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.

Related posts:

1. A vanity for the black and white 1940s bathroom: 7-day Gut Renovation Chronicles The first step in designing my mom’s 1940s-style, no-special-orders, black-and-white bathroom...
2. Faucet, light and hardware for the black-and-white 1940s bathroom: The 7-day Gut Bathroom Renovation Working fast to buy all the basics for my mom’s...
3. Black trim for a white subway tile bathroom — The Gut Bathroom Renovation Chronicles continue Completing the spur-of-the-moment, gut renovation of my mom’s bathroom meant...

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.

Related posts:

1. A vanity for the black and white 1940s bathroom: 7-day Gut Renovation Chronicles The first step in designing my mom’s 1940s-style, no-special-orders, black-and-white bathroom...
2. Faucet, light and hardware for the black-and-white 1940s bathroom: The 7-day Gut Bathroom Renovation Working fast to buy all the basics for my mom’s...
3. 3 places to buy black and white checkerboard floor tile – in resilient vinyl If you are designing a diner style kitchen, laundry room...

Here’s the family that lived in the dugout. These Pie Town photos were taken by Russell Lee, in October 1940, as part of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information project to document the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations. Yes, there were color photos taken – but apparently not very many. 

Here’s the kitchen in the dugout house of another family in Pie Town.

Down South: African American’s tenant’s home beside the Mississippi River levee, near Lake Providence, Louisiana, June 1940. Photo by Marion Post Wolcott.

Over on the East Cost, where settlements had been in place longer, I think a lot of housing looked like this. The caption indicates: tenement housing, Brockton, Mass., 1940. This photo by Jack Delano.

1940! Can you believe it? My mother was born in 1938. Her mother was born in 1911. My grandfather was born in 1900. Even with our hi-def big screens and 4G networks and solar panels and botox injections — we are still that connected to those times. I find this mind-boggling.  All of these photos are now part of the Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

The Denver Post catalogued these photos and more — which were featured in the 2006 exhibit Bound for Glory: America in Color –  on their website:  The catalog is pretty darn amazing… riveting…. p.s. I hope you come back to me.

Oh, one more thing: The dugout house: Now THAT is a bona-fide ”sustainable house.” Don’t kid yourself: We cannot consume ourself out of a consumption crisis. Well, my pea brain can’t comprehend how…

via Snowden Flood

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