For someone needing inspiration to restore a bungalow bathroom or the old house buff who likes to get all the details period perfect, I am posting images from several plumbing supply catalogs dating from 1910’s – 1920’s. You might also enjoy seeing photos and illustrations of period bathrooms during the same time period.

These sinks were named “Filmore” Lavatory

Hajoca Plumbing Goods offered by the Haines, Jones & Cadbury Company

 


Public sink fixture sold by Standard.

Kohler bathroom accessories

Hajoca Plumbing Goods

Kohler toilets

Bathroom accessories by Hajoca Plumbing Goods

 
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I have been researching historical photos for ideas to help us when we tackle our bathroom. The photos are taken from magazines, books and online sources covering the early 1900′s to the 1920′s. Most of the photos focus on the early years during that time span.

These rooms may look sterile to our modern eyes, but they were the high-end bathrooms of their day with all the bells and whistles.

Bathrooms were mainly white to appear clean and sanitary.

Wood trim, a wood toilet seat and a rug or two did occasionally sneak in. I really like the window in the above photo.

The bathroom on the right features square tiles on the floor and walls instead of the hex and subway tile more commonly associated with that time period.

Isn’t the tile in the bathroom shown on the right amazing?

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1. Toto Promenade Toilet, 2. Schoolhouse Electric Hendrix Ceiling Fixture,
3. Schoolhouse Electric Sage Sconce, 4. St. Thomas Creations Richmond Pedestal Sink, 5. Delacora Double Handle Lavatory Faucet, 6. Randolph Morris Clawfoot Tub Package, 7. Plisse Extra Wide Fabric Shower Curtain,
8. Hotel Shower Curtain Rings, 9. Carrera Marble Floor Tiles, 10. Dal-Tile White Ceramic Subway Tile
Not pictured: Wall Mounted Shower Hoop in nickel

We have been talking about redoing our bathroom for years. When I say years, I mean 7. So when we decided to remodel the bathroom our conversation went something like this…

Me: I really want to redo our bathroom.

Husband: So, lets do it.

Me: Really?

Husband: Yes.

Me: Are you sure?

Husband: Yes.

This conversation took place over the phone during my husband’s lunch break. By the time he came home from work that evening I had ordered everything for the bathroom down to the switch plate covers and the shower curtain rings. The contractor was scheduled to start on Monday. I had set up interviews with electricians and plumbers for the following day. No turning back now!

Bathroom Before, it can only get better from here!

Taken from the second bedroom/office looking into the bathroom. The door on the opposite side of the room leads to the back hallway. The smaller door is for a built-in linen closet.

The floor was covered in vinyl tiles and old linoleum. The linoleum appeared to date around 1920-1930s and must have been glued down with some old fashioned version of superglue because it was horrible to get up. The floor was black around the toilet and tub due to some serious water damage, so I stained the floor a dark walnut color for now.

Closer view of the linen closet door. It might be difficult to tell but the plaster wall to the right of the linen closet is scored to resemble subway tile. Notice the big crack in the ceiling above the linen closet. There are huge cracks all along the ceiling.

The walls were painted none too carefully before we purchased the house. The paint has peeled off in the past few years. It appears that the plaster color was originally left natural, the woodwork was painted a muted gold color (I often see it referred to as ‘wheat’ in modern paint samples), and the ceiling was a vibrant green color. The second bedroom/office walls were painted the same green color as the bathroom ceiling.

The bathtub and wall tiles appear to date from the late 1940s – early 1950s. We assume there was originally a clawfoot tub. The daughter of our home’s second owner told us that the house did not originally have a shower. Her family added a shower downstairs off the back porch. That area had been gutted when we bought the house. We now use it for our washer and dryer.

Our idea was to add a clawfoot tub with a shower attachement, but It has been pointed out that it might be difficult to get a clawfoot tub shower enclosure/curtain rod to fit into the available space because of the slanted ceiling. I’m not sure what we will end up doing?

Our duplex apartment from the 1930′s had a bath tub and a seperate shower stall which I loved, but no room for something like that in our 6ft x 12ft space.

We are fairly certain the bathroom originally had a high-tank toilet based on the holes in the floor. I found the outline of a wall hung sink. The pedestal sink in the photo is from our old duplex apartment and dates from the 1930s. The property manager was throwing the sink out so we grabbed it.

