Partway Through the Bathroom Facelift

PUTTING BEADBOARD WAINSCOTTING IN OUR BATHROOM

We had our plan in mind... 

we took our measurements... 

(checked them twice)... 

and headed out with a cut list of supplies! 

Here is Steveio, loading up the beadboard and trim boards on the cute little trailer he bought last summer. It sure has come in handy for small projects, especially when some of the boards were 10 feet long.  It was just beginning to snow, so we got home and the wood was pretty dry and no road slop on any of it. Whew!

Next up was to gather some tools.  Ahhhh this is a good start!

Steve carried all of the wood down to the basement.  Our basement is divided up into three rooms plus a cistern.  I would need to spread out my work into all three rooms to get all the wood laid out. We brought the sawhorses down as well.  Sooo funny, last spring I "garbage picked" a couple sets of sawhorses and Steve was totally against me taking them.  Well, he said we had a nice metal set of 2, and one wooden set left behind by the sellers.... so why get more?   ha!  We used all four sets last summer while I stained all the spindles and crossboards for our big fence project.  Having four sets lets me get more productive and thus more units can dry at the same time!

With careful testing, I determined that on our wood, we need 2 coats of Minwax stain. My formula is 4 parts Golden Pecan, 2 parts Red Chestnut and 1/2 part Jacobean to obtain the right orangey-reddish-brown to match the 103 year old woodwork stain in our home.

Here is about 30 sq feet of beadboard with the first coat of stain on it

the 8 foot long boards will be cut into two 48" pieces for our wainscoting

This batch is in my workroom

Here is another 60 sq feet in the root cellar room, 

with a first coat on them

These are the baseboards and top cap trim,
they have 2 coats on them and are the right color now. 

Maybe tomorrow evening I can get the final coat of clear polyurethane on them.  I have some leftover quick drying floor poly from when I redid the hardwood floors 2 years ago. I think that will make a good solid strong seal on the bathroom walls. It's stuff from a gym floor supply poly company.

While I was down in the basement staining, Steve was upstairs working on tearing off the plastic tiles and baseboards.  He also removed the chrome medicine cabinet.  Wow.. look how thick the plaster is in this 103 year old house!  It's a 1/2 inch layer of thick cement onto the lathes.   No wonder we don't have any wall cracks!!  It's really solid and tough stuff.  Not like the thin skim coats they do nowadays of chalky white stuff on gypsum wallboard.

Steve works fast!!!  He had most of this done within an hour!   Of course, the plastic tiles just kinda pop off after being glued on for about 60 years.  He will take down any of the rougher bumps of plaster and glue with a small oscillating tool and I will shop vac up the mess as we go.  Less of dust and junk flying around in the air. 

The three walls, North, East and South were all tiled.... the West wall along the tub we had taken down those tiles five years ago when we redid that part of the bathroom.  Now the new beadboard will go on all of the walls, 48 inches up, with a 5 inch thick baseboard. It will be high enough to cover the old surface and glued messy icky wall underneath.

I bought a quart of white paint to cover the heat register grate as well. These lovely old cast iron grates are so wonderful, and I would like to leave it original... but this was already painted many times before. The rest of the registers in our house are original and untouched .

While I had my brushes and white paint stuff out... I decided to paint the little table for next to the tub. It has been white when I first bought it, and I painted it cream back then. Now it's back to white.  It's perfect for setting my glass of wine on, or an ice water, my MP3 player, and a candle, while taking a relaxing bubble bath. 

I saw an ad on the local buy sell trade Facebook Marketplace site. It was PERFECT! We wanted an old medicine cabinet, but most we have seen are painted. I want to stain one to match the beadboard.  Yes, Steve could make one, but I wanted an "old one".  Sure enough, a lady was selling this one that has already been stripped, for a mere $10, this came home with me! 

Replacing THIS with THIS (after it gets stained)

 

Lucky for us, our son works for a glass cutting plant, and I think I can beg him to make me a nice bevelled edge mirror to go in the door opening!  

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Mr Antsy Pantsy wants me to hurry and get all this wood stained and poly'd quick, he wants to start cutting the beadboards in half and attaching them to the walls.

But but but --- we had a few other things to take care of this week...

• We babysat on Thursday up to Oconto for Jameson and Whitney while their parents went to his company Christmas party.  
• Today we got up at the crack before dawn to help transport garage items from Steve's dad's old house to his new house. That resulted in 350 miles of a convoy round trip to get a lot of stuff done.  
• This this evening we snatched up granddaughter Claire to babysit so her parents could go to their company Christmas party! 

Walls can wait a bit,

Dad needs our help and 

Grandkids grow up too fast!