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

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   Bungalow Bathroom Remodel In Progress...
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3. Bathroom Hardware Tracking down vintage bathroom accessories

The marble floor is even more gorgeous than I imagined.

I know it isn’t traditional, but I love the look.

Detail of the tile baseboard.

I wanted to mimic the height of the wooden baseboards we have throughout the house in the bathroom. I selected a tile chair rail molding and liner to make the “baseboard”. I can’t wait to see everything grouted.

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2. 
   Subway Tile & Bungalow Bathrooms Just Go Together Like Peanut Butter & Jelly
3. 
   Rub-a-dub-dub We have a tub!

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.

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   Bungalow Bathroom Remodel Here We Go Now...
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   When Animals and House Projects Don’t Mix Bad Kitty!

Our house has never had a shower and now we don’t have a tub. Oh, the dreaded phase of our project! I have not been looking forward to it. This is one way to get me to the gym…if not to work out, at least to shower.

The old tub is solid cast iron so we expected it to be heavy, just not 500 lbs heavy! Actually, we have no way of knowing how much the tub really weighs. But, it took 4 big, strong guys to move the tub. They claimed it felt like 500-600 lbs.

The closet doors are now installed.

All the woodwork has been primed {sorry!}. We received some encouragement to go the next step, leave the wood natural and stain it. I hate to disappoint anyone, but we learned our lesson about staining woodwork that was originally painted when we restored the hallway.

It took 4-5 guys to carry the tub down a very narrow stairway. It was slow going with lots of stops and false starts. I looked on and just hoped that the steps were strong enough to hold. They were. The tub made it down without incident.

The cat, who we call the project supervisor because he likes to oversee all the work, wanted no part of moving the tub and for once was nowhere to be found. Smart cat.

The tub, old sink and toilet were given to a friend of a friend who used them in their own bathroom remodel project.

And I thought our kitchen couldn’t get any worse! The ceiling had to be opened to update the bathroom plumbing. We are adding additional support and reinforcing the ceiling beams underneath the tub. Although, our new tub will weigh less than half of what the old tub weighed, better to be safe then sorry.

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1. Before: Upstairs Bathroom Our bungalow bathroom needs lots of work
2. 
   Bungalow Bathroom Remodel Here We Go Now...
3. 
   Tinted Varnish Solution for when your stain color is too light

We decided to enlarge the opening of the linen closet and add another door. Our contractor found a salvage door that he scaled down and rebuilt to match the existing linen closet door. In the photo above, the original closet door is on the left and the “new” closet door on the right.

Painting the doors will hide a multiple of sins like the wood grain going in different directions and patches around the door handle. We are thrilled with the new door.

The opening for the linen closet is ready to be framed in.

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   Slowly Moving Along… What a difference wood windows make
2. The Antique French Doors Are Installed Leaded glass French doors were salvaged from a 1915 home
3. Our Decision Making Process Trying to balance historical accuracy and modern sensibility

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

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1. Before: Upstairs Bathroom Our bungalow bathroom needs lots of work
2. 
   Making Progress, Slowly but Surely Repurposing a Salvaged Door
3. Den Disaster Termites, mold, asbestos, dry rot, and shot plaster

Down with the walls! Look at all that extra usable space behind the wall. It even has the original wood flooring. For a house that is in desperate need of storage space, this is a very happy find.

The original woodwork has been stripped, although not too carefully since we intend to repaint it. We will still be using the bathroom during the construction process. This is the only bathtub in the house…and no shower!

Only the bottom portion of the walls will be removed. The walls will be white subway tile. We are hoping to save and repair the plaster ceiling and top portion of the walls.

Related posts:

1. Before: Upstairs Bathroom Our bungalow bathroom needs lots of work
2. Den Disaster Termites, mold, asbestos, dry rot, and shot plaster
3. Living Room Plaster Walls Update Proof that even badly damaged plaster walls can be saved

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!

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3. Historic Garage Examples Get inspired by these bungalow garages

West Adams is a racially and economically diverse area that offers some of the finest houses in Los Angeles. You will find elaborate Italianate mansions, beautiful Craftsman homes, ornate Victorians and street after street of simple bungalows. Our neighborhood is truly bungalow heaven, although some people in Pasadena might disagree.

To call our home a “fixer” is understating the situation. Our home needed everything; by everything I mean a new foundation, new sewer lines, new roof, new electrical, updated plumbing, asbestos siding removal, original wood siding patched or replaced, the front porch rebuilt, the enclosed back porch ripped off and rebuilt, windows restored, landscaping, burglar bars removed and an exterior paint job. And, that was just the outside.

The inside hasn’t been any easier. We have gone room-by-room, restoring one room at a time. Under 18 layers of paint – yes, 18! – we found beautiful Douglas fir woodwork. We also found crumbling plaster, missing light fixtures, a few mummified rats, a kitchen floor covered in 5-inch thick plaster of Paris and black hardwood floors.

