Hi.
I'm Bob Vila.
Welcome to the show.
Where our remodeling project on this hundred year old two-family house is complete.
We've been creating a brand new baby nursery up on the third floor and today we'll show you the finishing touches.
Just in time too, because the stork has arrived.
So, we'll be looking at the nursery, at the furniture and some finishing touches in the bathroom.
Including a vintage tub and glass shower surround.
Stick around.
Okay.
Before we start the tour, let's recap a little bit about what the scope of this project entailed.
We not only created a new nursery room, but we've really taken over third floor attic space and some of the things that had to be done to the house.
Invisible things including pumping insulation throughout those attic spaces in between the roof rafters and also replacing some of the windows.
But anyway lets go inside and start our tour.
If you live in the upper portion of a two family house you have to get use to stairs, so from the front door we have one flight and here we are.
And there's many thing that you want to do when you are building a nursery and getting ready for a new family, one of them has to do with kid's safety.
The folks from Kidco helped us by supplying gates on the staircases.
In the kitchen they've put in all sorts of clever gadgets.
One step ahead is the other group that helped us out where we've got magnetic locks on all of the drawers and doors.
And we've got special knob covers on the stoves, so they can't fuss with that while they are toddlers and they also put in outlet covers, sliding outlet covers.
So that you don't have to worry about little ones poking anything in there.
And, h ere at the top of the stairs in the stair hall.
We have one improvement which is really important.
This house had only one bathroom and what we've done is we've carved out an area that's just about four by six feet and we've managed to totally create a powder room here.
And you know some of the features really make it elegant, like the bellacor lighting, the sconces that you see there and then the choice of cool colors for the walls and the porchier fixtures.
White porcelain lavatory, and of course the water closet, the toilet.
And, for me, what really makes it special is this iridescent blue mosaic tile from Dow tile.
Nick Beazley, our homeowner's with me now and a minute ago we were in the half-bathroom that is right off of the key hall in the living room , et cetera.
Right.
And now we're in the new master.
So architecturally , you kind of flip things right?
Correct.
When we moved in there was a little tiny half bath off the master bedroom and the main bathroom was off the hallway.
And so we reversed that thinking it would be nicer to have a little half bath that our guests could use and come and go.
And we can have our own private bathroom here.
Exactly.
Makes a lot of sense.
So you had to do a lot of demolition.
Lot of demolition.
We had to redo all the plumbing because there'd been a lot you know, old plumbing that wasn't very good.
A lot of brass that someone had a to pull out.
Right.
And the floors were out of level and had been hacked up by the previous plumber, so we redid all that, shored it up structurally, and then relayed it out.
So.
Exactly.
So we've added new windows from Pella.
Which in this case, I guess they're the two over one or is it the two over?
Two over one.
Two over one.
Which again is in the feeling of this 1890's house.
Yeah.
There are a couple of original windows left from the house and they were two over one, so we chose these to match.
Right.
I think you and your wife have done a great job with color choices around here.
Now the Corian tub surround is in a terrific blue shade.
Mm-hm.
And, of course, we had the fellows from Sterling out here who did a magnificent job of figuring out how to do the template for the tub using digital photography and computers.
Impressive.
Very impressive and it came out perfect and of course you picked a wall color that matches the bedroom so that the master bedroom and the master bath all flow together very nicely.
I really like what you've done as a solution for not having glass doors or not having just a shower curtain when you've got a situation like this tub here, where it just has a half wall with one end.
This was an interesting glass installation, done by our friends at Classic Glass, here in Stoneham, Massachusetts.
It involved finding a plum line and drilling through the tile, starting with a center punch so the drill won't wobble and damage the tile, then inserting plastic wall anchors.
The aluminum channel was made to accept three eights inch tempered glass.
It was screwed to the wall using three stainless steel screws to prevent any corrosion.
On the bottom of the glass, they applied a vinyl cushion that adhered to the edge to steel the joint and take up any variation between the surfaces.
And when that glass was set in place upside down, they they dry fit everything to be sure all dimensions are correct.
We know that the channel is level so the glass should be level.
One End of the shower curtain rod is held in place with a traditional chrome racket.
At the other end they used a specially made fitting that allows a boat to go through the glass.
It threads right into the rod and is tightened with a very small Allen wrench.
After everything was dry fit successfully, the guys reassembled it using silicone adhesive for a permanent installation and it looks great.
All right, so lets talk about the lighting fixtures.
These are all form Velacore.
And like so many components in a remodel today, you go online and you do your selections, right?
That's right.
They had a great website.
Really easy to use and they have huge selection.
Yeah.
So you've gotten these which are sort of a modern take on old fashioned glass shades that would have been hung over, you know, over a sink.
And here you got a terrific American Standard pedestal sink, which I think aesthetically works very, very well.
I mean your choices are good for an 1890's house being rehab-ed in the 21st century.
The floor is terrific.
Thank you.
Well, it's a very, very good job of unifying the whole thing, and these windows are not like the ones that I know we put in the nursery, where we have the Pella inserts.
How do, how do these work?
These are from Smith and Noble right?
Right, these are top-down, bottom-up shades.
So they can either operate like a traditional shade where they come up and down or they can come down from the top as well which we thought in the bathroom would be nice since it gives you privacy, but also allows the light in as well.
It works very well.
Great, well there's still more to see.