The strange thing is how high the medicine cabinet is placed. When I look in the mirror I can only see my eyes and I’m average height. I wonder how tall the original owners were?

Photo taken looking into the second bedroom/office.

One of my favorite things about the bathroom is the woodwork. The mint green register grate matches the others in the house, and was salvaged from Liz’s Antique Hardware located on Le Brea Ave. It needs to be stripped.

Finding the right shade of white paint can be a very difficult process. After trying numerous whites that were too blue, too green or too just not right, I hand mixed my own color. It is a pretty, soft white with a gray undertone. The bright white trim makes the wall color stand out.

We still have lots of little touches to finish up, but the tub, toilet and sink are installed. Oh, happy day!

We have been asked why we didn’t use refurbished antique or vintage plumbing fixtures. I think they are lovely and worth every penny if you can afford it. But, this is a bathroom remodel on a budget where every penny counts. It was more important for us to put our money towards desperately needed storage space.

Truth be told, after living with our old bathroom for 7 years, I just wanted everything to be brand new and to feel clean. No matter how much we cleaned the old bathroom, it never really felt clean.

Whether you decide to go with antique plumbing fixtures, modern fixtures in a vintage style or something completely modern, get something that you love and that makes you feel happy whenever you walk into the room.

See more: Our Bathroom Fixtures, Inspiration Room

Hajoca Plumbing Goods showers

Hajoca Plumbing Goods shower accessories

 


Hajoca Plumbing Goods bath tubs

Kohler “Viceroy” bath tub

Standard nickel plated towel bars

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The bathroom project is finally complete. Whew! We are thrilled with the results.

Starting with an inspiration photo, to picking out all the fixtures, to taking the room down to the studs and slowly putting it back together again; this has been the most difficult project completed in our house. So many decisions…

The updated bathroom is the project that has increased our enjoyment of the house the most. It is hard to believe that such a little room can have a big impact.

Our contractor built a door to match the original closet door and framed out a larger storage space.

For the first time in 98 years our house has a shower!

The ceiling fixture and sconce from Schoolhouse Electric help pull the room together.

My favorite things about the remodel? The marble floors…

the additional storage space…

and the color…

All the soft white tones make me happy!

The other day I stumbled across a bathroom designed by Nate Berkus for Billy and Katie Lee Joel. I find this bathroom so peaceful and serene. I have been looking at it every day and wishing it was my bathroom.

Nate’s decorating philosophy can be summed up with the tagline, “Love the Way You Live.” I find that so seductive…I want to love the way I live!

Sadly, I think our tagline is more along the lines of “Purchased a very RUNDOWN House. Living in the house while restoring it for 5+ years. Ran out of patience and money. Wonder if we will EVER get this house finished?” or just the short and sweet “NOT Loving the Way I Live.”

The photo doesn’t do our bathroom justice. It is much worse in real life. It is hard to see the paint peeling off the plaster, the sink that still doesn’t work, or the lack of a shower. Three years ago “brushing our teeth in the bath tub” still seemed funny…now, not so much.

I really hope 2008 is the year we can afford to tackle our bathroom. I am getting desperate!

Does anyone know what this is? My thought is it is used to catch water so that someone could pour water from it to wash their hair, but I am not sure?

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I have been saving this Restoration Hardware bathroom in my inspiration files for several years. I love that the design is so clean and simple. I can’t get enough of white, clean and simple.

I have also purchased a Victorian decor tank lever from Fashion Plumbing.

Please feel free to post your sources for bathroom accessories and hardware in the comments section.

Slow and steady wins the race, right? We might not be fast but we sure are proud! Check out the subway tile.

It is very exciting to see the walls tiled. Finally, after all these years.

Our little Project Supervisor.

I have decided that our cat Jack used to work in construction or as a building inspector in a past life. Every day he walks into the room and inspects all the work that has been done.

The bathtub is just the right size to give two corgis a bath and the sides are high enough that they can’t jump out.

Lately, I have been strangely drawn to wallpaper, which is crazy because I know from personal experience just how difficult it is to remove.

Image from Apartment Therapy

I am the same person who adamantly hated wallpaper and swore I would never do that to our beautiful plaster walls. Well, never say never…

I am considering indulging my wallpaper lust, but starting small by hanging it in our tiny powder room.

