1895 Bathroom: The Movie

I sort of finished the tile today, and I wasn’t ready to start anything else, so instead I started cleaning. I have family coming for a visit in one week and I really need to get the place cleaned up. They’ve been here before, and they know it’s a real work-in-progress, so it doesn’t need to be prefect.

Anyway, I polished the bathroom today so I thought I’d shoot a video of it. This was the first room I did in the house, and as you can see, it’s not really finished. There is the window that needs help, but I’m saving all of the windows to do as one project over the course of a year or so. The other issue, that I sort of talk about in the video, is the missing piece of trim.

The missing trim is a wainscot cap that they used in every room of the house that had wainscoting. It’s the same profile of trim in 5 rooms and the back stairs. I was missing a piece for the bathroom, and missing some for the kitchen. I thought I might have some made for the kitchen, so I figured I’d just wait and get enough made to replace missing pieces in both rooms. I ended up using something different in the kitchen, so now I can use some of the original pieces I salvaged from the kitchen to complete the bathroom. The trouble is, it’s not going to get done unless I do it.

It dawned on me as I was shooting the video that I haven’t really finished any rooms in the house yet. I did the bathroom and the kitchen, but the bathroom needs the trim piece, and the kitchen still needs the edges of the marble on the island finished. I really need to do these things as soon as I finish the bathroom. This assumes I do someday finish the bathroom.

I also talk about stripping the shellac off some of the beadboard. I used salvaged wood from the addition to have the missing beadboard made. When I oiled and shellacked it, it came out lighter than the original wood. I need to strip off the shellac and then re-oil it and tint the oil with red mahogany stain. A friend of mine turned me on to this trick and it works very good to match the old color of the wood. The new wood, because it was salvage from the 20s, was milled at about the same time, and is also old-growth wood, but it just hasn’t had the same exposure as the original beadboard, so it comes out lighter in color. So I’ll do that before I put on the wainscot cap. Then, aside from the window, the room will be done…..except for the tub and sink faucets, but that’s another story.

So now I give you, 1895 Bathroom: The Movie. Do I hear Oscar buzz already?