Saturday, February 21, 2009

Oubliette

Much to report this week, including the oubliette, which I'll get to at the end of the post.

After a very long time, probably close to a year, we finally finished painting the bathroom. This started while giving my daughters a bath. They would play in the tub and I would get bored. This is a dangerous thing, because I start looking around for things to "fix".

The calcimine paint in the bathroom, combined with constant humidity and heat caused the paint to peel in some areas of the bathroom, so I took the closest thing to a paint scraper in the bathroom (a nail file) and started picking at the paint on the bathroom walls.

Every few nights for the last year I'd peel a little more until finally, we had about 80% of it done. Then last weekend and this week, we decided to just get it done. Honestly, the upcoming rush of visitors had something to do this.

Ms. Huis took the steamer and the scraper and finished the job. She also primed and painted the bathroom. As always, it's nice to have it done.

Here are some before shots, along with pictures of Ms. Huis hard at work.





And the after shots.





In the after shots you'll notice a white grate behind the toilet. This was one of our four tuberculosis vents that were put in place to allow air to circulate in the house. The grates are in the basement work room, the basement bathroom, the kitchen and the upstairs bathroom. The ran up into the attic where the eventually led to the outside.

These vents were still functional when we bought the house, but we had to use the main vent as a wire chase when we rewired the house. Sadly, it is no longer functional. It actually helped cool the house in the summer as the cool basement air circulated through the house.

We had to take the grate off to paint the bathroom and from now on, I'll be referring to the bathroom grate as the oubliette. At the bottom of the venting, I found a desiccated bird that must have flown in and been unable to find it's way out. There was also several inches of other material as well, source completely unknown.

It's cleaned out now.

Lastly, the mouse count also went up one more this week. We're up to 48.

5 comments:

Ms. Huis Herself said...

I gotta say, I look _particularly_ glamorous in that photo. :) Well, at least you all know I'm working on the house, too!

Anonymous said...

Kids, love the bathroom!!! It looks soooo nice! And I think the blue is great - can't wait to see it in person. Ms. Huis, you did a fine job! Good that Mr. Huis could care for the girls so you could get the work done! Hope to see you all soon... Gramma Yori

ShoNuff said...

I like the blue too. It really makes the wood grain stand out.

Mugsy said...

LOVE the blue. It looks great!

Nectarine said...

We cannot wait to see the bathroom in person. It looks great!!