Splish Splash

 Everything is a miracle.  It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar.

~Pablo Picasso

 

It is time to look for a tub/shower for the guest bathroom.   Tubs are highly personal.  Some people love to soak for a long time and listen to music.  Others love candles and a good view.  Oh la la and when love is in the air........

There are so many styles and shapes.  I love the clean lines of  the simple, stand alone tubs.  I wanted the white tub above.  It turns out they are all too wide for the space.  Very disappointing.  I had to look for something else.  Plus, after all, this bathroom is very, very small.  I just felt because it is so small it needed something special. 

Herr Reinhart suggested a clawfoot tub.  We had stayed in the historic Wawona Hotel in Yosemite National Park years ago.  Our room had a private bath with a clawfoot tub with a shower.  I began looking at clawfoot tubs.  Not as costly.  Will fit in the small confines of this tiny bathroom.  It has a specialness.  And I could paint the outside whatever color I wanted if I so desired! 

 

Off to Ohmega Salvage in Berkeley to do some tub shopping! 

Photos from various sources.  Click on for links.

Windows

All the windows of my heart I open to the day.

 

John Greenleaf Whittier

 

 

 

window shopping in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California

As a child I had an absorbing pleasure of drawing simple box houses.  I loved drawing the square, then the triangle and finally the little rectangles for the windows.  The real fun came with the windows.  I would make curtains or sashes or even a flower in a vase sitting on the sill.  Sometimes I would color the inside of the windows with bright yellow. To this day I love paintings of simple, block houses. 

 

 

Georgia O'Keefe   Barn with Snow  c. 1933

It is no wonder that I wanted a simple, box shaped house.  Built of straw.  But 2008 happened and no one would give us a loan for straw bale construction.  They would give us a construction loan for a stick house.  No bricks---earthquake country.  No straw---unconventional.  Just sticks.  This is getting to sound like Three Little Pigs.

 

There are some elements of a straw bale house that we were able to keep.  The window sills done in earth plaster, walls with lime plaster with clay paint and a few other things.  I love some softness that the windows provide, but I also love angles.  My eye needs some conventional space that provides a protective hardness, too.  A  stretched canvas board feeling.  Too much softness would swallow me up.  I need some framing solidness, too. 

first layer of earth plaster

The windows are in and we are happy with them.  I learned a lot about windows.  I learn that they are expensive.  We had to find windows with no UVA coating for the south exposure.  Which is harder to explain to salespeople why we want sun-damaging rays to fade our concrete floor than to get them to sell us non-UVA coated windows. We also needed hopper windows for the cupola (clerestory.)  Turns out that the bedroom windows need casement windows because of new changes in fire code.  We also needed hopper windows for the cupola (clerestory.)  Then hopper windows were switched out to awning windows which will open with old-fashioned climb up a ladder with a long pole and hook method.  I might add, with cross-fingers and someday a very tall visiting grandson.

  

At noon the winter solstice sun streams through this window!

south side