Naturally, you must be curious about our new bathroom – what we’ve called our real bathroom, in contrast to the water closet on the first floor.

Well, for now, so are we.

As we considered our shrinking funding options, we admitted we didn’t have to finish the upstairs bathroom at this point, though having it done would deliver a definite quality of life improvement.

We wanted a tub that would be deep enough for a real soak – one that I could actually fit into without attempting hatha yoga with water. The tub also had to have a left-hand drain if we were to avoid having the pipe run against the outside wall, where it might freeze and burst in deep winter.

Our original choice, built-in or alcove, switched to a free-standing model after seeing one in a neighbor’s home during a party. We went back a week later to get a second look and measurements.

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The toilet had to be a back-flushing model due to a shallow space in the flooring.

Having lighting above the sink and electrical outlets in the room would be huge advances over the water closet downstairs, as we learned in the 4½ years of its being our only option. Do note that having a carpenter who was also a licensed electrician meant that all of the lines and outlets would be in place before the drywall went up.

As for storage? A large medicine cabinet and a vanity for the sink are considered boffo additions, ones you probably take for granted in your own digs.

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But once the bathroom and laundry room were plumbed, awaiting the next steps, we ran into complications.

First was actually ordering the tub and toilet and getting them delivered to our remote locale. Getting agreement on some of the selections added to our delay. Our plumber kept delaying, too, especially once in took a lucrative gig out in Indiana and then further out in Seattle. A potential replacement wasn’t interested in delivering what we wanted rather than the generic stuff they had it stock. All the while, our available money went to other parts of the renovation. So for, now, alas, this is moved over the next phase, whenever.

 

When the upstairs finally became available, we began moving items from the first floor and a few boxes from the storage units.

My new bedroom/studio was the first one to be fully ready for occupancy. It’s the smallest of the four, while the front two rooms were still being used by the carpenters as they worked on the front exterior. They still have some tweaks before coming into their intended use. The fourth, our guestroom, is at the moment mostly storage. This does seem to feel like musical chairs.

Still, things that had long been packed away have finally came out into daylight and become accessible. We’ve even had some more room to stir about in.

Not for long, though. The future dining room aka my former bedroom/studio was quickly designated as a staging area when we cleared out our storage unit at the other end of the state. In time, it will likely be a storage space when we get to renovating the kitchen and downstairs bathroom. Those Ikea kitchen cabinets, for one, will take up a lot of room somewhere before they go up on the wall. As for appliances? Or an extra sawhorse or two?

And we thought we were done with that sense of camping in this house?

Get ready for Phase Two, hopefully still in my lifetime.

You may have guessed we’ve taken tons of photos of the renovations in our historic home. You’ve been viewing some as progress reports in this weekly series, but those show steps along the way.

Sometimes it’s helpful to skip over those, going straight from how things looked at the beginning and then leaping to what the work delivered in the upstairs phase of renovations.

Should you be interested in that comparison, I’ve assembled a gallery of before-and-after contrasts in a free photo album, one I’m making available to you, should you be interested.

As I’ll explain next week, we’re hardly as far along as we had hoped. So I’m calling the album “Before & Midway After.”

In assembling the photographs, I was emotionally overrun in seeing how dramatic some of the advances have been. It’s helpful in facing the remaining work ahead.

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That said, check out the free tour at Thistle Finch editions.

You’ll also find the history of the house and its previous residents in another booklet, should you be curious.

Most of us, I suspect, seldom think about them at all – they’re just there, open-or-shut as we move on to something else or perhaps seek some privacy. Oh, sometimes they stick or squeak or the knob needs tightening, but for the most part we rarely even see them. As for simply walking into one, BLAM! Sometimes it’s not a joke or only a black eye.

As perspective, when our renovation project began, I was occupying a bedroom that had no door. Ours is an old house, after all, and the back parlor, as we also call the room, sat off the kitchen and our tiny bathroom. At least the bathroom had a door, though it didn’t close fully. As a matter of fact, few of the indoor doors in our house closed fully and the exterior ones were equally suspect.

Adam, our amazing contractor, raised another question about which way each of our upcoming doors would open. I assumed, erroneously, that they would be situated to minimize obstruction of open space. Instead, it seems that doors conventionally open with the right hand. Not the left. From either side, at that. Try it and let me know if I’m wrong.

The discussion thickened, no pun intended, when one of the coconspirators in this renovation declared she wouldn’t have hollow-core doors in the house, not even the bedrooms. My leaning for two of the upstairs bedrooms had been for Japanese-style curtains and for leaving the laundry room open. But then considerations of noise, privacy, and smoke-and-fire emergencies overruled me. A bathroom, of course, needs a solid closure, period. Would ours upstairs have a frosted window, like the one downstairs? As you see, this can get complicated. Those popular flip-this house cable TV programs are so lacking.

But back to topic.

The other coconspirator proposed picking up antique doors salvaged from other renovation projects, and we decided to go that route. They didn’t even have to match, did they?

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Still ahead was what to do with the two exterior doors downstairs.

They were leaky, as far as bad weather went, warped, and rotting. The front door presents a neighborhood impression as well as the challenge of upholding the town’s historical character. Its storm door had already fallen away, due to frame warping.

To see some examples of exterior doors of Eastport homes, take a look at the Doors Fit for a Cape photo album at Thistle Finch editions.

In the original layouts for the upstairs, I thought a laundry room was pushing our limits. On the other hand, I didn’t want a washer and dryer in the bathroom, either. That just would have looked, well, utilitarian. Besides, keeping them separate would avert crowding when competing uses erupted.

So what would be wrong with keeping them downstairs?

That’s when the fact that we would have to carry our laundry up and down stairs was pointed out to me. They’re the bulk of our wash load.

OK, I relented and was willing to go see where the new plan would lead.

I had to admit that no longer having it in my bedroom and studio was going to come as a relief.

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What I’m seeing now is how much this “luxury” really enhances our daily living, starting with the sheets and blankets storage.

I’ve long been a fan of having elbow space as part of my work area. For perspective, I recommend Richard Swenen’s 1992 bestseller, Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives.

The laundry room – and the slightly wider than normal hallway between it and the stairwell – reflect that thinking.

The laundry tub also fits into that idea of margin, with its deep bowl facilitating household and painting projects cleanup more easily than a bathtub does.

Add to that the ease of ironing.

There’s even thought of running a clothesline out from the window.

Frankly, I’m not so sure about that, though I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.