midtownmoneypit

Baby Got Backsplash.....

2009-07-05T10:44:00.000-07:00

I've already talked about my tile problem, and the saga we went through with glass mosaic tile in our bathroom. Now here's a story with a happy ending. I guess I'm a glutton for punishment, because. once again, I picked out glass mosaic tile with a paper face. But the difference this time is our tile installer extraordinaire, Cole Caldwell. If any of you were wondering, the phrase to describe a miracle worker in Spanish is: trabajador milagroso. Some phrases are really improved by being in another language I think...
Anyway, with Cole on our side - this tile installation was a snap. Little things like unlevel countertops don't bother Cole. He said that he woke up at three o'clock in the morning with the solution to that one. Wouldn't it be a better world if everyone had that much pride in their work?
A friend of ours had her tile edged with special stainless steel edges that covered the backer board and ugly edges of the tile, and I wanted to replicate that look. Unfortunately in the design wasteland of Memphis Tennessee that wasn't available at any tile place. Off I went to our local home depot and purchased some right angle steel weather stripping. It worked like a charm!
Finding the perfect coloration to match my crazy pea green cabinets and black galaxy countertops had only taken me about six months, but I think the result was well worth the wait!
We also finally got our seating area down thanks to a great deal on some chairs I got at the local West Elm outlet for $31 each!
You also get a view of one of our two pantries in this photo. These used to be two coat closets that were covered by icky bifold shutter doors that were pea green. In Midtown you never know what someone is going to through out, and shortly before we moved into the house we discovered a set of mahogany french doors across the street from our old house that were in a throw away heap. We liked their crusty finish so much we left them as is. In a true housewarming gift of love, my uncle Ray came and stayed with us a couple of days and retro fit these doors into place as pantry doors. Thanks again Uncle Ray! You rock!
The table is another "gift." Our friend Frank Mix is also our countertop guy and as good at what he does as master tile man Cole. It's because of him that we have our countertops in the first place - he so generously gave us a deal on some extra pieces of black galaxy countertop when we first moved in to our house, and we added on extra pieces as the kitchen began to take shape. My wonderful husband gave me a surprise 39th birthday party - and as a gift Frank strolls in with two extra pieces of black galaxy for us to use as table tops! BTW, Frank is a totally bad a__ Navy veteran, so if he tells you something is going to happen and what it is going to look like, you can bank on it!
Our carpenter and beer brewing afficianado and all around great friend Phil Kane of British carpentry built us the window seat that has a hinged lid. He gave me a lot of grief about that lid, saying that I would put stuff in there and never use it again, and that it was a waste. I'll have you know Phil, that I've opened that thing at least three times in the 5 years since you've installed it - so that just shows how little you know!
It occurs to me as I write about our kitchen how appropriate it is that this is the heart of our home. So many of our good friends and relatives have their time and efforts built in to every nail and groutline and coat of paint here. With all of the great rooms in our house it's possible to hang out and socialize in at our home, it is inevitably our kitchen everyone congregates in. As a perfect illustration of how important this room is, it's always the first place Big Eddy Hill members listen to recordings of our music! B Scott Duke swears by the little Bose speakers we have stationed on the countertop, but I think it's more than that. I think it's the good karma of all those who've left something of themselves here that makes the music sound so good...
Thanks guys - we'll never forget it:
Phil Kane - British Carpentry
Frank Simeon Mix
Cole Caldwell - Caldwell Tile
David Henderson - Henderson Electric
Lamar and Lynda Bridges
Super Duper Woody Cooper
Ray and Carolyn Karrer
Mark Wagner

Number 3.....There's nothing quite like a good rationalization....

2009-06-27T21:17:00.000-07:00

Being the great indoorsmen that we are, we rationalized that we needed a space where we could "let out hair down" and enjoy a good movie and our music collection. Living in a typical Midtown house, most of the rooms in our historic home are chopped up and rather on the small side. So up we went to the attic. Sorry I don't have any photos of the before, but trust me, you're better off. The most uneven and sorry sheetrock job in history hung in part of the attic - it had formerly been a boy's bedroom - with one poor window unit cooling those poor kids in a Southern summer, they probably wanted to escape their attic more than Anne Frank did. Sorry, I know that was tastless.

Of course every hang out spot needs a bar - so my husband and our British carpenter, Phil, who we love, came up with the idea for a copper surfaced bar. My do it yourself husband strode up to the local Home Depot and came home with two ball peen hammers....
Six weeks of bone shattering, pounding labor ensued for my man. Six weeks of incessant banging later, our border collie and I will never quite be the same either. Our dog can now fall asleep un impeded during a full volume jamming session of "Back in Black."

