clawfoot tub – The Hermits' Rest

The Good Kind of Anxious

There’s a big difference between anxiety (see earlier post from today) and being anxious. For example, I’m really anxious to be able to move out of my current dungeon office at the Hermit Haus and enjoy my cozy new office over at the Pope house. That’s a good kind of anxious.

I am very tired of looking at these paneled walls, and sitting in this dim room I’ve tried to cheer up with paintings and flowers. The bird hanger will hold my purse in the new office.

I am waiting, as patiently as I can, because the floors need to be re-finished, and we couldn’t do that this week. Next week, though, baby, sanding will occur. The old floors will look really cool, and we are going to have some fantastic little touches in my office. Ooh, I’m excited, and that is helping me have something positive to focus on.

Today Chris came by the beautifully cool Pope house to pick up a very important item: the door that’s going to be the base for my new desk he’s making. While we had it downstairs, we decided to see where it will look best in the room. We first tried it lined up with the window in the center of the room, so I could walk around it from all sides. One thing that occurred to me when we did that is that when I’m in Zoom meetings, the camera will be facing the bathroom. It’s a cool bathroom, but…

You can see here how a camera pointing from the center of the desk would look into the bathroom.
It would have looked pretty good from this angle, though.

So, Chris suggested we try angling the desk. With a little shuffling around, I saw that I’d have a better view out the window, a nice view of my wood stove and interior window, and it just felt good. Plus, my computer’s camera would be looking at either the barn door and the wall, or just the wall, which will have either a bookcase with nice objects on it, or a big painting. Ahh.

Pretending to sit, I can see everything pretty, the stove, my chairs, my interior window, the door.
This is what you’ll see looking in the door. Zoom will show either that barn door or the brick it covers when shut, like it is here.
It doesn’t look too weird from this angle, either.

There’s one more decision made.

Mmm, lilacs. I assume the paint won’t smell like them.

Meanwhile, Meghan came up to us and showed us colors she’d like for her upstairs office. She wants a nice lilac color. The color she chose will look great with the dark trim that we’re leaving up there (it’s in great shape). All we have to do to get her up and running will be clean well, paint the walls, and run a 220 outlet up to the office so she can have a window air conditioner that will actually keep her cool.

Felix says that when we are ready to finish out the rest of the upstairs, it will be really easy to put in an upstairs HVAC unit in the attic. That’s for another day, though!

What’s this? We found Tubby’s sibling WITH feet in a house near the Pope house. Ooh, if we buy yet another Victorian house, we might have another project.

Tubby Moved In

What a big day it was at the Pope house! First, Kathleen started unpacking and building her new office furniture 🪑. It was fun to see her desk, cow chairs, lamps, and more. I tried out her office chair. Ahh.

Besides that, Chris painted the break area cabinets. He first put a coat of Kilz on them to prevent more mildew. He also added some bracing to the flimsy construction. They will be fine.

Cabinets. The bottom one is braces to hold it together.

We have had trouble finding someone out here to cut our granite, so we’re just going to get a nice inexpensive laminate that we can cut ourselves. That will save time and probably money. We also still need a faucet. That will happen this weekend.

Trim for by the stairs got stained. Randy cleaned many of the windows.

Saving the Best for Last

But the most important thing is that Tubby got moved into the bathroom! First, Chris made some black wooden blocks for the tub to sit on. The theory is that it will distribute the weight over more area, so the tile won’t crack.

The floor got cleaned very well (that will be hard later). Then, Chris and Randy (in a most manly fashion) lifted Tubby up and carried it right in! Thankfully it went through the door. Tubby looks so white and gleaming!

The sink and toilet are ready to go in, too. Ooh. Ahh. We just need a few fixtures and the plumbers can come!

Shinier Tubby PLUS Cabinets!

It seems like a never-ending saga, but it is a saga that will eventually end and has certainly been great for keeping us busy during the pandemic and such. So, what’s been going on at the Pope Residence for the past few days?

Tubby has been getting all white and shiny. Chris has now applied two coats of porcelain paint, and plans to do one more, because he’s not real happy with the bits of texture that show up from using a roller on the second coat. I’m just happy to see Tubby standing up on those new black feet.

Standing up on Tubby’s four black feet!
The first coat finished. You can see brush strokes.
The second coat looks mighty good.
But if you look closely, you can see it’s not smooth.

Chris went into the shipping container and got our cabinets for the break area out. He was most disappointed to discover they had mold on them. It’s not surprising, since it sure has been wet outside, but we thought it sealed better than it apparently does.

Sanding off the ick.
Annoying mold.

Luckily, the stuff came right off, and the cabinets needed to be sanded anyway before they could be painted. While I’m glad to see they were made of sustainably harvested wood, I must also say that the construction quality is less than ideal. They are also really inexpensive, so what did we want, anyway? We will get them looking great before finding our granite and putting it on.

Proof that the cabinets are sustainably made. I believe that’s their best feature.

Other stuff’s been happening, too. The stairs are now curing away and look quite shiny and nice. While that’s going on, Chris is painting miles and miles of quarter-round trim. Whee.

Looking down the stairs. They blend nicely with the flooring, but aren’t exactly the same.

