Once Upon a River: A Novel

As in “American Salvage,” her celebrated story collection from 2009, Campbell has a ruthless and precise eye for the details of the physical world…. Campbell so intently scrutinizes Margo’s [the teenaged protagonist] inner life that she does not seem to be asserting any larger point about American culture or human nature — but she is…. It would be too bad if, because of Campbell’s realistic style and ferocious attention to her setting, “Once Upon a River” were discounted as merely a fine example of American regionalism. It is, rather, an excellent American parable about the consequences of our favorite ideal, freedom.

"Before"

After: Bonnie's kitchen updated included replacing the original, worn countertop with Arborite Red Xabia. She trimmed it with aluminum trim from RetroTrims.com. And she added a Kohler Delafield sink with hudee ring and a new faucet. Retro Renovation help her point her local retailers to these products.

The reason I choose this particular excerpt of Jane Smiley’s review, is that I sure would pay attention to any renovation done by an acclaimed writer with a “ruthless and precise eye for the details of the physical world”! Bonnie’s story is that she waited 24 years to replace the worn countertop original to her Kalamazoo house, using resources found here. Read her books and you would never doubt that, of course, she would keep her updates in line the midcentury modest design of the house. Moreover — and here’s another place I  pay big attention — she underscores the benefits of “modest.” Bonnie writes:

Hi Pam — A bit about our house:

I call it a swamp house, and my husband and I bought it in 1987 for $24,500. I always tell my students that if they are serious about writing that they should live in a very modest house and try to keep expenses low so that they don’t have to work themselves too hard to pay the mortgage. They think I’m kidding, but I’m not. It’s very hard to make time to write in any case, and so if there’s a way to spend less time earning a living, then follow that way. I also am honest when I say that my poor housekeeping is part of the plan.  I can have a clean, well-kept house or I can get books written, not both.

And that was a lot of the reason why I never took the time to improve my kitchen, because I wanted to keep my focus on my writing.  And it paid off.
My last two books American Salvage and Once Upon a River have gotten quite a bit of critical acclaim. So I was able to take some time out to make my kitchen a nicer place to be. I still might not have done the improvements had my brother Tom the plumber not been unemployed.  I had done some babysitting for him a few weekends, and he wanted to pay me back by helping me with the sink and counter.

The house was built right after WWII, as were many of the houses here, and I know the house was built by a single man, because it was built without a single closet. The kitchen is fairly small, with a modest amount of storage. There’s not really room for a refrigerator in the kitchen, so I keep it in the utility room. When my husband’s mother moved in with us a few years ago, we put on an addition, so we now have a four bedroom, which allows us both to have offices, which is a great luxury.

"Before"

I’ll say up front that my goal was just to get a new counter and sink because my old one was just terrible. And I  lived with the old one for 24 years.  I’ve been pretty distracted in that time, first studying mathematics as a grad student and then becoming a Novelist.

I had a pretty challenging time getting the sink I wanted since all the plumbing places around here told me I could not get a sink to install with a hudee ring. From these photos you’ll see that the sink was hopelessly stained because all the porcelain finish was gone. The countertop laminate was a travesty. The wall behind the sink had shelf paper on it. (Yes, I lived with it for 24 years.)

Here are some before photos of counter plus my husband Chris Magson and brother Tom with Hudee Ring (before cutting plywood).

The stove is a Kalamazoo brand stove that my husband became obsessed with. It’s sort of a museum quality piece, a replacement.

I also have an amazing red microwave… not sure how I lucked into that at Sears. Maybe it’s not retro, though the food processor beside it is.

As for the wide photos, I truly regret that I didn’t sweep my floor and polish it a bit.  I’m attaching a kitchen floor picture, one that shows how nice the floor looks when it’s waxed. We’re kind of a farm family here. We burn wood and keep donkeys, and so things can be pretty messy.

Cheers!  Bonnie

Thank you, Bonnie, for taking the time to share this all with us. (Again, readers, Bonnie can attest how I torture featured contributors with the back and forth.) Your swamp kitchen update is perfection. And no need to apologize for unpolished vintage floors — we have all been there!

Read more about Bonnie Jo Campbell’s kitchen update (and her life):

• On her blog, Bone-Eye: A Writer’s Adventures.
• And, here is the website for her books.

If you want to buy one or more of her books, you can also see them here: Bonnie Campbell’s books on Amazon (affiliate link).

Readers, note that I wrote about Arborite Red Xabia appears to be a good substitute for crackle ice laminate. You can see the effect very clearly here. Red crackle ice is going to be much more expensive, because it is a specialty product. Also, I have a sample of the red cracked ice laminate from some years ago, and I was concerned about the pixelation of the digital printing. I know other readers have used it, though, and were happy with it. Bottom line: Get samples — large samples, preferably — before you commit.

Products that Bonnie used to create her retro red countertop: 

• Arborite Red Xabia laminate.
• Aluminum edging from Eagle Mouldings – Note, this install required three different pieces. Bonnie says she used: “(1) Face nosing 13/16″ (with holes drilled) A-274; (2) Cove E98 MFA for 1/16″ material worked well for join of counter and backsplash, and it came together nicely at the corners (as you’ve show); and (3) At the top of the backsplash, which was laminate mounted on 3/16″ plywood, we used J-caps 1/4″ E401 BA MFA.” Talk to Thor at Eagle Mouldings — he’s eager to help.
• Kohler Delafield porcelain cast iron double-bowl sink with metal rim.
• The faucet is a Moen, Bonnie says.

