Do you have a Cinderella bath tub and wonder how, originally, a shower curtain was supposed to work? And what about the shower curtain rod? Today, Carolyn shares hers — original to her new-to-her 1959 bathroom. Oh, what a bathroom — an original-condition 1959 pink bathroom that dreams are made of — fabulous tile work, Cinderella bath tub, gorgeous sink on chrome legs, and an equally gorgeous lowboy toilet — oh my! Carolyn has shared lots of photos — and has some questions for us before she even moves in.
Carolyn writes:
I am the proud new, second owner of a 1959 split level. Amazingly, the owner was a plumber and his brother a tile layer, so my bathrooms are pretty darn cool. This is my favorite… pre-decorating. I say decorating as that’s the only change this bathroom will get.
The wallpaper was stripped between realtor 1 and realtor 2. Apparently few people in my area were enamored of this as I am.
I’m sharing it for a few main reasons–
— to show the shape of the original Cinderella shower rod since I’ve seen others ask.
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- What is a “Cinderella” bathtub — see all my stories about them here. -Pam
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— to confirm that those hooks are intended to hold back the shower curtain. Mine have a little ball chain attachment for this purpose.
- —to brag about the original shower curtain. Yes, I will need to replace this someday, but now I have a wonderful template. It is not a rectangle! There are lower and higher hems which perfectly fit the tub — and it snaps in the middleA few notes of from the owner’s sons —
This is not the original toilet. When it needs to be replaced plumber dad searched long and hard to find the best possible color match. It is more of a coral than a pink. It also has built in venting. The told me many times that this is a $1,000 toilet (in ’70s money). I will keep it as long as I can, but I do think it uses about 80 gallons a flush, which hurts my heart having previously lived in a drought zone.
Although the is the hall bath, the two boys were not allowed to bath here. They used the (blue tiled) master shower. This was mom’s bath only. And she always bathed, never showered.
They left me one all of pink toilet paper they found in the linen closet. I am trying to save it for guests but it is hard to resist.
Carolyn asks for advice:
Anyway, I’ll be seeking much advice and tips from your site — for instance, where can I get those grey and pink mosaic tiles if I do have to replace the toilet — should I go ahead an buy a pink toilet now in case they’re discontinued before I HAVE to replace this one?
So, I thought I’d send this now before things get too crazy….
Best,
Carolyn
Thank you, Carolyn — We all want your bathroom, I am confident in saying.
To answer your questions:
Q. Buy a new, lower flow toilet now, or wait?
Suggested answer: Get your spare now. If there’s one thing we’ve learned on this blog, it’s here today, gone tomorrow, when it comes to vintage stuff still made today. Well, not always, but usually. Relevant case in point: there used to be two, but now there is only one place left to get a pink toilet, see this story. I’d say, get it now and store it ’til you need it. Or, when you find your extra floor tile, make the switch then.
Q. Where to get vintage unglazed porcelain ceramic floor tile?
Suggested answer: Vintage. That -random block mosaic’ style of flooring you have — looks like unglazed porcelain to me, but I am not an expert — was quite common back in the day, but it is not made today in those colors and dimensions, as far as I know. So, start hunting for a vintage match now — maybe you’ll find a sheet or two within… five or 10 years. I’d set up saved searches in ebay.
For example, here’s some vintage porcelain mosaic floor tile from the 1950s — on ebay right now — not what you are looking for exactly, but of the era. Note the very very narrow grout line — that’s because these were mud-set (set in concrete); these old style mosaics had very minimal grout lines, unlike mastic-set tiles today.
Here’s another source — it’s free to ask if they have what you need!
Note: All these links to ebay are affiliate links — I earn a wee commission if you click and buy something.
Another thought on where to find replacements: Get to know your neighbors, could be they used the same floor tile. Note, I could be that your toilet is sitting on perfectly preserved floor tile and that when you take it up the hole will be just where you want it to be. If either are not… it’s probably going to be hard to ‘tear’ out and ‘move’ any of the floor tile — because it’s set in concrete, aka ‘mud set’.
Good luck with your new-old house, Carolyn! Send me a photo when you’re done decorating!
David R. says
GREAT bathroom! I’ve always wondered how a shower curtain would would with a Cinderella tub. I’ve got a quick, low budget trick for the toilet. During the war (WWII), my grandmother said to help conserve water (mainly so the hydro plants wouldn’t have to work as hard, which saved power, etc.) they taught her in Home Ec to drain the toilet and put a brick in the empty tank. Fill it back up, and the tank then holds less water, and therefore won’t use as much. I’ve told other people with vintage toilets the trick, and they’ve all said that it works rather well.