And Randy is back helping out! Today he is arranging things on the second floor to have furniture (new and old) in one room, wood and other supplies in another room, and who knows what in a third. The bedroom leading to our deck will get cleaned up and maybe a couple of pieces of furniture put in it for top-secret meetings (not in the summer!).

Furniture storage world. It has an air conditioner.
The room that will be emptied out and cleaned up.
The spare material storage room.

It’s a good thing we have so many rooms upstairs that we aren’t even using yet! We are tantalizingly close to being able to put the bathroom fixtures in and call in the plumbers…yay.

Tubby’s Makeover Continues

The serious work that’s going on at the Pope house is that the stairs are getting their final coats of urethane today. These pictures are from the first coat, which looks darned nice.

The color goes well with the floors. There will be a white trim band along the wall.
Shiny, but not too shiny

Chris didn’t sand the stairs very much, because, as he rightly pointed out, it’s good to have some traction on stairs. With my propensity to fall and slip, I will be very grateful for any help I can get. And of course there WILL be “trim” along the wall and stair rails!

Tubby Is Special

Mrs. Swallow says she hopes we hurry up and get away from her damn nest.

I just couldn’t wait like a good blogger and do my other writing before sharing this. I am so excited about that darned bathtub! It’s our special labor of love.

This morning Tubby went from drab to fab with two coats of flat white Rustoleum paint. All that sanding made a difference, because other than a few lumps from when it was cast, the outside looks pretty smooth and nice.

And then, what did I find in the mail today but the replacement legs! These are MUCH smaller, but do have claws.

Not as fancy as the other ones, but they do FIT.

Most important, they FIT. Those little black feet make Tubby look just about ready for his big debut!

We’ll have a helper next week, so Chris will be able to get Tubby set up and installed in the bathroom, and we’ll get the last few stains out of the inside. Gosh, someday it might even hold water (more likely, water the plants).

Is It a Bathtub Beauty Yet?

Today has mostly been about doors and stairs. All the doors are now stained and hung, which is a significant milestone!

The door into my office that will always be closed, looking at my other office door.
Kathleen’s office door.
Lee’s door and his wood wall.
Other side of Lee’s door and small bathroom door.
The door to my bathroom, from inside. It opens really easily.

The rest of today, Chris has been covering nail holes, sanding, and otherwise preparing the stairs for being stained. That will be another huge milestone.

But yes, I did get CLR, which is a product to remove lime stains, rust, and such, this morning. I ran out between phone calls to see if it would work. I was not as happy with it as I hoped to be. It’s definitely not a miracle product, and appears that it will need to be used repeatedly with the scrubber. I can’t use a metal scraper, because I don’t want to damage the tub. Sigh. It’s getting there.

It sure felt good to scrub hard, though. Renovation is very good for the frustrated.

What’s an Office without Doors?

An Open Office

Like my corporate office in Austin that I haven’t seen since early March. And I do not like those one bit. That’s why I was extra happy to see that there were some new office doors hung in the Pope house when I got back to town today. I realize now they are the same style as the ones at Bobcat, my Austin House, only in knotty pine.

The door on the right is the one Chris had to cut down, because the opening is only 7 feet.

They are going to get stained to match the barn doors, to add a bit of contrast to all the white trim. The black hardware looks very nice.

The door to Lee’s office, with the barn door that separates his and Kathleen’s offices behind it. The doors will match.

Chris also got one of the barn doors partially hung, and is working on the other one. It’s no easy feat to get a big, heavy door securely affixed to a brick wall, so there’s lots of prep work and such. Once everything is ready, Chris will crack open the tube of super-duper epoxy that mixes itself in the nozzle and quickly use it to firmly attach all the support bolts and such. It only takes 45 minutes to dry, so you have to glue while the gluing is good, apparently.

You can see above the bathroom door the large bolts that will hold the barn door up. The door is at right.

Other things that are getting attached are the mantel pieces in the front office and my office. We don’t want them falling down, either. I’m getting excited about the area that will surround my faux woodstove in my office. Ooh, it will be a surprise.

New piece of wood to support the hearth. Still bummed that one brick is missing.

The Main Bathroom Shines

All of the furnishings are now in the main bathroom, though none of the plumbing is hooked up. The new shelving unit looks really nice, and the rustic vanity goes well with the lighting. You can actually tell it’s a bathroom now.

The half door opens and does not hit the vanity nor the light fixture
This vanity matches the “barn door” theme of much of our furniture
Here’s the broom closet looking all built-in

While losing a day of work going to Temple to get supplies and help stranded elderly people on the side of the road, Chris picked up the feet for our cast iron bathtub. That practically gave him a hernia, because WHOA these things are WAY bigger than they looked in their picture! They are huge!

I think it weighs 10 pounds. I know it’s 9 inches long. That is one BIG clawfoot.

Everyone thought surely I’d exchange them, but I figure they “make a statement” and we will use them. Most certainly they will hold up the tub, as long as the combined weight of legs and tub don’t collapse the floor! The installation guide just says it’s “extremely heavy.”

This has taken a while, but to me, it’s gone pretty quickly, considering that it’s mostly been done by one person!