Our power room is in the midst of getting a few updates. We recently purchased an Ann sink from IKEA. It is about the only sink that I could find that fit our requirements of being affordable and small enough to work in the space. We also tiled behind the sink to prevent problems with water splashing onto the walls.

And I am considering the Mme. Jeanne wallpaper from Grow House Grow. The pattern is loosely based on mollusk scallop shells. I like how it mimics the round shape of the sink.

Hmmmmm…will I regret this? It isn’t as easy as painting over the walls if I change my mind.

Look who decided to walk across the still wet cement floor, leaving tiny paw prints in his wake. The Project Supervisor, otherwise known as Jack and more recently other names that I won’t post here, decided that he needed to look out the bathroom window now, right now.

The bathroom door is being stripped in the backyard, so I put up a barricade to keep Jack out. It is going to take more than my feeble attempts to stop him. Now that he is successfully inside the bathroom he refuses to budge. I am reduced to opening cans of cat food outside the bathroom door, but he is having none of that.

He is lying underneath the window on the still wet cement, safely out of reach, and I swear he is laughing at me.

That would be us!

You know, the people with their appliances sitting out in the yard?
That would be us!

We currently have a bathroom sink and console, washer, dryer and several doors sitting in the back yard and driveway.

Even Lulu has decided to get into the act of our backward slide into “those trashy people” by throwing her food all over the floor with gleeful abandon.

Yes, I realize that the smart thing to have done would have been to rent a dumpster. But, in our defense, Los Angeles has many people who make their living hauling trash and debris for people who don’t have a truck or the means to take the trash to the dump themselves. During past projects we have hired someone from the Home Depot parking lot or often people will see our trash and stop to ask if they can haul it for us.

I didn’t realize that we would end up with so much debris from this project – the trash pile kept growing…and growing…and growing. The trash pile has taken over the “good wood that I want to keep” pile. Everything is now mixed together in one colossal pile that will have to be sorted before it can be hauled away.

The downstairs bathroom is now gutted.

The bathroom floor will need to be built up so that it is level the rest of the floor. The bathroom floor was replaced before we bought the house due to water damage and a termite infestation. This floor is 6″ lower than the rest of the floor.

Never having owned or restored a house before, I thought I could single-handedly restore a room a month. Now here we are 3 years later with 3 completed rooms and 1 almost finished back porch and powder room. Our garage and sleeping porch are still filled with boxes that we can’t unpack until we restore the rooms where those items belong.

We never had that house warming party.

It’s a little embarrassing that we have no working sink in either of our two bathrooms. When people visit they end up washing up in our kitchen sink. At first it seemed like an adventure, then sort-of like camping and now sadly, it just seems normal. The “bathroom situation” has caused a few awkward explanations to friends and family.

The bathroom situation was never supposed to go on this long. We kind-of left each room “as-is” and intended to fix it up completely when we got to it. The problem is we haven’t gotten to the bathrooms yet. If I had known I would be brushing my teeth in the bathtub 3 years later I would have started our restoration in the bathroom! Instead, we focused on the main living areas that people see when they first walk in our house – the living room, dining room, and den.

David and several friends are working on an independent film project. Over the weekend they filmed a few scenes in our garage. For the first time our house was filled with people. Actors waiting for their scene to shoot spent time on our front porch while others congregated inside. Several people played the piano, others sat around the dining room table, people broke off into several small groups in the living room and den.

Our house filled with activity and life. It occurred to me how great our house is for entertaining, bathroom situation aside, because of the way the rooms are open and flow into each other.

It was house warming party that we never had.

I am super excited about the bathroom remodel and don’t want to sound like a big baby, but actively using a bathroom while you are remodeling it really, really sucks! A lot.

A hundred years ago just having indoor plumbing was the height of luxury and convenience. Only having one full bath in 2010 is the height of poverty and inconvenience. I’m kidding, sort-of. This is the phase of the project where I start to get cranky. A lot.

The electrical is done and the plumbing rough in completed.

Bathroom linen closet before.

The contractor has taken advantage of useable space found behind the wall to expand the linen closet. We desperately need the additional storage.

Our linen closet is now much larger.

This picture gives you a sense of the narrowness of the room and the slope of the ceiling. The ceiling follows the roofline.

