Blast From The Past: The First Apartment, Part 1

Many years ago...in a town far away, my partner Ian and I moved into a delightfully dilapidated 3 story "apartment". Actually it was a 3 story building with a tattoo parlor on the first floor and 4 individual apartments above and behind. After we chased all of the current tenants out (thank you police department) we took over the entire building and went to work turning it into a pretty amazing living and party space. I apologize upfront for the quality of these photos...it's 1994 and megapixels weren't invented yet.

The 2nd Floor Landing. Ian had a window fetish.

The Greek Room. Exposed plaster and sepia. Also my office.

Master Bedroom. Yes, a puzzle bed that came apart in 9 pieces for party seating!

Let me tell you what a pain those poke dots were! Not painted, wood circles nailed to the wall!!!

The Garden Room. He did the painting. I cut the hole in the wall to the Kitchen!

That's it for now. I'll post more later. I can't take credit for any of the design choices here, it was all Ian. At the ripe old age of 25, I couldn't have visualized any of this. I was just the muscle...lifting and cutting and wielding a sledge hammer.

I have to say tho, when it came time to renovate my church, a lot of what he taught me played a very major role in it's design and construction. 

Ian, I miss you and I will always be grateful for you teaching me that, "No matter what happens, you can always paint over it!" Rest in peace.

The Place To Stay

I've talked about Cabana Gardens Guest House in previous posts. I can't extol it's virtues enough as THE place to stay when in Rehoboth Beach. It's clean, has a great selection of rooms, and is smack dab in the middle of everything you'd want to do in Rehoboth. Not to mention the fact that the owner, Gary lets us decorate our space. We always stay in the rooms that border the pool on the upper deck and we always bring our own accouterments.

Those lanterns and drapes...they're ours.

Inez, who is a member of the cleaning staff came by the pool the first day we were there to say, "When I saw the decorations, I knew you were back!" 

Our vacation space

I provide the lanterns. This year I decided to go with slightly more expensive nylon lanterns that would survive any weather we might get without running and fading of the color. I also figured that we could use them from year to year. We did lose one in a storm that hit our second day there. A small price to pay to have such a colorful and inviting space. Tod fashions the drapes. In the late afternoon the sun just burns into the second story deck. Having the curtains to close during that time is a welcome relief. No burned feet or sweaty bodies that way.

The late afternoon view.

What a marvelous spot to sit and read a book, or in my case, sip a cocktail. Next year, with the addition of one more set of curtains it will be complete. It's nice while on vacation to be given the latitude to make a space which isn't your own, your own. Maybe Gary let's us do it because we have been staying there for so long, but for whatever reason...I'm really happy that he allows us to customize our vacation experience.

Not the Sistine Chapel, But...

Ceilings, most rooms have them. Most of the time they're painted white so they "disappear". Only they tend not to. Many years ago I had one floor of an apartment that had lower ceilings than the first floor. I went against convention and painted everyone of those low ceilings black. No one but me ever noticed the ceiling height difference until I pointed it out.

I am not advocating that everyone run out and to Lowe's and buy them out of black paint. I'm just saying, it works. Ever notice how a lot of public spaces (restaurants, galleries, etc) paint their open ceilings black. Black makes stuff disappear, white...not so much.

All that being said, I would never paint my ceilings today. Out in the sanctuary there are the most gorgeous wood ceilings.

The view Molly sees while lying on her back on her bed

I love the slight color variations in the wood. You really see them on a bright sunny day. I had to brighten this photo up a but cause it was cloudy today.

In the back room (bedroom, bathroom, laundry room, closet) there were not gorgeous wood ceilings. There was gross drop ceiling installed which I promptly ripped out. Once renovations were almost complete, it was time to decide what sort of ceiling to put back in. A friend of mine suggested ripping out the rafters and doing a cathedral ceiling. I didn't like that idea. With the ceilings so high (17ft) in the sanctuary, I wanted this room to be much more cozy. Not to mention that I then would have had 2 rooms that are a bitch to heat!

So, I put a drop ceiling back in. Before you cringe, and everyone I suggested it to did, I had a plan. My plan was to install the metal grid and buy copper fabric that would drape across the frame. I'd seen it down in a restaurant in Chicago, and I loved the effect. It is also prohibitively EXPENSIVE! Enough fabric to do the room was going to cost me $6000 YIKES!

I still went ahead and hung the grid. I also learned a very thrifty fact about drop ceiling grid. The white grid is very inexpensive because that is what everyone uses. I wanted black grid, which costs triple what the white does. Then I found out from my trusty Lowe's salesperson, that they make little plastic covers that you can snap onto the grid to make it black. Much less expensive.

