The Bathroom Palette on a Budget

I love it. When the palette and components all pull together. It delights both the designer and the project manager in me. There's a lovely, satisfied release seeing it all lock together and take on its own life!               

Normally I have the core idea, and get the base pieces. Then I let each piece inform the surrounding pieces once it's in place. 

That habit comes from years of doing the rehab work myself. Being on the site every day gives you the opportunity to see pieces "in situ." That tells you a lot about the direction the rest must go. For example, I added a sandblasted art glass window to a dressing room, after I placed the built-in dressing table. I could just see how sandblasting the only window offered the needed privacy while letting natural light shine into the space. (And I got to design a unique window as well.) I like the feel of layering and growing the design theme in response to what's there.

Loni cutting the window resist

But my contractor Tim asked that I get everything chosen, bought, and delivered before he began any work. You know, essentially making all the design decisions at once. It makes sense of course, but it can be daunting.

If you're buying online as well as at local stores, purchasing several items at once gets you free shipping - no small chunk of change when items like tubs are involved. But that means you have to visualize how the vanity light fixture in brushed nickel will look with the tub doors that you've only seen as online "pictures". What's the scale of the design element? How does the polished "this" really look with the brushed "that"? Trust your sensibilities. Play! It does pull together and it is enjoyable to do. There's a total "Yes!" when it arrives, you lay it all out, and see how the materials and textures interplay.

In our new bath, the Designer me was inspired by one piece: the sandblasted Cavata tub doors by Kohler you see below. It created the whole textural palette that runs through the elements of the bath. 

Kohler Cavata sandblasted door

Once I found these doors with the light cross-hatched pattern, everything I added in some way incorporated that texture. Sandblasting expanded into frosted tile, and also became brushed nickel metallics. Then, as I found the next pieces, their shape, material or texture added additional conventions to the look. Now it was squared and frosted, brushed metal,etc. 

The challenge of course is to make it all hang together without looking like those women's jewelry sets of the 50's. You know, the identically matching earrings, necklace and bracelet numbers? So while all the metal is very square in feel, I'm mixing the polished chrome you see in the elegant tub spout in the top picture and bright square vanity hardware, with brushed nickel pieces to make the feel modern, more eclectic, and more visually engaging.

And yesterday, I bought the paint for the master bath, hallway and new alcove. (On sale, of course!) You can see the two colors I'm using in the bath tucked under the paint can, just below the white edge tile. That was a lovely, focused day carefully looking at tones, and undertones, grouping pieces to see their impact on each other. My goal was finding a palette that was subtle yet rich enough to catch some of the lively brown tile, but not too vintage that it would gray out the floor's white. See how the sandalwood tones just pull at the yummy "city lights" tile palette? And that mix really glows against the creamy white field tile. In a room without natural light....that's exactly what I need.

The brushed nickel multi-rectangular element is my vanity light fixture.Terrific yes? It has sandblasted lights that pick up the cross-hatched sandblasted pattern of my tub doors and the frosted  "city lights" tiles. So that finishes out everything needed for my Phase 2 redesign.

Remember that this design work was done on a slim, slim budget. Understanding that good design works deeply around one idea, you can let a single piece inspire and be your focus. Then as you judiciously buy what surrounds it, you can let go of other ideas (as I've mentioned in earlier posts here and here ) Concentrating that focus can be powerful. Or use good, budget-wise pieces to broaden the design conversation, as I did. Just make sure it's only one conversation!

PHASE 2: The Blue Cabinet

I am looking for my blue cabinet. Like this:

  
Weary, chipped,..... and so full of character.

I lived with this one for a vacation week in Mendocino last summer. As you see, the rest of the kitchen is modern, Danish clean, and obviously a choice owner Ron made to update what is essentially an1880's shanty.

Mendo's Garden Cottage

But this playful piece matches nothing else in the sleek creme and white kitchen. It just has to have a story around it. But I didn't want to ask Ron, in case it wasn't as provocative as my own musings about Mendo's past.





I know just where I want my cabinet to go in my kitchen. Here in that little recessed niche over the housemate fridge:

I love how the rich color says, "Look at me! Aren't I special?" More than that, in my kitchen it will say, "Loni lives here, and this gives you a hint about who she is." I see mine as green. Glass doors would be fun, but I'll take the character that I find and let it create its own story.

Since all my Phase 2 drawings are finally done and ready for Tim, I went shopping at Urban Ore, our local salvage recycling yard, or as they call it their Eco-Park.  No luck. But I'm still hoping to find other opportunities and places where I might find it. I could buy an inexpensive IKEA 30"x24" cabinet, distress, and antique it with my table milk paint. Won't have the period piece feel quite, so I'm holding out. It's an on-going hunt that I am enjoying between other tasks, and hopefully another weekend project that will have its own resonant feeling of putting myself into my house, as this Christmas table project did.



And I will write more about The Garden Cottage too. It's an example that can teach us how to use groups of buildings to achieve an amazing, and wonderfully intimate sense of "home." Ron has done many creative things to make the place unique and welcoming. It's an inspiring case study with many lessons.

A Gathering of the Feminine

I went to listen.

