be referred to as “morons”. People make design decisions based on their particular needs / tastes / or budgets. Thank you.
Well, I have to admit, I noted the reference. But I let it be. Because… we’ve all been there when it comes to lame-headed DIY done by previous owners. I hear ya about being civil, but every once in a while, well, I let one rip…
Trust me, if you had recently spent hours and hours scraping off the many things they had *glued* to the house’s plaster walls, the glued down carpets or repairing the lovely wood windows they had glued shut (do we sense a theme?) you would not feel very kindly toward the previous owners, either.
There are differences of taste; there are constraints of budget. And then there is the egregious abuse of Liquid Nails.
Well, time to go back to using that handy razor-blade holder to scrape off yet more encrusted glue…..
Hey, sometimes its warranted.
Thanks for the advise about removing a shower door. I’ve never been a shower door fan. You can’t put them in the washer to clean and you can’t change it out to match your towels! The shower doors in the house we’re moving into are so hard water stained. I’m glad to know I can remove them w/o having to do major surgery on the tub.
I love this site and I so appreciate all the people who participate here.
By the way, Roberta’s bathroom is lovely. I hope to get mine looking as great as hers.
What a beautiful job! It’s gorgeous. I have a question. When you removed the backsplash, was there left over glue on the tiles? If so, how did you get it off? We have a bathroom that looks like the tiles were painted and then covered over with some other type of flooring. I’m hoping to be able to remove it all, but not sure if it’s possible. They are such a lovely shade of green, I’d hate to have to tear them all out. Thanks!
Precautionary Pam jumps in: Good idea to check the materials in flooring and adhesives before a’rippin’ to ensure you know whether either contain vintage nastiness — consult with a properly licensed professional…
Morgen – We were faced with a corian backsplash completely glued to the tile–every square inch was glued firmly in place. We tried everything, including letting caulk softener soak into it, using a steamer, and lots and lots of digging into the glue with putty knives and razor blade knives. We worked at a clean removal for about 2 weeks before giving up and prying the backsplash off. Eight of the tile came off along with it–in pieces. That’s why we ended up (thankfully) at World of Tile, to find replacements for the shattered tile.
Pam’s suggestion is a good place to start–try to figure out what it is before you try to remove it, certainly before you try steam or chemicals. I hate to say this, but most often when tile gets painted (or epoxied, ala Bathfitter) it is first abraded or chemically etched to provide a ‘tooth’ for better adhesion. We looked at several houses that had been Bathfitterized and it was sad to know that great vintage tile had been destroyed so that the bathroom could become a shrine to beige.
Having said all that, if it were my bathroom I’d still try, one layer at a time, and go slowly. First see if you can use a putty knife to pry up a corner of whatever is on top. Work in an area that is not readily seen, such as behind the toilet or in a closet. Once you have a hunk off take it to a floor covering store and ask if they can ID it to make sure it does not contain asbestos.
Then try scraping off the paint–again, slowly, gently. Try physical removal before chemicals. If it was a DIY job you may be lucky and the sweet, kind geniuses who did it may have done it badly, so you can just scrape off the paint with a razor blade knife!
Best wishes and keep on restoring!
My favorite (abridged) Retro Renovation Truth of the day:
“If it was a DIY job, you may be lucky and … it may have done it badly.”
Thank you both! I hadn’t even considered the evils that may be hidden in the stuff on the floor. Thank you again!
How ’bout taking the toilet tank cover to your local hardware place that can supposedly mix paint to the color of ‘anything’ and get a quart of paint to redo the toilet seat. Would be nice if somehow the same could be done in a spray for the pedestar sink; maybe a tutone; up to the top or bowl level & leave that white. I like the grey & yellow (grew up with ’50s grey & pink) & good idea using the Fiesta® tumbler.
I actually like the white toilet seat, especially with the white sink–it pulls the room together. There is no rule saying bathrooms need to be matchy-matchy, after all. Bemis makes a seat that they claim would be a good color match, however, should I wish to so invest. A bit pricey for me, as well, as there are many things I’d spend the money on before a toilet seat!
The Fiesta juice tumbler in the yellow bathroom is the ‘new old’ yellow, meaning not the original color but the one discontinued in 2002. I am painting the trim in my Mamie pink bathroom maroon and picking up that 50′s signature tone with a tumbler in Fiesta cinnabar. The Fiesta gusto bowl also makes a handy catch-all container for baths, as does the fruit bowl, which can also serve as a soap dish. Regrettably, Home Laughlin Co does not make tissue covers or actual soap dishes in Fiesta colors. I think a lot of their colors would work fabulously in vintage baths, and the juice tumblers actually fit inside (many but not all) original wall cup holders. Here are the Fiesta colors, original (meaning pre-1973), retired & current: http://www.hlchina.com/fiestacolors.htm
Hey everybody–I have a running search on eBay for vintage Crane sinks, hoping to find a Buttercup one for sale. No luck yet, but here’s a new old stock *pink* sink just listed, and it is gorgeous! Anyone able to tell us the style & color? http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=251142681184&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1123
I am sure I have catalogs for Crane somewhere in my stash. I wanna say it’s Drexel design, but I am just pulling that out of the deep, clogged recesses of my aging hard drive, so give it no real currency… deabath.com would surely know, I bet!