The results were well worth it though, our friends now beg us to have more parties on "number three" as we so sophisticatingly call our hang out spot. We had the walls painted in a chocolate brown matte color to make the sloping walls recede, and decked out all the woodwork and wooden floors in stark and clean white. We thought we would end up using number 3 more in the winter months - kind of like a couple of hibernating bears, but it ends up we use it more in the hot summer months because the colors keep it feeling so cool!

A Happy but Expensive Ending to the Bathroom Saga

2009-06-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

After we licked our wounds for awhile - not long - because it was too painful to look at the scraped up tile beds, we used the tried and true approach of calling the best tile supplier in town and getting a list of the installers they recommended. The first guy I scared off by demanding a guarantee for the work and explaining what had already occurred - he ran like the wind. The second guy, Cole, we clicked with immediately, he felt as bad about what had occurred as if he'd been responsible himself. He reassured me totally and GUARANTEED that he could make our bathroom look beautiful. Because of the money we had lost on our original tile, we had to make some sacrifices. I was by this time so burned on the paper faced glass mosaic tile that we chose some safe choices: white subway tile for the walls, and 12" x 12" carerra marble for the floors. Gone were my MCM dreams, but who knows, maybe it ended up being a better choice. The subway tile and marble are perfectly in keeping with the age and style of our home, and for resale purposes couldn't be more neutral. The faucets arrived from Chicago Faucets and were fabulous, and as a final splurge, I ordered a Dale Chihuly knock off mini chandelier for the bathroom at the NY Gift Show. It was a pricey end to the reno, but in my book there is no better money spent than on distinctive lighting, it is what truly sets apart an interior. Please, please, please do a little more searching than Home Depot or Lowe's people! It's worth it!

Bathroom Saga cont.....

2009-06-27T13:58:00.000-07:00

After all the sheetrock dust had settled and the groovy new tile had arrived, fate intervened as a friend of my husband's said he knew just the man for the installation, his son-in-law. Now this guy made his living tiling, he had even tiled part of the brand new Fed Ex Forum here in Memphis, so we felt confident that he knew everything about tile! And the price he gave us? $500! So off I trot to work without a care in the world - just knowing that I would come home to a beautiful new bathroom. First alarm bell sounded when my husband, who works from home, called to ask me if I was sure that the paper side of the tile was installed face up, as the installer seemed unsure on this point. This should have triggered me to come home immediately and tell the dude the deal was off, but oh no, not me. Talked to the guy, straightened him out and went back to work. Sure enough, when I come home all the tile had been installed correctly with the paper side out, (you have to leave the tile this way for 24 hours before removing the paper.) I just KNEW that the next day when I came home my dream would be a reality. The next morning around 10:00 am my husband called, frantic, because it turned out that when the guys started to remove the paper facing, they had to scrape and scrape and the tile wasn't STICKING!!!! I flew home from work and ran upstairs to find a nightmare, there was my beautiful bathroom just as I had envisioned it, with the mosaic tile gleaming and beautiful with multiple pieces missing, and crunching under the feet of all of us as we walked across it and it came up as we stepped on it. All of us, including the installer, were about in tears. I finally had to make the decision which at the time felt like pulling the plug on a loved one's life support system and tell the guys to go ahead and scrape it all up - it was unsavable. I'm actually glad that I had to go back to work that day, my poor husband had to stay and listen to $1,300.00 worth of tile being scraped up and dumped in boxes and buckets. That night we furiously tried to figure out what had gone wrong - had the mastic been the wrong kind? We tried to get our money back from the internet site where we had gotten the tile - no dice and hard lesson learned. It turns out that the installer had had NO experience installing this kind of tile, and had soaked the paper the night before, right after he had installed the tile. This is big no no with paper faced tile, and makes it virtually impossible to get it off 24 hours later..... Please see photos of scraped up tile bed in our bathroom - it was probably the biggest money pit day of all our remodeling - and as sad as it is - let it be a lesson to all you remodelers out there.
Lesson One: BE CAREFUL ordering materials online! Please see if there are ratings of the website you are doing business with -
Lesson Two: ASK YOUR INSTALLER QUESTIONS! If your installer has no experience installing the products you have selected - even if they give you a great price and have great experience - think twice. We were lucky, our guy felt so bad that he ended up charging us nothing for his two days work - but his work cost us the whole price of the tile!