Carolyn says
I will definitely try this tip. Thanks!
David R. says
Not a problem at all! Keep on with that killer bath!
Kathy says
Better yet, wrap the brick with a zippered plastic bag, to keep chips of brick from breaking off.
A submerged plastic jug or a bag made for this purpose (I got one from Amazon for about $3.00) would work too. You don’t have to totally drain the tank to put it in. Check to see if the flush is adequate afterward.
Pam Kueber says
I keep reading these suggestions…. but suggest: Consult with experts.
MJ says
My sweetie, late and lamented, filled a large plastic (!) cola bottle with water. Displaces more than a brick, I think. These days, since I’m on a well, I should conserve H2O but it’s a long run to the new septic tank and I have nightmares about flushing my pink toilet and ending up with a clogged drainline!
Meantime, I need to sell and a RE agent went through this place, took one look at the pink fixtures, turned away and said, “Those will go first thing.” Guess what? I won’t list the place with her after all.
It’s 1974 house, built for a woman who loved pink. The more of it the better in her private bathroom and the outside painted pink and white (gone now, thankfully…this is not Florida!) Outside, every flower in the garden and every blooming shrub: PINK!
I did find a really great young plumber who replaced the innards of both my upstairs toilets { 🙁 One is all white–sigh} and everything works 21st century now.
I just love it that others share my appreciation of these lovely bathrooms. Keep on keeping on, dear friends.
David R. says
Oh, I didn’t even think of a cola bottle! That’s a good idea. It’s a shame people are so brain washed to think that they have to have white and gray everything. I joke that you could shoot modern TV shows in B&W and nobody’d know the difference.
Pam Kueber says
Sad but true:
Amarissa says
Oh what a BEAUTIFUL pink bathroom! That tub is really amazing– What a dream!!! Thank you, Carolyn for sharing with all of us who adore pink bathrooms. Pam- thank you for sharing the link for vintage style/colored toilets. We have wall mount (floating) style toilets, and someone replaced my pink one with a mocha colored one in the 70’s… SO, I would like to find a pink one to go with what is left of my pink bathroom. Here’s to hoping!
Lauren says
The shower curtain rod is pretty sweet. Is it aluminium? My weird (but straight) curtain rod with the interior track is aluminium, aka no rust. Lasts a lot better than today’s fare.
I bet a muffler shop could help you make a new curtain rod for one of these tubs. My father, a remodeling contractor, makes custom handrails this way. He figures out the dimensions and curves he needs and then has the muffler shop bend the pipe. This is what muffler shops do and they are good at it. Then he welds a couple of brackets on the ends for mounting.
Pam Kueber says
Great idea: A muffler shop!!!!
Brian E Parker says
If you don’t mind mounting your shower curtain track to the ceiling…
http://www.ceilingshowerrod.com/new/rods.php
I used these folks for my old apartment in San Francisco, and they were terrific!
Carolyn says
Thanks. Yes, I think it’s aluminum. Good idea on the muffler shop.
Laurel says
Good luck removing the old toilet when needed. My original 1958 sun tan colored toilet was not installed with a wax ring. Instead they used concrete to seal it to the phlange. This caused, in 2014, a crack going from base to tank. My father ended up having to take a hammer to it to get it out when it broke in half trying to lift it off. Thankfully he chisseled off the concrete without damaging the phlange.
Pam Kueber says
oh my
Mary Elizabeth says
Sounds like a do-it-yourself project gone wrong. Good for your dad, saving the phlange1
Lenier says
Hi Carolyn!
You certainly have a wonderful bath!
When we came the first time to see our 1960 ranch and I entered the master bathroom I almost fainted seeing that we would have a Cinderella tub after closing. Although ours is the recessed model (not squared like yours is) it’s near mint condition and certainly this is the most comfy tub you can find on earth.
Being involved with the maelstrom of renovating our home (something I am recording step by step for a possible future Pam’s story) I have faced many obstacles starting by the toilets.