So, the grid is hung, now what to put in it? Paper! I found a huge roll of copper paper online at a gift wrap website. $70 bucks! That is my kind of bargain. Not to mention the fact that it was exactly 2ft wide, and how wide is a drop ceiling grid? 2ft x 4ft! PERFECT! The paper wasn't going to do the draping I was expecting the fabric to do. I bought the least expensive drop ceiling tiles I could find and wrapped the paper end to end on those. Then Tod had the amazing idea not just to wrap the flat paper around the tile, but to crinkle it all up first, then spread it back out over the tile. Sheer genius!

What I see when I open my eyes every morning.

The crinkling of the paper created all of those wonderful facets. I could stare at it for hours. The crinkling also creates an upholstered effect since the center of the paper doesn't hug the tile underneath it. That, and I also had enough paper leftover to wrap presents with for 5 years! I still have a good portion of it left. In a few more years, when this paper eventually fades...I'll just spend another  70 bucks and get a brand new ceiling out of it.

Another idea for drop ceilings I used years ago in that apartment with the black ceilings. The bathrooms and kitchen there had horribly ugly drop ceilings. We trashed the panels and bought a carton of the panels that are used to cover lights in a drop ceiling. We put those in every slot of the drop ceiling. What an amazing effect. Turning on the lights in those smaller spaces was suddenly like turning on the sun. It really brightened up the space.

In the end, with a little creativity, drop ceilings aren't so bad. I never thought I'd catch myself laying on my bed staring at one for a half hour and enjoying it.

Renovation Sensation! -- The Bathroom

Look! It's a new feature! I've created this one to detail some of the renovations I've done on the Old Homestead…ie, The Church. I know after I teased a few weeks ago that my contractor was coming back to complete my list of needed renovation that you all have been waiting with bated breath to see what's been done.

First stop, the bathroom. A little history here, the main floor of the church is made up of the sanctuary and behind was a large room that used to house the nursery. I'm guessing this based on the fact that there was a huge window built into the wall to "spy" on the kiddies during the church service.

Let's start with the model I built many many years ago.

"White…my favorite color!" (Name the movie, win a prize)

Yep, I built a model. I thought it was important, since I've never designed a bathroom from scratch, to get a sense of scale in the space. So I bought myself some Foamcore, measured like a mad man, and came up with the above. From right to left, the water closet, the insanely huge "Porn" shower, and then the vanity.

Here is what the room looked like before renovation began.

Large & kinda messy, huh?

3 years later and I don't even want to tell you how much money, here is the result. Keep in mind, the entire renovation also included the bedroom, laundry room, and closet. We'll get to those another time. Once again, working from right to left.

The Water Closet

No, you can't really see people peeing and pooping through the glass on the door! You can see rough shapes, but that is about it.

The "Porn" Shower

Yeah, ok…it has a huge window in it. That, and it fits 6 comfortably. I wanted a shower that I could stand in the center of and spin like Wonder Woman. Keep in mind I had been showering for 3 years inside of a postage stamp downstairs. The water "rains" from directly above. I added the window so I would have a creative space to play with. I have all kinds of plans for it, I just have to decide which one I want to do first. For now a curtain seemed the fitting choice. The walls are painted with swimming pool paint to compensate for the damp environment. I just didn't feel like doing tile everywhere…everyone does that!

The Vanity…oh, and the sexy shower lighting in the background

Vessel sink and a Toiletry Panty Cabinet…Swank!

The vanity is the latest portion of the renovation. It is so nice to not have to use the tiny sink in the Water Closet when getting ready for work or to go out. I chose a slate-ish formica for the counter and covered the pantry with the same copper paper that adorns the ceiling. It helps to tie things together when you can. I am really pleased with the vessel sink. As a tall person, sinks so often wind up being too low for me. In this case I split the difference by lowering the counter slightly and placing the vessel sink on top of it. The shelving to the right of the sink was purchased at IKEA. It holds fresh towels and washcloths and the toiletries that are currently in use. Oh, and in case you didn't notice, both the WC and the Shower are up 2 steps. It was a necessary evil in order to be able to get to the main drainage pipe (a curse in older architecture). I like it, it's different, and I've only fallen once so far…hence the hand rail bar going in and out of the shower.

All in all, a successful renovation. I stayed very faithful to the original model. I think the only changes consisted of making the shower window a little smaller and shortening the vanity enough to include the "pantry". So…what do you think? Love it? Hate it? Got a question about that I'd be happy to answer in a future post? Say your peace in the comments.