I wanted to hear the concerns and goals, and meet the people who took time out of their current living situations to talk about and consider living in a women centered collective.

We ranged in age from 30-60 something. We sat around a table in a relaxed commons kitchen in Oakland. And after a bit of ritual and appetizer tasting, we took turns speaking about what we each wanted from a place shared with others. Feelings that could lead to a vision statement for such a collective.

How did we each really want to live?

Phrases like developing relationships as a focus rather than commodity ownership were spoken. Honoring, both elders and others, and growing a culture of health. A love of warmth, sun and moisture. Wanting integrity and commitment that one can rely upon. A joy in movement, ritual, and music,.. and the smell of fresh earth. Time for meditation,  for family. Wanting the joy of doing together, and many hopes for extended family and layered circles of friendship. Being bodily comfortable. Simplified, meaningful living. A need for creativity as a part of everyday. I added talent sharing and asked for a stepping up to the bar with one's skills, but pairing that with a release to another's skilled lead.

And after all the wishes and ideals came up, Abigail spoke eloquently about the reality of community living. That what we meet over the initial months, and what we bring to the initial months is not all. Ultimately over time whatever we are personally working on will come to the table too, ours and everyone else's. The public personae will fall away, and that's as it should be. She knew that it was at that point that true relationship and deep connections happen.

For two hours, I sat amongst a group of women who for the majority had not met each other before. We never once needed to chit chat about favorite movies, or the weather. We started the conversation at a deep, yet comfortable place for us all. Real.

So why am I drawn to those who hunger for collective living, you ask?

Phase I: Lessons in Sustainable Space Planning

I still have four or so posts to create  - and all their attendant visuals - to finish sharing our Phase I changes with you. But I have been thinking about what's happened thus far, and since we're beginning the rip-out for Phase 2, I can't help but assess and reflect.

If you've been reading Shelter&, you know that I purposefully gave Phase I a slim budget. For several reasons: 

• For me, the most exploratory purpose

Phase I: BEFORE - The Grand Toad

She is our house's namesake - Toadhall - our great room in the back. And the reason we bought this place.  

Let me set the scene: An expansive 42' x 23' room, mostly green plexiglass for walls. One pane has a smiley face scratched into it. Eleven foot high wooden ceilings with amazingly heavy support beams, a huge10' x 18' multiple-paned skylight in the middle.  
 
Where there are walls, they're covered with ugly brown exterior siding that matches the dark brown, cream and, yes, orange back porch you reach through double glass sliders from the kitchen. 

A Date with My Demo Man

TJ is getting into this full bore.

We've got just over two weeks until our contractor starts, and TJ has taken it upon himself to organize and do the entire new master bath rip out. We are going down to studs in what was the old laundry room. 

Door that leads to kitchen.

Wall that will have tub.

Ranch 99 Market

At some point this evening, TJ and I became aware that our housemates still weren't home well after 7:30pm. The summer light was still bright, and we weren't concerned, though we tend to keep an ear for Melissa, since she travels on buses from the other end of town. 

But finally they tumbled in the door at once and both were loaded down with cases of tropical fruit, greens and daikon. Seems they coordinated a shopping trip together to a great Asian produce market that I knew nothing about called Ranch 99.

 

Minutes later our new kitchen prep areas looked like this:

It also seems TJ and I are also invited to a planned group "diakon cake" making lesson that Stephen will lead.

 

Six weeks ago they didn't know each other.

Phase I - KITCHEN #4 - The Extra Fridge

So along with all this rearranging in our kitchen, I did an experiment with my fridge. Originally back in December, I decided to buy a housemate fridge. That meant finding a place for it. I decided that if I bought one just a bit smaller, it would fit into the fridge alcove. But then our fridge needed to move. Where? I wanted to try next to the dishwasher. To see how that would feel, TJ, Rae and I moved our fridge over right after we did the chimney  (Part #1 in this series), and created the new work stations (Part #2). Could we get used to the fridge right there, or would it feel in the way?

To our surprise, it felt terrific!

For years we had moved around the island as shown to the left to prepare a meal. We got our food from the fridge, dumping the fixings on the small side of the island that was most reachable. Then we carried it all to the sink to clean, to then carry it to the other small side of the island to chop and throw into pots, or walked all the way to the far corner of the kitchen to pop things into the microwave. Because our micro is also a convection oven, we use it a great deal, cooking rice, and steaming veggies.
                                                                                                                             But as you see here, meal prep now lives in two tighter triangles on one side of the island. When we open our fridge, we place the washables immediately on the sink counter. Turn around and we're right where we need to cook. The microwave is closer to the prep areas too. And when our housemates are prepping food at their new stations, we're not in their way.


 So we kept the new position for our fridge, and purchased a new fridge for our housemates that just fit into the existing alcove you see in the plan below:

 

And there's more. Here's a sneak peak into Phase 2.

As you see here, I've noted a new, decently-sized alcove where the housemate fridge will ultimately go when we finish Phase 2 (Click to get a slide show of all pictures.) Creating that new space - and buying a fridge that opens in the proper direction- allows their fridge to open right onto the edge of the purple area where they prepare food.


