February 2006: Decorating the Bath Room

Mid-Winter

It has been rather too long in coming that I update this site. Lisa and I have had our hands full for many months now and forward progress on our various initiatives around here has been slow to negligible. Nevertheless, things have happened (as they will…) and from my store of photographs I will briefly go over what has been going on hereabouts.

At this time, we have a fully functional if still unfinished bathroom we are most happy with. Our friend Aleister Couper visited from Maui and was a tremendous help putting in the drywall and I am most thankful for that as it is, as many of you will know, not particularly pleasant work. It is very nice to have that done and at this point it is all finished and painted, although Lisa and I are in the process of decorating it as we can’t help doing something creative whenever possible. That this considerably increases the time to completion is secondary.

Thanks to Aleister's kind help (and Jonathan's lovely mudding), we have beautiful surfaces in our new bathroom.

Those who have seen this bathroom in it’s original state will recognize the vast improvement all this represents. We rebuilt the intrusive closet and gave the room a little more space. There will be shelves for linens here eventually.

I have a thing about checking the oops mix paint at our local building supply stores. I like vivid colors but they can be hard to get right so a lot of over-intense paint shows up there. I found a 5-gallon bucket of this green for $20— an irresistible bargain considering it was top quality. Only problem was, it was too dark to paint the whole room with, so we had to go back and actually buy some custom mix paint to match it! I think the effect rather nice, although it will get toned down a bit when we apply an ochre glaze.

Here are the initial stages of our only slightly ambitious decorative paint job.

The funky-looking vanity countertop is a temporary so we can brush our teeth until the real one gets put in— a flowing curve that will fill the corner. That will wait until we do the floor; and what a floor it will be! Thanks to Jonathan’s eye for salvage, we scored a truckload of Brazilian Cherry off-cuts from a construction site his firm did the design for. Installing that will follow the wall decorating.

Nice light in here, huh? It makes a huge difference to our comfort level in the house to have such a nice space.

Decorating of the bath house is moving forward as well. Contemplative imagery surrounds the bathtub creating a sanctuary of relaxation and insight. “A good place to get some thinking done…” as the song goes.

Painting an image of the Chartres Cathedral Labyrinth.
The other side features a Sri Yantra, a different kind of labyrinth, painted by Lisa.

By now, we’ve exhaustively covered the developments to one room of the house. As to the rest of the house, well, nothing’s really changed. The living arrangements are different these days— we now have Patrick, head chef at the Blossoming Lotus living here along with Joanna, who teaches Yoga and waits tables at the Lotus. It’s really lovely having them here and boy, do we enjoy those gourmet feasts at Patrick’s capable hands!