Butterfly Jungle: Marathon Remodel and a Do-Over

Yikes! I had forgotten how "special" this bathroom was when we moved into our old farmhouse. We rarely used it for almost two years because the entire third floor was empty, a no-man's land. Well, actually, the third floor was "tied up in other projects."

The grooviest (and funkiest) kitchen a girl could ever hope to have.

Our first priority after we bought our 200 year old farmhouse was to work on the kitchen. What you don't see here is the "pantry" to the right with a plastic pull up window blind for its door and a free-standing heater that was vented directly out through the wall above a sliding glas door. Vented, I might add, with drier vent. Nor do you see the avocado green refrigerator to the left and the matching stove we had already taken out that was- not kidding- 18 inches wide. This room too is a story all its own but in the process of trying to get the kitchen done, we ended up with the third floor all ripped up in order to run water and heating to the kitchen. My huband's viewpoint was that since we had to run copper pipes to the kitchen we may as well do it all at once. Since the pressure tank for the well system was, for some reason, on the third floor we ended up moving that as well so we worked on the third floor and the first floor at the same time.

The third floor bedroom, our Master Suite in the making.

And sure enough, when we lifted floor boards on the third floor to run pipe, we found water damage from leaky windows. We traced it back to the source and fixed it, at additional time and expense. Of course. It was a pattern that quickly established itself in our home: start one project and you never know what else you'll discover and have to fix. It's the reason we haven't replaced the siding on our house. We know that there are already two layers of siding on the entire house and the back side, the weather side, has three layers. Besides the fact that the last layer on the outside is that old asbestos cement board that has to be removed with abatement procedures (just say "money pit"), we're afraid of what we might discover if we start ripping off siding.

Anyway...

We finally made it to working on the third floor bath. People occasionally ask us if we ever found the treasure of the old man who lived here and sadly we have not. However, at the end of the closet was a hole through the plaster to the area under the rafters where we found a blue fur coat with orange satin lining and a newspaper. I would have worn the very cool coat had the mice not found it first and the newspaper was from the day before Kennedy was shot. We would have also kept the newspaper but time had found it as well and it crumbled away as we looked through it though we were being as careful as possible.

First priority in the bath was a shower-tub. The closet was very narrow, too narrow in fact to put shelves up and still be able to squeeze in, so we opened the wall between it and the bath and used that space for a shower-tub. Did I mention that by this time I was pregnant with our Zippy? I helped carry that tub surround up three flights of stairs when I was five months along. Maybe not wise but I think that Big 'Un actually carried most of it by himself.

Anyway... again....

How did it turn out? First edition looked like this ...

The scheme was all based on the shower curtain I had ordered from Coldwater Creek. I really liked the way it came out and like it all over again when I see these pictures. But, after 16years here, I got started "re-working" some of the colors in the house. The new bedroom (still in progress, of course) began clashing with the bathroom so off to the paint store I went. That's mostly all I did the second time around was paint because I didn't want to get into spending tons of money and I loved the shower curtain. Painted the walls and wainscot, painted the vanity. I was going to paint the wooden towels bars as well but then I started thinking that maybe the paint would eventually begin to peel from the damp towels so we replaced those also. Oh, and I "antiqued" the gold mirror frame. But for the cost of a couple gallons of paint and some hardware, I think I came out OK the second time.

I hope you can see the blue walls- clear and pastel, no gray in it at all.

Remember how I didn't want to get rid of the previous shower curtain because I loved it so much? Well, after all was done and over with, I found this sweet embroidered curtain at TJMaxx. Some things were just meant to be.

I replaced the green leaf dish on the vanity with this little bowl I made at a local pottery shop.
The paint job is sort of wobbly but the tip on the paint bottle and I weren't getting along that day. Oh well, it is well.

Maybe you noticed we have an atrium door to the bathroom. I love atrium doors and two of the baths in our house have them. I covered the glass with a frosted privacy film so that we still get light but not sight. There is an odd triangular "vestibule" outside of our master bath and it can be sort of dark. Not really because we have huge windows just around that corner but that's how I marketed it to Big 'Un when we were door shopping. Anyway...

I drew blossoms to match (sort of ) the blossoms on the shower curtain on the glass side of the upper right quadrant of the door and cut the frosted film off of the other side of the door with an exacto knife. This was actually kind of tricky and not at all like cutting paper. The end result looks somewhat like woodcut prints but I'm OK with that look. It's a very subtle effect and that's fine as well. Perhaps I could cut out blossoms from some of the leftover film and apply it on top of the film that is already applied to the glass for more of a dimensional look. Hmmm.....

Even though our house is close to the road, we are fortunate to live out in the country so we can get away with no curtains on the window. One of my small pleasures is observing the reflection of the big maple out front in the mirror. I like how those big old branches change from one season to the next.