Bathroom Before

We are officially halfway done restoring the house. We have unofficially been on a break from working on the house for the past 3 years. The kitchen and main bathroom haven’t been upgraded since we bought the house. They are still awful!

List of projects and rooms left to be restored:
drum roll please…

Kitchen
Bathroom
2 Upstairs Bedrooms
Sleeping Porch
Back steps and stone patio
Put in a back yard and landscaping
Garage
New Fence

Hopefully, we will get either the bathroom or kitchen started and finished in 2009. Get ready for lots of inspirational kitchen and bathroom photos in the mean time. Planning is the fun part!

When Heather and I left tonight to go visit some friends, the first drizzle had appeared – signaling in the fall season in southern California. We were a little worried since our new roof is not yet complete, so we put a tarp over some of the boxes we had in the upstairs sun room which was exposed to the outside since the siding had been removed. We then headed out expecting a nice evening with friends. { Heather: Stupid or just optimistic? }

In the middle of dinner, after I had consumed my first martini and was well into my first beer, the rain started to really come down pounding on the streets and the rooftops. Heather started to get really worried because she was afraid our ceilings would get ruined. I shrugged the whole thing off thinking that there wasn’t anything we could do. After a couple minutes of debating the situation, Heather decided that she wanted to leave to check the house. I decided that I would go with her. So we cut our evening short and left.

Rain poured down from the sky on our drive home and the windshield wipers had difficulty in keeping a clear view of the road. The roads themselves were slick and the divider lines blended into the asphalt under sheets of water.

When we arrived home we quickly checked each room. The living room was ok. Our renovated dining room was ok (what a relief). Then I heard Heather yell, “We’ve got a huge problem!”

See that blue bucket on the top shelf just filling up with water?

I went into the kitchen and to my horror saw water dripping from different parts of the ceiling. Heather opened up the cabinets and brown water was dripping all over our clean dishes and glasses.

No, the horror isn’t how ugly our back porch is…it is that waterfall gushing down the wall!

We moved to the back porch and discovered a small waterfall flowing from the ceiling on the back porch and in the bathroom. We went upstairs and found water dripping in the upstairs bathroom and in the second bedroom as well.

We had a small disaster on our hands.

We scrambled around the house for buckets and I climbed up into the attic to see if I could contain the water up there. When I was in the attic I found water dripping from the roof, but not in huge quantities. Heather handed me paint trays and I put them under the leaks in the roof.

Crawlspace above the kitchen and back porch. Look at all that water! And that is knob and tube wiring!! Egads!!!

Heather told me the problem was actually in the crawlspace that was above the kitchen and back porch. As I was investigating the problem, Heather yelled “The ceiling is coming down in the kitchen! Get a bucket quick!” I ran downstairs with a bucket to find that the dripping was turning into a steady stream of brown water pissing from the ceiling.

Kitchen ceiling. The only thing still holding it up is the wallpaper.

At that point I decided I needed to get onto the roof and cover the unfinished roof with plastic. Heather called our contractor.

Heather wanted to get into the crawlspace with buckets to contain the water. I wanted to go out the second story window onto the unfinished part of the roof. I quickly moved boxes out from the crawl space and we put buckets in there to catch the water. Then I dismantled the window and tried to put a big piece of plastic on the roof. I was going to nail the plastic down but Heather didn’t want me out on the roof since it was raining.

Bathroom on the back porch flooded with water.

After some time our contractor and his father showed up to assess the situation. They then proceeded out the window and onto the roof with a big piece of plastic. They nailed the plastic down and told us they would be back tomorrow to finish the roof installation. They were very kind. They had even called earlier when we were out to tell us it was raining.

So now we have a HUGE mess. The ceilings need to be replaced in two rooms. They had to be replaced anyway, but now the need is more urgent. All our dishes need to be washed and the cabinets need to be cleaned and dried out.

Fun. { Heather: Not so much… }

If I could have one “do over” with our bathroom it would be to have gone with a light gray grout color on the marble floors instead of bright white. I am finding it very challenging to keep the grout clean! My mom has light gray grout on her bathroom floor and it is holding up beautifully. Live and learn.

How can my beautiful floors looks so gross, disgusting, and yucky!?

