a lovely new bath

Inspired by our shared intrigue of old ways and natural techniques our lovely new bathroom is a combination of earth toned slate and a Moroccan waterproof plaster technique called tadelakt. We used a lime mixture with a 'mayan green' earth pigment and surprisingly our color turned out nearly identical to our inspiration color.  My hubby has a passion for olde world building techniques and though until more recently he has mostly worked with timbers he is excited to be broadening his work to include earth plaster and earth pigments.  This sort of plaster work is not an easy feat and involves many messy steps but the outcome is breathtaking. Our new bath transports you to an old home in the European countryside, so we feel.  It is always a bit of challenge for he and I to compromise our ways. He is skilled and fine tuned and appreciates utmost attention to detail while I prefer a more primitive and rustic simplicity.  But through it all we work it out and I think we have come up with some great creations. A true representation of the two of us.

We found this beautiful antique cypress door at a local antique store and after much scraping and sanding my hubby cut the door in half to make french doors. This made the most sense as the original door took up most of the hallway when it was open.  These new doors add a great authentic olde world feel, like our very own primitive palace :).  We added rusty hardware which fits perfectly.

We added wide cypress atop the doors and window to create a beam like look.  We used the original trim around the parellels of the doors and window but we scraped and sanded through to the wood to change them up and add to the overall rustic appeal.

I love the geode and crystal knobs we picked up at Anthropologie on a recent trip to New Orleans.

a tiny antique afghani wool rug... scored on ebay for a great $25

and heres a look at some before and during...

You can never be sure what you'll find when you start to take apart an old house. We had anticipated some work but my goodness. We had to replace a decent portion of the sub floor, we had to change the side of the plumbing for the shower because we did not consider that when we bought our new/old tub. With that though we plumbed our grey water from the tub into our garden which is super exciting for us.

this little man means serious business ya'll

I am so glad this is finished.  Honestly I am horrible at renovating, at least emotionally. It makes me kinda crazy.  Highly irritable and cranky due to all the chaos and mess. Of course I try to contain it mostly but that in itself can make one want to bust ya know. Ain't that ashame. My poor hubby. He is so sensitive to my ways too.  Again, let me just say WE ARE THRILLED this is finished. He worked so hard and did such a great job. This was our summer vacation for the most part.  We had talked of plans for a week long road trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains but instead we spent that time and money on a long awaited, often talked about bathroom remodel. Now that is said and done and beautiful!  Neeeext...

You can find more pictures of our original bath here and more pics and stories of our home here.