Being complete novices, and complete idiots, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. We have done a lot of work on the house ourselves, but hire people to help us when in over our heads, which happens often. We have learned an amazing amount and met some wonderful people along the way.

After 7 years, we are half way done. We could have finished restoring the house, but decided to take a sanity break from working on the house a few years ago. We still have some large projects ahead of us. I am dreaming of a restored kitchen and bathroom. A small confession, we’re still brushing our teeth in the bathtub seven years later!

This site started as a blog in 2003 to document all the changes and work being done on our house. Since then it has grown into a way for me to share with you all the things and people who inspire me.

If you have a house project or story that you would like to share contact me at:
heather [at] 1912bungalow [dot] com.

Related posts:

1. Living In The House What it is like to live in a house while remodeling it
2. Do We Remove the Security Bars? Will I feel safe without bars on my windows?
3. Living Room Restoration Admitting we need help and hiring a contractor

It has finally sunk in that we don’t have the stamina to have house projects going all the time, one after another, lets hurry up and get everything done so our house is restored all ready. Our what seemed realistic at the time plan, the one where we complete all the work on our house within five years? It’s now the 10 year plan or the hopefully we get the house done before we die plan. Considering this is our fourth year in the house and we are barely halfway done, I think the new plan is a good call.

We have decided that completing one project a year is a more realistic pace for us. Although, it would have been nice to have restored the kitchen and our main bathroom before we hit upon the one-project-a-year-for-a-more-balanced-life approach. I think it is going to be a while before I have the ever changing kitchen of my dreams.

January
My dad came to visit and finished some plumbing work he had started the year before. This culminated with hooking up the sink in our downstairs half bath. It only took us 3 years to actually have water running out of a faucet in one of our bathrooms. Yeah!

February

The episode of “Restoration Realities” featuring us aired on the DIY television network. Along with the show’s host and carpenter we built a period appropriate screen door and weather stripped our windows and front door.

Heather + Dave on Restoration Realities Part 1
Restoration Realities Part 2
Restoration Realities Part 3
Restoration Realities Part 4

March
Did absolutely NO work on the house.

April
Did absolutely NO work on the house, but may have scared a very nice sounding family away from the idea of restoring a rundown Craftsman home of their own.

May
Did absolutely NO work on the house. Starting to see a theme here?

June
Did absolutely NO work on the house.

July
Did absolutely NO work on the house, but I finally resolved the ownership issue of the oil and mineral rights to our property.

August
Finally, some work on the house! Stripped the woodwork and doors of the stairwell, landing and upstairs back hallway. I purchased leaded glass French doors from the early 1900′s off of eBay for the upstairs back hallway.

September
I publicly confess that I have resentful feelings towards the house for the first time. I think I used the word “hate.” And, in certain moments I do hate the house. There, I said it again. We are at an odd point in our restoration experience. The honeymoon period with the house is definitely over.

Maybe this is normal? Maybe around year 4 of an extensive restoration project everyone starts hating their house a little bit, or at least all the time, money and energy that goes into it? After all the work on our house year, after year, after year, we are barely at the halfway point of having our home fully restored.

It’s not like I hate the house all the time. It comes and goes. There are moments when I also love our house. Most of those loving moments are spent in the completed portion of the house.

October
We discovered that the upstairs sleeping porch, a 1918 addition, was inadequately framed. I’m not sure if inadequate is a strong enough word to describe opening up a wall and discovering two 2×2′s as the sole support for a load bearing wall. Shocking comes to mind, so does what the hell were they thinking, quickly followed by I wonder how poorly the rest of the sleeping porch is built?

Pablo rebuilt the wall and installed the leaded glass French doors.

November
Ah, November…November was a month chock full of resentful, or maybe even hateful feelings. There was a lot to hate.

Getting right to it, we both hated the color I selected to paint the stairwell and hallway. I was going for silvery sage but ended up with baby nursery mint green. We received alot of wonderful paint color suggestions, but in the end decided to go with a blue green color that matches the original 1912 wall color of our bedroom.

This leads us to the most mysterious occurrence that has happened during our entire restoration process. Two weeks after the woodwork was stained and sealed with several coats of varnish the woodwork faded. Drastically. Overnight. We have no idea how or why this happened. It’s so unbelievable. I didn’t even know that such a thing was possible? We are hoping that someone out there might be able to provide an answer.

December
Our stairwell and back hallway project is completed. One more down, seven major projects left to go…

Lulu and Winston underneath the Christmas tree

David and I spent a quiet Christmas in our little bungalow, just the two of us.

Looking forward to 2007!

Related posts:

1. 2005 Year In Review Taking a look back at our bungalow restoration project
2. Hallway & Stairwell (almost) Finito! Walls patched and painted, wood stripped and stained
3. Wide Open Spaces We try to decide if we should enclose our hallway?