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 –>
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.
KathyC says
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
MsKittyMuses says
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*
pam kueber says
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.
Annie B. says
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”?
Roberta Lee says
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!
Lynne says
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.
Stacie says
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.
Sarah G says
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.
Kate B says
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/
Stacie says
Hooray! Nice to see a success story! Thanks, Kate 🙂
Roberta Lee says
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
Stacie says
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!
Rebecca@MidcenturyModernRemodel says
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.
Jackie says
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.)
Patty says
Would like to see the before pictures.
Nancy says
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!
Roberta Lee says
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.
Janet says
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.
Patty says
I googled and found a discontinued grey toilet seat.
Has anyone tried to paint one to match their fixture?
Kate H says
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
Sarah G says
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!
Michael says
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.
Janet says
It looks just beautiful and you should be so thrilled with its restoration! Can’t wait to see your pink bathroom when completed!