It sure has been a while! Want to see what we've been doing?
Week number 1 of our bathroom renovation has drawn to close. For the first week, we stayed away at a nice little place we found on AirBNB, avoiding the dustiest part of the process, but we're back in residence. The strip out has taken a full week. The builder told us that many a bathroom would be at wet seal after a week, but the strip out took so long because the house has been so solidly built - our research tells us an owner-builder built our house in the 1940s.
Who needs ceilings anyway? This entire process started because we couldn't have our bathroom ceiling exhaust fan repaired because it was cut into the asbestos ceiling. So we had to replace the ceiling to have an exhaust fan that worked. And the cornices had to be replaced too... and while we're at it, we hate the floor and in fact the entire bathroom was absurdly small, so let's just gut the whole thing and rip out two brick walls and start again. All because we needed a working exhaust fan.
It turns out that the previous owners had simply tiled over the existing tile work to update the bathroom. Under the more recent tiles the builder found earlier tiles. It is possible that these are the original tiles from the 1940s when the house was built and the builder thinks that is likely.
This old photo shows the bathroom years before we bought the house. You can see the tile work from the above photo - the top photo shows the wall next to the window, where the showerhead is. Off on the right hand wall you can see a white tiled square surrounded by a black border. Our tile work will reference this decorative tiling style, picking up on the art deco style. The house is a bit late for art deco, but there are quite a few art deco references in the house, including a curved brick feature at the front of the house, the handrails at the front stairs and internal sliding glass doors between the dining room and lounge room.
The tile pattern on the left image above will be tiled into both tiled sides of the shower.
Our bathroom vanity will be similar to the one above, with the lovely exposed pipework underneath. In order to create the look of a black painted skirting board around the bottom of the walls, we have chosen a high gloss black tile with a shaped profile as the first row of tiling on the walls.
The floor tiles are 30cm black and while tiles, set in offset checkerboard, as above. But in the meantime, it's still very much a work in progress.
As soon as the bathroom is finished, we will be having the boards polished... there is hardwood under that drab old carpet!
