Heater Grate Update

The heat source in our master bathroom is an in-wall electric heater with fan mounted on the outside wall between the toilet and the tub - highly visible.  It is controlled by a thermostat on the wall just inside the bathroom door, which explains why there is no knob on the hole in the lower left corner.  

I'd like to say it doesn't matter to me what the grill over the heater looks like, but I care a lot.  And this thing makes me sad, especially since we put down a beautiful marble floor and are installing a claw foot tub with classic brass filler and so forth.  This thing just doesn't go.

But not to worry, I am prepared.  I was at BIG NYC a few weeks ago and I spied a vintage cast iron heat register grill with lovely scrollwork.  It was downright cheap so I bought it figuring I would find a use for it.  Looks like it will have a place in our house much sooner than expected.

I am thinking I will paint it off-white and mount it about a half inch off the wall, just in front of the existing sheet metal heater grate. I don't want to get rid of the existing grate because the holes are smaller and I don't want any little fingers getting in there through the big holes in the scrollwork grate.  Yes, I know that the existing heater grate shows through the scrollwork, but that is just because it is white - I intend to paint it flat black so that (hopefully) it looks empty behind the top grate.

DESIGN IDEA: Vintage Soapstone Sinks? Cheap and abundant, but workable?

(Note to reader - all photos are from elsewhere on the web)

We haven't chosen a kitchen sink yet, but the time is nigh (does that mean what I think it means?).  Anyway, we have been talking about getting a farmhouse sink, whatever that means.  The term "farmhouse sink" seems to cover anything from a brand new apron front firestone sink to a great big cast iron slop sink with washboards on either side to the monstrously heavy "soapstone" sinks that used to be popular in basement laundry rooms to any big old dirty tub anybody on CL is hoping to get out of their basement.  

The new firestone sinks aren't going anywhere anytime soon and they cost a little bundle, so we can talk about those some other later if nothing else works out.  And the big cast iron ones are just so gosh darn wide (since this is about things "country" I'm taking "gosh darn" out for a test drive) with the big washboards on either side - so they just wouldn't work against a curved wall - plus they are usually missing a big ring of enamel around the drain hole and have a dark circle of exposed iron which is no fun at all.  

And then there are these massive old soapstone sinks.  A lot of them seem to come from Alberene, a company that is still in business ("The Alberene Soapstone Company was founded in 1888 after large deposits of soapstone were discovered in the foothills of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains." and so on (http://www.alberenesoapstone.com/why-alberene-soapstone/about-alberene-soapstone)).  They came in single basin and double basin and had a brass or bronze medallion on the front and looked pretty much like some variation on this...

And they sometimes sat on heavy cast iron legs (but good luck finding a pair of these. I have visions of them electroplated gold - oooooh!!)

And there are a lot of them out there for sale for anywhere from $75 to $500 - but plenty turn up on CL in the affordable range. 

They are big and heavy and invariably filthy, but since they are made of soapstone which is not porous, so it seems they can be cleaned up!

Apparently, if you sand these sinks down and then rub in some mineral oil, they clean up pretty nice.

These two following are pretty much the most realistic inspiration photos since they are the most common model of old Alberene double basin sinks.

 

And here are some more examples:

And since they lend themselves to wall mounted faucets, you can do fun stuff like this:

What do we think?
 
Some Links:
Here is a guy who did it himself: http://myhouserepair.blogspot.com/

And here is another great link: http://www.cultivate.com/blog/why-you-should-try-salvaged-kitchen-sink

CL Find - Clawfoot Tub

Looks like we might have scored a nice new clawfoot tub with hardware on CL today super-duper cheap.  I hope I hope I hope.  I was apparently the first one to call and I agreed to the price and we are picking it up on Saturday morning.  So, I am praying that the seller doesn't for some reason go ahead and sell it or give it to someone else or change his mind about the price or some other such bummer thing that can easily happen with CL finds of this sort.
Anyway, it is a Waterworks cast iron clawfoot tub with Waterworks nickel plated brass hardware.  Super exciting if it happens.
Here it is.  (NOTE: There is a tiny spec of chipped porcelain on the tub - hence the price - this is what the finger is pointing to in the picture way below - I think it must have just been a tiny bubble that popped - no biggie in any event).

 

Lumber Van - Part II

We got a 12 ft cargo van yesterday morning (same van they gave me 2 weeks ago) and V and I loaded up all the maple flooring I collected over the past two weeks from a nearby dumpster (looks to be about 300 sq ft).  We didn't get a pic of the wood in the back of the van, but this is the wood after we moved it into the house - it is stacked on the upper landing outside the main floor.  To give you a sense of scale, the stack is about six feet long end to end and is four rows deep.  So it's a lot of wood!

Then we drove over to Jersey City to pick up the reclaimed cedar water tower staves I found on Craigslist. These are mostly 2"x5"s and there are are about 44 10ft lengths - but those have some rot about two feet from the end, so they are probably going to end up yielding about 6-7 feet of usable decking after cutting and planing.  We also got about 50 4 foot lengths which will lose about a foot each in the clean-up process.

Note that way way back in the load, just behind the seats, you can see some tin ceiling tiles that I picked up cheap on Craigslist this week in the neighborhood.

Finally, we picked up a table I bought on ebay 2 months ago.  The seller was in Ohio, but the guy who sold me the cedar hooked me up with someone who was driving back from Ohio on Thursday so, for a reasonable price, he picked it up in Ohio and dropped it off in Jersey City.  Note that the table top isn't pictured here - it is cast iron and weighs a ton so we left it outside - we're going to put some sort of custom (i.e., made by us!) wood table-top on this anyway.

And that was how we spent our day yesterday - loading all this stuff in and then out.

design idea - chandelier pulley

Once I finish the big, dark, industrial chandelier, I am going to need to suspend it from the ceiling.  I know I haven't begun work on the chandelier yet, but it is never too early to begin imagining how it will be suspended.  My thought has been to run a chain or rope or cable through a big pulley mounted to the ceiling.  But which pulley?
There are so many lovely old pulleys of roughly the same vintage as the dumbwaiter pulley that I am using as the heart of the chandelier.  Below are some samples I found quickly on the internet. Note that a good many of them are made by the same company, Myers, that made the barn door roller-pulleys we got to carry the interior door from the box to the tube.  So check them out (click on the pix to enlarge):