Bathroom remodel - Stage II

2009-06-27T13:52:00.000-07:00

Before I continue with the nightmare of the tile in a box, here are some photos of our bathroom in the remodeling phase:

Our Bathroom Remodel, AKA 1300 hundred bucks in a box...

2009-06-27T13:32:00.000-07:00

Anyone need any glass mosaic tile loose in a box? Like 150 square feet of it? It's sitting in boxes and Home Depot buckets in our garage if you do. This was the casualty of our bathroom remodeling project, which I like to call, "1,300 hundred bucks in a box." Let me start by saying that I am obsessive over a few things, one is paint color, the other is tile choice. By day, I pride myself that as a professional lighting, furniture and accessory designer that I instantly know my own mind and can make design decisions at the drop of a hat. But when I get home and have to pick a paint color or a tile for our own home I suddenly become more indecisive than the former head of FEMA. Our house is nearly 100 years old, but my vision for our upstairs bathroom was to bring some Mid Century cool to our vintage bath while at the same time preserving the charm of some of the old fixtures, i.e. the old glorious 6' clawfoot tub and stately pedestal sink. Combine that with my teeny budget and hours upon hours of websurfing and I finally had decided upon a beautiful mosaic glass tile that combined 4 different opaque and translucent shades of white. It would climb the walls and carpet the floor of our sparkling new bath. So I ordered the paper faced tiles online and procured the right kind of mastic as well and slathered with anticipation.
Then the trouble began.......

Roofer Madness!

2009-06-27T06:02:00.000-07:00

OK, so maybe it's like the crowning of Quasimoto as the King of Paris, but the new roof DOES make a difference. Of course it definitely fits into the "money pit" category, because the cost of said "crown" was almost 3 times what was anticipated. It also took that much longer to install than we thought. A thanks and shout out to the previous owners who thought nothing of installing two ponderous applications of roll roofing over the original shake shingles, as well as another layer of regular asphalt shingles. For remodelers who are new to the reroofing game, FYI cedar shake shingles must be removed one at a time, and can never be roofed over, as they will dampen and rot and swell and generally end up weighing many times their original weight over the years. The next item up for discussion is whether or not to dispense with the outdoor staircase pictured here and install it inside the building. This would allow us to side the entire side of the building and gain more yard space. We would lose some usable space inside the garage, but I think the positives still outweigh the negatives. Wish us luck!

Backyard Wars: "In the Beginning..."

2009-06-15T11:39:00.000-07:00

Yes, the dogs are cute, but don't let that distract you from the horror of the background. Yes, sadly, that is my backyard. Unfortunately the photo doesn't show the full glory of the outbuilding. It has peeling paint, a sagging door, and a staircase that is a true wonder of ingenuity! If anyone tells you that is necessary for there to be 4 posts at equal heights on the ground to support such a structure - don't believe them. It is actually possible to have a working staircase with one of the 4" x 4" posts just screwed to the outside of the building a full foot off of the ground! Getting a new roof on this old lovely today, courtesy of man with the most awesome Hispanic name ever: Jose de la Luz!(Jose of the Light). Money pit surprise of the day: oh yes the roof still had all of the original shake shingles on it that will have to be pried off one by one, and now partial new decking will not be an option. I LOVE to spend money on something so visibly exciting as a roof! Signing off to roll pennies......

yeah, I know it's not Christmas, but....

2009-05-15T14:21:00.001-07:00

This is a photo taken at Christmas in our livingroom looking through to the diningroom. We love our house, but the old home, small room layout is challenging at Christmastime. Solution? Three small Christmas trees instead of 1 big one. Where are the ornaments? In the third floor closet, where my lazy self couldn't bother to get them this year. I just told people I was doing that "woodland forest" theme - they seemed to believe me.

Memphis in May

2009-05-15T13:26:00.000-07:00

I've established this blog to chronicle all the excitement, joy, dust and financial stress of remodeling our historic home in Midtown Memphis Tennessee. The war is going on 8 years now, and shows no signs of abating. Current and next projects include, finishing guest room #1, tackling the master bedroom. Then the major project that is making us both throw up our hands - the heinous backyard and "little house" that are currently in the hands of our two dogs....
They are winning this battle - we're going to have to call for reinforcements. If anyone has a clue what type of grass will grow under the marauding paws of two 50 lb dogs and an over abundance of shade, please post!!!