It's not ideal since our housemates must move into the rose colored area when they need to wash or cook. If I had the budget, I'd put a second sink into the new counter by the chimney. (Maybe that will be a Phase 3 in future.) Doing that would create circulation triangles on each side of the island.

For now, it's working.

I love how piles of chopped fresh food fill the butcher blocks. Being vegetarian, Stephen likes to use the main island area to cut up his many assorted veggies. Then he grabs a bunch with both hands, reaches straight across to drop them into the hot pan on the stovetop. It sizzles.

We all take turns at the sink, cooktop or microwave, chattering about our day.

Phase I: KITCHEN #3 - The Serendipitous Delightful Palette

Here are the earlier posts about my kitchen rethinking. Each link opens in a new window so you can pop back here to continue the series:

Phase I: KITCHEN #1 - A Touch of Story

Phase I: KITCHEN #2 - How Intending Multi-Use Improved What We'd Grown Accustomed To

My Country For A Palette

No natural light reaches my kitchen without traveling through another room first. Windows are too far away. So one of the prior owners painted the kitchen all white. It's an honest impulse being the lightest tint. The floors are white, the walls are white, as are the counter surfaces, all the base and upper cabinetry, and the pantry doors. Everything, save some wood trim on counter edges, drawer and cabinet door fronts,....is white. But even with that touch of wood, the kitchen feels bland. Literally colorless. 

When we moved in, I wanted to add some color, something rich. And not wanting the typical kitchen-y yellow or green, I aimed for a bolder terracotta. It would give a nice groundedness to the bottom of the room, and the white uppers and counters would still add a brightness.

But the paint job came out a peachy orange. It wasn't horrible, but I wasn't thrilled. I'm still not.

I live with it, assuming that when I finally remodel this kitchen to make it flow better (Vortex Kitchen, remember?), I'll do something classy.

So the time has come. And my first thoughts in bringing our house story in here is this wonderful vintage palette below, with lots of sepia in it. Very Victorian. Done judiciously, I think that color fits into the modern, yet old world flavor palette I'm aiming at. (See Old Lady Furniture about that story.)

Phase I's Reality

As we are moving through our Phase I, the reality of designing this house for a wider and more collective use is making me selective. Selective about physical things, which is all to the good. But also about ideas. I am loosening my hold on "designing", per se. By that I mean, overlaying a design onto a space, even a good design. I have worried some that it would feel unfinished if I did less than a full-blown design story throughout. But instead I am discovering the reverse. Hidden inside this letting go, there is serendipity! There is more reusing things in fresh ways. And even better, there is rediscovering my delight. And that assembles into a more authentic, unique story. Ours!

So, I told you in Step 2  that I finished my second work station by throwing down a small area rug to invite housemates to use the area. Where did that come from? 

A room where it didn't work. Last year, I painted the kids upstairs bathroom an amazing apple green. Later, I happened upon a vibrant striped rug while shopping, and bought it, hoping it would work in the bathroom. But the bathroom is long and has a two-sink vanity. The rug looked too inconsequential. 

I held onto it because the palette pleased me.(I told myself that I didn't have anything else to use there for the moment.) So I just left it in there as the shower rug. And not using that bathroom, I totally forgot about it.

Well, look what happened! Somewhere inside me, this palette was meant to be a part of my house story. When my daughter Rae and I went shopping for the Common areas odds and ends last November, we bought placemats for the new harvest table, soap dishes, a shower caddy, small bathroom accessories and new dishtowels. (Ah, there's something about dishtowels.They're always grabbed when the potholder isn't within reach, or whenever you need something between you and whatever. They're constantly rubbed on wet hands and across kitchen surfaces too. I'm afraid mine quickly slip into raggedness without my noticing. ....and I still will use them. I won't embarrass mine with a picture.)

When I was buying placemats, I was looking at vintage greens and soft colors for the dining room. Understated.The soap dispensers for the kitchen were the bisque white and oiled brass that would work with the country style. But this is the dishtowel pack I picked....even as I clung to the vintage green kitchen in my future:

It was over a week before I realized how the rug and the towels worked together:

Now I am pleased with my peachy base cabinets.They will stay. They say playful in a very "me" way to my housemates. This is so much more organic than an imposed design theme. It grew from what I had obviously been drawn too, while it saved me dollars.

And now here's the last bit of serendipity. Do you remember the post ,Hinting at Story, Hinting at Period where I express how much I adore the Florida Cracker House palettes? They're colorful, bold and playful. Well, here it is! Rather than the subdued,Victorian kitchen that would "tell the proper story", I have a bright upbeat Cracker House kitchen.

I realize now that  instead of "what's my house's design story?", I should be asking "What delights me?" This cheery palette does and it works. Brightens my spirits in a way that even a very classy Vintage would not.

Now I have two housemates. Instead of gathering around the big country table as I first assumed, we all lean in places around the kitchen, with our bowls and cups in our hands, and we talk. Does my Cracker-colored kitchen contribute to that? If it was more vintage would the darker, formal feeling move us on our way ? Dunno. But I think the cheery me in this kitchen attracts them, and I'll take community where it comes. In this case, I believe it is organically designed into the room.