So, I was super excited when I saw a tip for cleaning grout lines on Pinterest. It is so easy. Here it is: You take a Clorox bleach pen and run it over the grout lines, let it set for at least 4 hours (I left it over night) and then wipe it up with warm water and a sponge or old wash cloth. That’s it!

Using the Clorox pen makes it really easy to follow the grout lines. You just kind-of get into a groove. I did the whole floor in 10 minutes…one of the benefits of having a small bathroom. I put the bleach on pretty thick and used a whole pen on our floor.

The next morning my floors looked new again. The bottom line…

This is one tip that really works!

We replaced the glass in the bathroom medicine cabinet. I hid a photo of us behind the glass to be found someday.

I wrote a brief note on the back of the photo. I probably should have written something more poetic, instead I scrawled out the first thing that came to mind. Our names, the date and “We remodeled the bathroom. I hope we did a good job. We tried our best. We purchased the house Sept. 2002. The 4th owners. Will anyone even find this someday? Love and best wishes to the future!”

And I do wonder if anyone will ever find it? A part of me must be an optimist.

The medicine cabinet door finally installed. It won’t be long until I fill it up with all my lotions and beauty potions.

Detail of the butterfly hinge.

It’s all about the details, isn’t it?

The bathroom remodel is so close to being finished…almost…there. The shower attachment still needs to be installed and a few other odds and ends. The big reveal is coming soon.

We have been getting a few posts lately about people redoing their bathrooms. So, in that spirit I have decided to post some pictures from “New Ideas For Bathrooms” published by Crane in the late 1920s. Enjoy!

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Many bungalows in our neighborhood have breakfast nooks and I’ve always been a little jealous that we don’t have one.

“If space allows, every house should have a nook-a delightful little space off the kitchen for breakfast or lunch, a place for kids to do homework while dinner is being prepared, the ideal spot for coffee and conversation.”

The accompanying illustration originally printed in Gustav Stickley’s The Craftsman magazine really got my attention. The placement of the nook was in the exact spot where one our of our built-in cupboards resides. The illustration shows a very humble opening in a wall with simple molding around the opening, nothing eleborate – almost like box with a window added onto the side of a kitchen.

Why is this in any way significant? On the other side of the wall is a small half-bath that is exactly the same width as the cupboard. We know this room is original to the house but couldn’t figure out it’s original purpose? It never made sense to me why there was a small room off the back of the house that could only be accessed from the outside, off of an open back porch.

It makes more sense that this room (currently our downstairs half-bath) wasn’t open to the outside but was really a nook off the kitchen. There is room enough for 2 built-in benches with a table between them. The existing window would have been perfectly centered on the wall over table.

It is possible that the nook was removed to add a bathroom downstairs and a built-in cupboard was placed in the opening to add more storage in the kitchen. If this happened, it would have been a change made fairly early on because the cupboard is very well crafted out of Douglas fir, although it’s in rather poor condition now.

Changes that were made after the original owners sold the house were not well crafted and usually haphazardly pulled together out of available materials. Although, it would not have been out of character for the original family to have made changes to the house. We have on record that they added an upstairs sleeping porch in 1916 and built a garage in 1918.

What is interesting is that the molding around the cupboard is different from the other built-in cupboard in the kitchen. This molding matches the molding around the doors. To me that suggests that the this could have been an opening (because the molding matches the doorways) for a nook.

While the molding on the other built-in is flat and matches the molding around the windows.

It seems odd that the moldings on the two built-in cupboards are different. In person, the built-in cupboards are similar but not exactly the same. This leads people to ask if the built-ins are both original or to question if one was added later? The truth is we don’t really know. Up until now I had thought they were both original.

One reason why I’m not completely sold on the idea that the built-in cupboard and bathroom behind it were originally a nook is because of a baseboard molding running along the back wall inside of the cupboard. The other built-in cupboard also has this baseboard molding. If the built-in was added later why would they bother to put in a baseboard?

This also leads me to wonder if perhaps both built-in cupboards were added later? Why would either of them have baseboard molding? Was that common?

It is challenging, but fun, to try to figure these things out so many years after the fact.

More photos of breakfast nooks

Now that our bathroom is completed we have decided to move into the bedroom located directly off the bathroom, a little more en suite…or as “en suite” as you can get in an almost 100 year old house. Our existing bedroom will become a home office.

I’m really excited to get started!