Originally commissioned for a couple of Dentists named Johnson, the house was a sort of private residence and business office sitting on .61 acres (that’s why we still have aluminum commercial doors at the entry) and it was probably tailored to the mistress of the house’s needs. It three bathrooms and a powder room that serve the 4010 sq.Ft. (the property takes over the entire block, no neighbors spying on you unless you cross the street)
The main bath, incredibly, the smallest, is Bermuda Coral (peach we say) with a fantastic vanity and wall covered mirrors. This bathroom doesn’t have a window but it has a Nutone exhaust to get rid of steam and odors. The master bath is huge. with a walk-in closet, long vanity with two sinks, Cinderella bathtub and a water closet for a private toilet with a beautiful American Standard “Carlisle” toilet (thankfully, the original pink one with original lid, too) The powder room is Ming green and it serves the Florida Room, where we have a built-in bar that can accommodate up to 8 tipsy friends. 😉 The third bathroom is in a huge room with private foyer and driveway, this one is a disgusting white-tiled, dark and window-less with exposed pipes (we don’t know why, if this room was an in-laws’ suite these people must have hated the in-laws too much) that we are intending to redo sometime soon. We’ve gotten the most amazing green bath set for this renovation, including a bidet!) and a frosted awning window that matches the rest of the house.
Unfortunately the previous owners didn’t treat our house well. They left the tiled roof break and neglected the whole kitchen (we just completed our set of metal cabinets for renovation… another thrilling story) plus they also removed the original floor to install the most hideous circus-blue carpet you can imagine. Thanks to the dentist office use, the baths were more for urgent needs and they didn’t suffer so much, except for the Carlisle toilets… At some point and for unknown reasons, they changed the Ming green and the peach one for the common white toilets we all know, they were so clashing that I had to look for toilets even before we close the house because it looked horrible to me. Fortunately I found a newer version of a peach lowboy down in Miami (around 280 miles South of St Petersburg where we live) and it took me up to three months to find a green toilet, this time in Tampa, not perfectly matching the Ming green sink but close in color and definitely not clashing my bath at this time.
I read you think your lowboy spends 80 gallons (???) per flush. That’s odd. Our toilets are also lowboy and they probably spend from half-a-gallon to a gallon per flush. You should make check the gasket inside (the division between toilet and tank, not the one that actually stops the water) because I found that my toilets had licks because of faded old gaskets. You could try with some water resistant silicon around the base, in my case it worked and the linking stopped.
Also, why should you change the toilet? If it is not cracked of broken you can still have it for many years, the plumbing inside is still easy to find. If you are worried about the drain system, in our house it was changed from iron to PVC and they did the whole thing outside, my original tile floor is still there and nothing was broken when I installed the color toilets after I got rid of the white ones.
My Cinderella bathtub originally had a sliding shower door, gone by now, and I am certainly dubious between a rigid curtain rod or a curved one. Still deciding. The shower curtain doesn’t fit to the tub leaving the left seat out when showering and this is like a big question mark for me because I certainly don’t see any solution to this. Maybe I should migrate to the sliding door again although I don’t like to be cleaning the glasses every other day. I don’t know yet.
I wish you luck with your beautiful bath and I hope you enjoy it for many, many years! Greetings from the warmth of Florida’s best beaches!
Lenier says
Oh la la! I read my comment and it’s full of typos! I apologize for that
Pam Kueber says
Wowwowowoowweeeee, sounds fabulous! Send me photos for sure.
And remember, everyone, my go-to place for Crane fixits is: deabath.com.
Nutella says
Waves from S. St Pete! Absolutely no original features left in our 1950’s ranch, but thank you for the tantalizing descriptions of your home. Can’t wait to see your “after” story!
Carolyn says
Your house sounds great. Can’t wait to see it.
My 80-gallon flush was an exaggeration-I really don’t know how much it takes, but it is a very, very long sustained flush. I will check out the gasket as you suggest.
My only reason for considering replacing the toilet is only for water conservation. I am not in a drought zone now, but I live in one for many years and I can’t help being conscious of water use. I love much mid-century vision, but environmental issues weren’t always considered as much as they need to be now. I won’t do it for a while, but I just want to think preemptively because, like you, I think a white toilet would not be a good aesthetic fit.
Carol says
You are so lucky Lenier! I’ve looked on craigslist for St. Pete and Tampa for stuff and there is great MCM stuff down there. The Sandpiper (now Guy Harvey) has been our vacation home since the early 70’s. The shell shop on Treasure Island stills smells the same as it did in the 70’s. Love that whole area, and yes, you do have the best beaches in FL!
Mary Elizabeth says
Your comment about searching for new toilets before even closing on the house made me laugh. We didn’t do that, but we did come to closing a set of retro kitchen curtains and a truckload of hardwood flooring to replace the hideous fuchsia carpet in the living room. As soon as we got out of the lawyer’s office, we came to the new house, and as I washed the kitchen windows and hung the curtains, my DH was rolling up the carpet and pulling up the carpet tack track.
Pam Kueber says
The first house I ever bought, some thirty years ago, same: Half-hour after the closing I was on my hands and knees tearing out wall-to-wall carpet including pulling seemingly endless carpet strips and tacks out. Probably, in retrospect, the carpeting was fine. But I was a yuppie, and we neeeeeeded our hardwood floors!
