Saturday, April 10, 2010
recycling
So, recycling materials from a condo remodel is not as easy as one would think. We have doors, carpet, window blinds, metal shelving, shower doors, etc... and we've been researching and calling places for about 2 weeks now. Many places are picky about the items they will accept and some charge fees for drop offs. My hope was that we could donate many of the demo materials to someone that would reuse them in future projects.
Our wonderful friends Sarah and Marty introduced us to 'Rebuilding Exchange' a couple months ago and today we finally had a chance to check it out. While it was quite a trip driving down to the southwest side on a Saturday afternoon (traffic! ah!), we were excited when they told us they would take our donation of the doors and that we were more than welcome to browse their collection. It's a warehouse (somewhat like Salvage One or Architectural Artifacts except the materials they have are more functional/less decorative and they are a lot more affordable). They are a sustainably oriented organization that seeks to reuse building materials that may otherwise get thrown away and end up in the landfill. We were excited to see books by Bruce Mau scattered atop some of their beautiful reclaimed wood furniture. Other highlights were their extensive reclaimed lumber room, their sink collection (almost found a perfect vintage wall sink, but it was too large) and a built in ironing board cabinet (unfortunately we couldn't think of a good place to put that in our condo).
Our wonderful friends Sarah and Marty introduced us to 'Rebuilding Exchange' a couple months ago and today we finally had a chance to check it out. While it was quite a trip driving down to the southwest side on a Saturday afternoon (traffic! ah!), we were excited when they told us they would take our donation of the doors and that we were more than welcome to browse their collection. It's a warehouse (somewhat like Salvage One or Architectural Artifacts except the materials they have are more functional/less decorative and they are a lot more affordable). They are a sustainably oriented organization that seeks to reuse building materials that may otherwise get thrown away and end up in the landfill. We were excited to see books by Bruce Mau scattered atop some of their beautiful reclaimed wood furniture. Other highlights were their extensive reclaimed lumber room, their sink collection (almost found a perfect vintage wall sink, but it was too large) and a built in ironing board cabinet (unfortunately we couldn't think of a good place to put that in our condo).
crown molding
We spent several weekend trips at lowes in the molding/trim aisle agonizing over which crown molding to go with. After some more research we decided to check out some local lumber companies. These were not only cheaper but they also had the 16' lengths that we needed (versus the 12' and 14' lengths at lowes). Today we went back to the lumber company and bought enough crown for the two bedrooms (which we will be working on first).
i'm in love!
...with the schoolhouse electric company! We just got their catalog in today after ordering it about 2 months ago. Now that we have our condo and the rehabbing is moving forward, I have found myself in love with pretty much every single vintage fixture they carry. We still aren't exactly sure of the look we want in each room but how will we pick with fixtures this beautiful???
We know for sure that we'll be installing a couple of the old push button light switches. They remind me of the old early 1900's house my parents rehabbed when I was about 4 years old. I love that when you push one in, the other pops out and makes a clicking noise. If they weren't so expensive, we would do them everywhere, but unfortunately we have a budget.
We know for sure that we'll be installing a couple of the old push button light switches. They remind me of the old early 1900's house my parents rehabbed when I was about 4 years old. I love that when you push one in, the other pops out and makes a clicking noise. If they weren't so expensive, we would do them everywhere, but unfortunately we have a budget.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Demo!
Together with help from family and friends our 1/2 bathroom has transformed from this...
to this...!
Another surprise... the tile had been installed directly on top of the holes in the wood flooring they had created for the plumbing. We plan on filling this in with plywood and re-tiling with vintage tile. We also hope to install a vintage wall sink in addition to wainscotting along the walls and crown molding at the ceiling. Here's one of the 'styling images' that we are basing some of our ideas on (hopefully ours will look this beautiful when we are done!):
to this...!Another surprise... the tile had been installed directly on top of the holes in the wood flooring they had created for the plumbing. We plan on filling this in with plywood and re-tiling with vintage tile. We also hope to install a vintage wall sink in addition to wainscotting along the walls and crown molding at the ceiling. Here's one of the 'styling images' that we are basing some of our ideas on (hopefully ours will look this beautiful when we are done!):
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