Here is the Crane kitchen catalog from 1953: http://retrorenovation.com/2011/07/08/1953-crane-kitchen-cabinets-26-photoscomplete-catalog/
Crane Marcia in yellow for you here, Roberta: http://deabath.com/Original/Or_colors/colors_2/Or_colors3/or_colors3.html
deabath.com (an advertiser) are THE CRANE experts
Beautiful bathroom. I like the choices you made and it looks vintage in a good way.
The removal of tub/shower doors happened at my house too. My c1978 2 story “colonial” had “doors that did not add to the decor”. The tub/shower unit is fiberglass in a darker than powder blue. The rubber bumpers from inside the door opening were screwed on to cover holes in unit until we either find a way to patch or replace tub. We wanted doors gone as soon as able.
rick
Hi Roberta,
I love your gray and yellow bathroom. Too bad for the sink, but here is a website link that could be interesting : http://www.periodbath.com.
It’s in Rochester, New York state and prices are affordable.
Enjoy your new old bathroom !
Beautiful bathroom remodel! Check out Finkles in Lambertville, NJ (just across from New Hope, PA) for a possible Buttercup sink. They have a pretty fabulous basement and separate warehouse full of retro plumbing supplies and more.
Finkles? Really? That’s amazing as I used to live in New Hope, until I sold my house in Bucks County and bought this old house in Cheltenham a year ago. I’ve been to Finkles but had no idea they have vintage bathroom stuff. Well worth a pilgrimage north to check it out, thanks for the tip! For those who don’t know Finkles, here some info: http://www.yelp.com/biz/finkle-hardware-plumbing-and-electrical-supplies-lambertville
They do have lots of neat stuff; they NEVER throw anything out! After pawing delightedly through their basement shelves, I found the NOS ca 1970 kitchen faucet I was hoping to find. Finkles is well worth a visit for retro renovators.
We got two avocado toilets from a friend, but the seats were wooden and well…. used. There are not many things in life that I prefer new to recycled, reused, refurbished, etc. But toilet seats are definitely one of them! It took 4 ebay/amazon purchases but we finally have two seats that match our avocado toilets. The funny thing is that even though the toilets were purchased and installed new, at the same time, they are slightly different shades of avocado. We found out because we got the tank lids switched when we first installed them. So we ended up getting two different seats, one to match each toilet!
Proof yet again: The Retro Decorating Gods are smiling upon you.
Hey I was wondering about the tile floor. Is that the original because it is exactly what I’m looking for and was hoping it was new and you could direct me to where you found those great colors.
Hi Kathy, I have done extensive continual research on bathroom tile, see all my stories here — http://retrorenovation.com/category/bathroom-categories/tile/
Hi Kathy! We are very lucky because that is the original floor. Take Pam’s advice and explore her articles; she has done a lot of research and can offer you amazingly helpful guidance on this. I will only add that that floor–in all its vintage glory–was one of the reasons we bought this house. It is just as gorgeous as it looks in the photos.
I have a 1956 gray and yellow bathroom in desperate need of restoration – I can hardly wait to get started!
Roberta, thanks for showing me how beautiful my bathroom could be.
Pam, thanks for this wonderful website.
Karen – So glad to hear you want to restore not destroy! This morning a neighbor told me she’s having a bathroom “done” and that the main reason is that it was (and she said this with a sneer) gray and yellow! I smiled politely but made no comment. Sad that her vintage bath is gone, but glad that yours is about to be reborn.
To my shame, I was ready to gut it, until the contractor who gave me an estimate told me he’d have to cut the cast iron tub in half to get it out the door. Destroying a useful, functioning object just didn’t sit right with me, so I started looking into other options and found this site. Yours is the first vintage gray & yellow bath I’ve seen besides my own. I am looking at my whole house with new eyes, and it is so exciting!
The first time we looked at this house it was the vintage bathroom tile that I liked the most. Trust me, we have ignored many, many helpful suggestions from well-meaning but misguided friends about the old bathrooms, and all involved first gutting the entire room.
I’m nearly done restoration of our Mamie pink bathroom, which centered on installing a 1950′s wall hung sink that I trash-picked years ago, long before I had a use for it. This house’s original 1953 sink had been replaced with the 70′s version of cool and modern: a Formica and plastic vanity. And *that* was picked up from my curb, I hope by someone restoring a newer house than ours. So it all goes around. My best advice on stuff you pull out and don’t want: Put it at the curb and run a “curb alert”, stuff-for-free ad on Craigslist with a photo of the thing. I do not believe there is *anything* that will not be recycled if you do that!
I am always amazed by the things that are taken from my curb. Luckily, all our fixtures are original but we will need to replace a few cracked tiles.
What is the brand/shade of your window trim paint?
Yes, I often wonder what would *not* be trash-picked from my curb…..
The trim paint is from Lowe’s: Olympic One, color is Sunbeam. I looked at a *lot* of color chips before choosing this one; it’s a terrific, creamy yellow that is a great match for my Crane Buttercup tub & toilet!
Thank you, Roberta. This will be a big help to me in getting my renovation started.