I thought about getting the bath started before writing this entry, but I’ve come to learn that filling a bath tub is a bit like boiling water. The second you take your eyes off of it, it’s ready. Usually passed ready. Usually cold.
At this point in my life I’ve helped build or remodel maybe 100 houses, start to finish, and how it’s done is more interesting than you can imagine. There are many ways of doing things. A handful compete over which is the most cost effective and efficient, and a broader range of possibilities open up when there is money to spare for different/fancier materials, and more robust internal systems/infrastructure- but not as many options as you think.
I’ve had more than a few customers request old fashioned materials. One customer wanted his entire house built to match an 1800s Victorian, galvanized water lines, cast iron drain stacks, brick archways and all. But a lot of that old stuff is impossible now. You can’t balloon frame a house anymore with true 2by6 floor joists because mills haven’t cut wood the actual size it’s called (now when you get a 2by6 it’s actually more like a 1.5by5.5) in forever, and balloon framing is a fire code violation. You can’t do cast iron drain stacks because lead and oakum joint sealing is a lost/dead art.
The old stuff was hand carved, back before there was TV or even Radio to entertain folks, so getting damn good at whittling was commonplace. Good luck finding a single person who could pull that off now, let alone pull it off for a reasonable price.
The more houses I built with dogshit modern materials (soft young white pine and particle board) the more I obsessively appreciated gilded age construction. Where I live, almost a majority of the homes are from that era, so I am quite used to them. Grew up in them. Friends grew up in them. Naturally, I had to own one of my own when I bought a house. In fact, a house from that era that hadn’t been remodeled into an abomination was the only prerequisite I had when I was house shopping back in 2018.
Even though homes from that era are incredibly common around here, almost all of them have been gutted and redone on the inside- most of them several times over, leaving almost nothing from the original structure and a whole lot of adhoc bullshit in its place. Any time I would look at a beautiful gabled home from the outside to the millenial grey home-flipper special interior, I wanted to puke in my mouth. Those were all Hard No’s for me.
I wanted something with solid bones that I could work on and restore myself.
I said ‘no’ to houses for two years before I noticed the hand written ‘for sale’ sign the old lady down the street from my apartment made and put in the yard of the house I’d eventually buy. I cut my relator out of the deal completely, which was a bummer for him, but OH WELL.
The house was carpeted from head to toe, and had some dark brown late 70s wall panels put on top of the living room and dining room walls, but every part of the original house was just buried underneath it, old growth wooden flooring and all. Even the 30 or however many windows were all the original sash windows with the ancient melting glass (dreamy glass, I call it), and the wiring is still half knob and tube- though the 80s remodel updated some of the wiring to include grounding wires.
So I have been blissfully tinkering away on it since, starting with shoring up the major parts of it that were collapsing- a new roof, old was shot, new brick chimney, old was shot, new deck to replace the rotting one- replaced and re-flashed a lot of rim joist (giant ass wooden beams in my case), jacked up and supported a wall that was falling into the basement because some genius cut the end of the floor support that was holding it up out to make room for a dryer vent.
After that, I started going room to room, stripping it (slowly, seductively) down to bare 1890s wood, lath, and plaster- and lovingly working with exactly what is there to make it new while keeping it old and original in a way that does not happen at all, anywhere, in construction ville.
I work illegally, doing things that require permits, but watch me give a fuck. I know more than those idiots, and although it may sound like hubris it is sadly just a fact.
There is a section of building codes that I agree with always, regarding structural soundness and proper engineering- but there is another section that is treated as being just as important that simply is not. Things like making sure an electrical box has an entire football field of empty space around it so the electrician can get a pedicure comfortably while he’s swapping out a breaker. And I don’t care to have inspectors or any government employees in my home for any reason, so I work under the radar and do whatever I want, which in most cases is overkill.
If this were a normal job site, my cracked plaster walls would have been ripped out and a drywaller would have come in and hung sheet rock in its place. But sheet rock is very clean looking, very smooth. Very uniform, and modern. Plaster has more of a concrete feel to it. More little imperfections. I painstakingly kept it in every room of the house through a long process of stitching it back to the lath behind it with glue and special washers, then filling the cracks with fresh plaster and sanding it all smooth before painting.
The floors I also stripped, even where covered in black mastic (melted tire rubber and asbestos), which on a normal job site would either be cut out and replaced with modern tongue and groove, or just floored over with a fresh layer of paneling or linoleum. I have gone to town with a special stripping wheel on a 4” angle grinder and brought my wood down to the first virgin layer I could reach before sanding it baby smooth and coating with a coat of poly to make it shine, protect it from water, and bring out the pretty wood grain.
The second room I completed was the second bedroom upstairs (the first was the first bedroom upstairs), though I converted that second bedroom into a bathroom with a beautiful clawfoot tub that I got out of an old victorian cottage that was being torn down.
When I tell you that going in that room and closing the door to take a bath feels like walking into the garden of eden to me, it is almost an understatement.
The old wood is so soft to the foot, and just the knowledge that I have for every square inch of that space that I worshiped into reality- the pale pink walls, the high gloss white trim with the corner spindles, the little metal butterfly pull chain on the old ceiling light fixture, the rebuilt sash window with the dream glass, the candle wall sconces and old paintings of roman women and stack of plants by the window and eucalyptus bath salts and candles all come together with the warm water and my projector TV behind me and my charcuterie board of ice water, fruit, champagne, and marijuana to cultivate an atmosphere and scene that is second only to heaven itself.
It’s a good thing I didn’t start the bath before I started writing this.
But I am going to go do that now…
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