Bathroom time out #2

 In between road trips and bathrooms in states of disarray, I'd also been working on a commission window for a friend of mine. We'd started talking about it last year about this time. I'd worked up a design for him by Halloween, and we'd settled on a timeline and cost in about Feb? March? It had been long enough that I thought he'd lost interest, but no, he'd just not seen my email.

There is something going on with Blogger - When I go to upload pictures, they are all coming in backwards. It sort of ruins the pace of storytelling, and also makes it really disjointed - but placing each photo one at a time would take forever.

Here we go, sort of in reverse order. :(

During this period of time, In between Moon's Moon window,  I also did a bunch of little projects.
First, a hood for Erin. Dags are a pain in the butt, but here we are. This one was entirely hand sewn:

Dags with stitched embellishments.

The front of the hood, with the long dangly lirpipe. That was the style.

Side view of the Hood. Based off 14th Century sources. It was good, solid work.

I had a bunch of Travel Auction devices I needed to paint and deliver.
All of these were done and delivered by the end of July.

Now! Moon's Moon, in reverse order. Hrmph.

The window!
Perhaps my most ambitious to date.

Moon's Moon!

Here we see the water almost done.

Because this is in reverse order, the water is receding!

The water is made up of two different art glasses - both of which have a super defined texture, and a lot of variation. These are pattern pieces laid out on the "light" blue (which is streaky with teal and lime green too. It sort of looks like seaweed.)

Some of the dark blues placed.

The pattern pieces on the  "dark" blue for the water.

The ship laid out.

All the wee bitty pieces for the ship.

I had glass and pattern pieces strewn all over my basement.

I got a new tool for this project! A circle cutter. It's finicky, and works best on nice, flat, even glass. This was the test piece. Note: None of the glass for this window is nice and flat or even.

The Very Cool opalescent glass I found for the moon.

The pattern laid out.

At the store, buying glass. Here's a better shot of the "light" and "dark" for the water.
The gentleman at the store saw the pattern and exclaimed, "I have it! I have your glass! Go look at the Youghiogheny section!"
I avoided that section because that is some High End Glass with High End Prices.
But he was right. I looked it it and it is the Ocean.

Here is the frame it will eventually go into. I still need to finesse it a little, and it will need to be reinforced with bars. This will not be a light window.

The window from the inside of Moon's Tiny House.

The outside of Moon's Tiny House.
Soon, Moon. Soon I will finish your window.
(Luckily, this is a seasonal space, and is well closed up for the winter.
This area is not exposed to the elements, but because this tiny house moves, the window is being constructed to be removable.)

A Grand Dump of Bathroom Pictures! (Part 2)

Once I returned under-slept but relatively unscathed from our grand tour of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South and North Dakota, and Montana, I found the bathroom had changed while I was gone. Not a lot visually, but a lot structurally.
They had done the roof in my absence (the whole roof - It badly needed it) and in the process discovered there were 8! Eight! layers of roofing material over the bathroom. A mix of asphalt and rolled rubber, they were worried that the sheer weight alone would trigger needing a new dumpster. I think we avoided it though.

There was plumbing!

A a vent stack pipe in the corner!
Super exciting because up until this point my house hasn't met code. This fixes a huge problem.

All new rafters, also up to code!

John the Carpenter revealed that there was a hand-hewn post hiding inside the mystery box in the dining room. This was likely reused from somewhere even older than the house.

Labeled electrical! With a vent fan!

The vent stack was framed in to make a chase. This eats up about a square foot of floor space in an already small bathroom, but it's worth it. (And frankly, I didn't have a choice.)

Slowly pealing back the wall between the bathroom and the dining room. The Mystery Post is still hanging out in the wall to the far right.

John left me this piece of the original Victorian Tongue and Groove so I could see the beaded profile. I didn't wind up saving any of it in the build, because at a certain point, I just wanted it Done. In hindsight, could I have reused it and run a small bit as wainscotting behind the toilet? Sure.
But Done.

Still Pealing. Old lathe it the far left.

Framing in the wall that will enclose the tub and help create a closet in the bathroom.

Brand new tempered window. This is also a code requirement due to proximity to the shower.
(I might slip and pitch myself headlong out the window.)

A floor! I don't have to worry about falling into the basement on my way to the portapotty in the middle of the night!

Wait. Water? Oh no.

There's no reason for the wall to be wet here. Not like this. Me, the plumber, and the GC Tad chased pipes and waited for it to rain for days - weeks, really. We could never get this to replicate once it dried.
The only think I can think of is that the washing machine (which backs up to this wall) needed to be moved. I think the hoses were disconnected, but it's so tight they couldn't get a bucket in there, and the hoses must have drained out, soaking up the wall.

Bathroom Time Out #1

Around about the time they were getting ready to rip the roof of my bathroom, I took off for a little road trip across the upper Midwest/West.

One of my best friends found herself in the dubious position of being what boils down to the regional president of our historical group. Part of that job required visiting other regional management to discuss stuff. This is what led to her telling me that she needed to drive to Montana in June. I offered to go to keep her company. And thus she, her sister-in-law, and I set out to drive from Cleveland to Butte and back in a week and change.

It was a heck of a time, and I'm so glad I went.

Taking off in the homemade camper.

At some point we crossed the Mississippi. It rained like crazy right before.

We stopped at "Dignity of Earth and Sky" in South Dakota.

It was really quite beautiful.

We got off at Wall Drug for dinner. (We sort of felt like we needed to.)

I saw this really cool truck in the parking lot.
I can only shudder to think what the gas mileage is like.

Lots of driving.

The trailer (and we) made it to Rushmore!

If you get too close, all you can see is up their noses.

Cleaned our palates with a stop at the Crazy Horse memorial and Art Museum.
Really nicely interpreted, I would highly recommend it.

Things started to get plateu-y

The colors were super pretty.

Trailer made it to Devil's Tower!

Also referred to as "Bear's Lodge" but the local Natives. We got a really good hike in here.

Hiking!

More driving. So much driving.

Becky and I decided to go check out the local Pictograph Cave State Park.
(https://fwp.mt.gov/pictograph-cave)

It was an interesting place, but one riddled with cautionary tales about how *not* to protect historic sites.

The trails around the caves were super short, so we went and did 4 miles here afterwards. Good hike.

Oh Yea - there was a historic event too - Didn't really get many pictures at the actual event though.

On the way home, we stopped and saw the world's biggest Bison.
It was silly and fun, and I loved traveling with these two (Becky center, Erin far right.)

But my travel agent really sucked, and I wound up on a red eye out of Cleveland to Boston in order to get to Framingham in time to go to work rather than take a extra day off.
Terrible planning.
It's me. I'm the worst travel agent ever.

When I got home, all kinds of work had happened to the house while I was gone.

Next: Bathroom Photo-dump Part 2!