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The crash project to create a vintage style black-and-white bathroom is: Done! And oh my gosh, did we have fun. One of the highlights, for sure, was at the very end, when Aunt Mary Anne and I were decorating. I remembered that I had just seen a bag of vintage costume jewelry in another bedroom, which Mom had picked up at an estate sale. We used it to bling-ify the bathroom, giving it a sparkly girly-girl lift. Aunt Mary Anne thought to put the vintage earrings right onto the shower hooks. We created: Shower Curtain Rod Ring Bedazzlers! LOVE!

Aunt Mary Anne rocks! She is the the most AMAZING decorator in the world. I learned SO MUCH from her. Note the shower curtain. It — and the pink sculpted towels — are both from the Target Shabby Chic collection. As part of my “get this bathroom done in 7 days” constraints, Target and one nearby antique mall are the only places I shopped for decor. I went right for those sculpted Shabby Chic towels. She also guided me to buy the deeper pink towel (“Home” collection, I recall) and to layer them. She then draped a costume pearl necklace over — clipping the earring at the bottom.

Target Shabby Chic sculpted pink hand towel with costume jewelry. Aunt Mary Anne sees this photo and says, “What happened to the earring?” At left: A peek at the $98 white vanity countertop from Lowes. Cultured marble = plastic, but I like it!

We initially thought that we would use a sliding shower door. I actually have it, and am stuck with it — Lowe’s will not take it back because it was a “special order” (even though it was very simple and was in a stockroom waiting somewhere. This annoys me to no end. Shame on you, Lowes, you lose mega points off your otherwise near-perfect score for overall wonderfulness for this ridiculousness.) We changed our mind to go with a shower curtain, rather than a sliding glass door, to give my mom more space to maneuver in the relatively narrow shower area.

Above: The Lowe’s vanity that I painted black using Rustoleum Cabinet Transformations — the whole project turned out great. I want to paint everything using the Rustoleum kit process! New pulls and knobs from Home Depot. Kohler Fairfax lav faucet from FaucetDirect.com. Soap dish: Vintage, from a rapid-fire shopping trip to Peddlar’s Mall in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Wastebasket: Old popcorn tin that Mom had saved. Aunt Mary Anne is mortified that we did not have “real” wastebasket liners, available from Bed Bath & Beyond, and that we had to use an old Target bag instead. She is a totally convincing role model about “do it right.” Vintage bracelet around the hand towel. Paint colors: Regular Gray (wall) and Alabaster (trim), both from Sherwin Williams. The gray has a bit of pink in it – when the sun comes through in late afternoon, it even looks a bit lavendar.

Jeremy laid the tile. The grout is Delorean Gray, from Tec – a wonderful grout color. The threshold of the shower is Carrera marble. Yum yum yum.

We even styled the top of the toilet. I found the big, heavy round vintage shaving mirror at Peddlar’s. Mary Anne and I are both super detail-oriented. She totally approved of the fact that I replaced the stock toilet flushing lever with a satin-nickel one from Moen. Toilet is American Standard, comfort height – the complete kits from Lowe’s. We actually replaced the toilet in the hall bath, too. However, they IMMEDIATELY started exhibiting problems. BOTH of them. IMMEDIATELY. They run after you flush and you have to jiggle the handle to get the tank to fill. This is also Ridiculous and will have to be remedied. Shame on you, American Standard and Lowe’s, for selling piece- of-crap crappers.

Rug also is Target Shabby Chic. Mom had the infuser around. She loved the bathoom. She said it was “just what I dreamed of.”

More learnings to follow.

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Completing the spur-of-the-moment, gut renovation of my mom’s bathroom meant that I had to buy everything off-the-shelf… or, I could not order anything that would take more than a few days to deliver. The subway tile for the wall and the hex tile for the floor were in-stock items at Louisville Tile. But I knew I wanted some black liner tiles — I think they are called splash strips (?) — to bring some black-and-white action to the walls.

My first idea was simply to use plain black liner strips, and top everything with a 2″x6″ bullnose. I knew I could get these basics from the big box home renovation stores. I first went to Lowe’s, and sure enough, these pieces were there, quite inexpensive. I then boogied over to Home Depot. Staring at their inspiration boards way up high above the tile, I noticed they were pairing a decorative white subway tile — kind of a vine motif — with a white rope trim. It looked nice. What if I used the black rope trim instead? The photo above: Imagine me, a Tuesday night around 8:30 p.m. at the Home Depot, laying out tiles all over the floor. I think it looks pretty darn good!

The price was also great: the decorative white subway tiles were about $2.50 each, the rope trim tiles were about $1. These tiles are both from Universal Ceramic. The decorative white UC subway tile is not the same shade of white as the AO subway tile — but as I write this, I am watching the tile installation under way in the bathroom, and I think: The two different whites looks fine, especially as they are separated by the rope tile. To be sure, though, this “will the whites clash?” question was a serious source of anguish and agony at one point. But, the good news is that I did not have the time to agonize very long. I made a decision. The next morning, I changed the decision. By that afternoon, I went back to my original decision and pulled that credit card out to buy all the tile required. I will have to write my “agony and ecstasy post” at the summary of this series. Also: A post addressing that agonizing question: “Do all my whites in the bathroom have to match?”

I took the tile home — “home” was Aunt Mary Anne’s that week. I showed it to her. She also loved it. And we stayed up until midnight making drawings and talking about how to use the trim tiles. My drawing from the day and the evening’s work is above. Pretty pretty pretty. Tomorrow: We go shopping for a vanity and a countertop. What will the Retro Decorating Gods deliver unto us, on an April Wednesday, in Elizabethtown, Kentucky? We cannot come home empty handed.

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