Saturday, January 17, 2015

Bathroom week is survived, barely...

Abigail is thrilled to be able to wash her hands in a sink with faucets.

Now if we just could get the hot water heater to work...
My original plan had been to make the central faucet from a cup hook, as I did with Katie and Hayden's kitchen. However, as I as wandering through Howard's Ace Hardware, home of housewares and ammo, at the crack of dawn, I chanced upon picture-hanging hooks that whispered: "Turn me upside-down, and I would look like a faucet!"



Looks like the sink needs a scrubbing to get rid of the hot glue strings.
The hot- and cold-water handles are constructed from random bits, and since the wing-thingies were "aged brass" with the dark shading, everything else had to be recolored to match, with much to-ing and fro-ing to the black-green acrylic paint (used on the faucet) and the combination of a gold pen and a black permanent marker (used on everything that started out as silver metal). I'm not entirely sure how why the handles are built like that, other than that "steampunk" is an excuse.

The tub got similar faucets, while I got the uneasy discovery that I've never finished trimming out the back wall.

Hop in and run yourself a bath!
Meanwhile, Hayden is delighted with the new curtain between the bathroom and bedroom. This allows her to pretend, for a moment, that the Dollar Tree vinyl "marble" walls are not coming down on their own. (Maybe I need to mount them on cardboard? Or do some more vinyl stickie tiles, like on the floor?) The curtain is a Dollar Tree placemat, held in place by random wood trim.

It's soothing... like a spa...
From down-market marble, we switch to off-the-grid rustic, as the Chicken Coop finally got the outhouse that I cut the pattern for back in May, shortly before Katie and Hayden arrived. At that point, I couldn't find the wood-grain scrapbook paper that I thought was left over from the Moose Lodge, and the store where I'd bought it keeps short and erratic hours.

Putting the pee-yew in bucolic.
(Ignore the white stuff around the door knob -- I'd forgotten that I wanted door handles until about 20 minutes before I would have lost the last afternoon light. It's tacky glue that hasn't dried.)

After a long, mournful moment of silence for the absence of Mystic Paper, which closed in May 2012 amid promises to announcing a new location "as soon as they knew where" -- and thereafter never emerged from a state of being Schrödinger's craft store -- I bit the proverbial bullet and ordered downloadable wood grains from Romantic Letters. This is my first encounter with digital scrapbook paper, where you have to print it yourself (and how decide how big to make the print-out).

Sit right down and stay a while!
I'm hoping that the camera angle is just really bad, rather than the seat being totally askew. It's not like there's a lot I can do about it now, as my fingers won't fit, now that the roof and base are on. (Also, if a thrift rehab doll shows up with olive-green flocked hair, you know where I got the flocking -- the Hobby Bench railroad modeling section.)

The roof gives me mixed feelings. The scrapbook paper (from the original bought-at-bricks-and-mortar-store lot) is supposed to look like corrugated tin, but I think in the longer run, I'm going to want to replace it with either model tin or (if I have any left) plastic-sheet Spanish barrel tiles.

Look, beautiful, calming alpaca! We no longer have to pee in the woods, like bears!
However, in the here and now, Marva Luce is delighted to have an outhouse! The outhouse and the well probably shouldn't be next to each other, though.

Having this done leaves me a beautiful Sunday for tackling Bratz Action Heroez outfits... and then next week is Bedroom Week, in which Katie and Hayden get an exciting new bed with storage bins.

6 comments:

  1. An outhouse! Oh, the memories... and none of them pleasant, lol. In my grandmother's first house the outhouse was a bit away from the house and right next to the chicken coop too! Her second house you still had to go out of the house to poop, but it was attached to a porch - real fancy like!

    Your outhouse is totally adorable!

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  2. Love the sink in bathroom #1 - that's gorgeous!

    And it feels a little weird to say that an outhouse is cute, but in this case it's true! :)

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  3. I agree with jSarie, the outhouse IS cute! Great post!

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  4. Hi SP! Abigaile's bathtroom is so glamorous! and the outhouse....a blast from the past. Luckily we were children and we were allowed to use the bathroom in the house! LOL
    Besides I'm happy for the alpaca and the rainbow girl!

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  5. LOL, I remember my grandparents only had an outhouse too. They even used the Sears catalog for toilet paper! I love your choice of hooks for faucets on the first bathroom.

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  6. @Muff, @jSarie, @Night Owl, @billa, @Phyllis -- I had no idea an outhouse would hit a chord with so many people! The off-the-grid Chicken Coop has really turned into my "guilty pleasure" project because it provides space to go in a direction I'd never go in real life!

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