Oh, within a few weeks I also pulled red flocked wallpaper out of the lovely little entryway. Ack! REGRET. Oh, and I did some (reversible) decorating damage to an original c. 1937 kitchen too.
Lynne says
The usual measurement for the toilet is 12″ from the wall to the center of the hole. They also 14″ from the wall to the center of the hole.
I found this out the hard way. When we moved our toilet in “Lynne and Bob’s Blue Bathroom” the 12 ” mark hit a joist. Our plumber said he would never cut a joist, so we had to move it forward to a 14″ center.
Luckily, with the new Lynne and Bob’s Master Bath remodel, the joists were fine and we used the regular 12 inch center.
Carol says
You are so lucky to have found a house with this dream of a bathroom! It is just beautiful. I would love to see your other bathroom too!
Carolyn says
Thanks! I sent some photos of the blue bathroom to Pam. That one is the master bath, but the pink one is much larger,
Shann Elble says
We have two bathrooms with unglazed porcelain tiles. I spend a lot of time keeping them clean. What is your best advice for a more permanent solution to this weekly ritual of hand & knees scrubbing? Is there a sealant that can be applied that will not ruin the original look of the tile?
Pam Kueber says
I don’t know the answer to this question, Shann, and since slips and falls can be a safety issue with tile, I recommend you consult with experts.
Lenier says
Some people wax the floor after cleaning and it keeps it pristine for a longer time, I find this dangerous as waxing is slippery, though
Pam Kueber says
PEOPLES: Get with your own experts when it comes to safety advice. I do not approve comments giving safety advice; so just don’t, please. Thank you !
Carolyn says
I am not looking forward to cleaning all the tile so much. But, it’s worth it. I read up a little and bought an enzyme cleaner and sealer. I will, of course, test a small area first, but I’m optimistic the sealer is the key. Now I just need a free weekend.
Not sure f links are allowed, but I found this article helpful:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/how-to-clean-old-tile-grout-thats-become-unsightly/2016/06/03/86cef8c2-2442-11e6-9e7f-57890b612299_story.html?utm_term=.e3f578e35144
Andrea says
If there is a linen closet the tile probably extended into there- that is what our does in our 59 Raised Rancher. We have the same tile you link above but in black & white. It would be a pain but you could try to steal from there dependeding on how much tile you needed. Might end up with more broken tiles the intact but worth a shot.
And I’m in love with this bathroom. I’d bathe everyday in that tub ifnit were mine. AND I too, would make my boys shower elsewhere.
Carolyn says
Thanks! Great idea on the linen closet. We do have one, but the floor is hardwood like the hall. Luckily, I found the secret stash so I’m good.
I have two girls (instead of the first set of boys raised there) so I don’t think I will be able to fight them off!
Mary Elizabeth says
My pink and gray 1959 bath is a magnet for little girls. We have been through several potty trainings of grandchildren, young cousins and grand nieces, and when they visit they are all inspired to “do the right thing” by the pink toilet. You are wise to purchase the spare now. (And my Gerber has a 1.28 gallon flush, so it looks good and salves my conscience as well.)
Ojamajoe says
As a general rule, the tile should have been installed right up to the drain under the toilet. A new throne should not require additional work on the floor, just a new wax ring.
I’d still be looking for matching tile though, in case of accidents!
Pam Kueber says
Yes, but the hole may be too far forward for today’s smaller toilets…
Erik in Minneapolis says
The standard rough-in for a toilet flange is 12″ from the center of the flange to the wall. It has been 12″ for decades. Therefore, the bolt holes in the base of the toilet that straddle the flange are placed accordingly and are standard regardless of manufacturer or style of toilet. Doesn’t matter if the toilet was manufactured 70 years ago or this morning.
10″ and 14″ rough-in toilets are also common.
Remove a flange bolt cover and measure from the center of the flange bolt to the wall. The distance should be be 12″ – 12 1/2″ or 14″ – 14 1/2″. If it is the latter, then it is a matter of purchasing a 14″ rough in toilet or purchasing a 12″ rough-in toilet and installing an off-set flange. Neither solution should require additional tile.
Carolyn says
Thanks to all posters for the compliments and suggestions. I honestly wouldn’t have thought of the tile issue except the seller made a comment about it when we did the walk through. In another incredible burst of luck-I found some extra matching tile in the basement. So I’m set.
I WILL be ordering the pink toilet this week! (Although I likely won’t install it for a good long while.) When I do, I will call the sellers who are still in business and I know they will do everything to preserve the beauty.