off the beaten path plumbing selections

January 13, 2012 by Jeff Erkelens

We thought we’d spotlight a lit of our dare I say “oddball” plumbing fixtures in our new house.

The first photo shows a simple water fountain we put in our kitchen. We drink a lot of water and we’ve noticed over the years that our dishwasher has too many water glasses from people constantly starting new ones. We wanted to get an old fashioned porcelain school water fountain, but the the used ones we found were in too bad of shape and the new ones were too expensive. The water fountain fixture piece was five bucks and we just used a metal mixing bowl for the bowl, which we drilled a hole in the bottom for the drain.

The second photo is of an old fashion water spigot that we plumbed down low to supply Felipe, our 100 pound lab, with water. He drinks so much water that it gets old lifting up the big bowl and having to fill it up. This actually has a little lever on it that we can tap with our feet and not even bend over. Ahh, laziness!

The third photo is from the same 1st floor 1/2 bath. The whole room is clad in this whimsical and wild spanish cedar curved strips that Devin designed. We wanted the fixtures to lend that same flavor, so Joey picked out simple old fashioned brass water spigots that come out of the wall. The bowl sink sits on an old letter press cabinet we picked up secondhand.

- Jeff

Project: 6th Street SW · Tags: , · Leave a comment

Music to my ears

June 17, 2011 by Jeff Erkelens

Sometimes it’s nice to have a little closure.

I don’t know what I was really thinking, but a few years ago I bought an upright piano on the cheap. I played a little as a kid and I think I thought I was going to have the time to take it up again. There were a few broken keys and it was terribly out of tune, but I thought it would be a fun project.

So, I and the rest of the Latitude fellas first carted the piano into the Monticello house a few years back. I had a bout of enthusiasm and I got some tuning wrenches from my buddy Ray and quickly tuned half the piano. My attention to it waned and we were left with a piano that was half in tune, half out of tune, so you really could only play one half at one time.

Then we moved on to the King St house. We loaded it in the pick up truck again and muscled it into the house.  Broke a few more keys driving across town among other wear and tear issues. After sitting in our living room at King St for over a year collecting dust, Joey had a piano tuner come and offer his opinion, which basically was, “fat chance trying to save this.”

So, we took some sledgehammers and sawzalls to it and we’ve been left with the carcass, the keys and the sound board, for over a year. Spontaneously, we thought wouldn’t it be great if we could somehow incorporate it into our house. So, we lugged the soundboard into the truck one last time and drove it down the street. It’s still quite heavy, but nothing like moving the whole piano.

Originally, we thought it would be great to have it on a wall in our living room, but then quickly realized we would be driven bonkers by kids banging on it all the time.  So, we settled on framing it into the 1st floor half bath, which is out of the way and has a door.  We thought it would be this great fantastical and surprising moment to walk into the bathroom and see the giant sound board. An added bonus is the back half faces into our mudroom nook, so we are going to use the shape of it to inform the shapes of the built in cubbies.

Project: 6th Street SW · Tags: , · 1 Comment

why go out to eat?

June 22, 2009 by Jeff Erkelens

So, you go in to pretty much any restaurant with a modern decor in Charlottesville and you are going to see DuRock, a cement backer board, on their bathrooms walls. Zocalo, X Lounge, Mas. I feel like there is one or two more.  They love it.

We’re just as guilty of stealing that idea as it’s our third bathroom we’ve used the Durock as cladding.  For me, it’s got so much texture and visual interest to it. It is a colder material, so I like to soften with some wood. In this case, we went a simple wood chair rail.  Again, one thing I can’t get away from is taking a traditional form and updating it with modern materials. So, we took a classic two tone look with the chair rail, but used the bright red candy apple tile down low (look closely, we’re missing a tile. It’s on the punch list), with the durock above.

IKEA has this new lines of sinks that are really sculptural, so I thought it cried out for an equally sculptural support for it. So, just made a simple slatted support out of wood. I love me some slats. That’s why all our of railings and fences are always slatted.  No pickets!

Anyway, got one more bathroom to show off, maybe tomorrow.  General philosopy on bathrooms: such a small space that material wise you can go a little crazy and not break the bank and have some fun.

Project: Rockland Avenue · Tags: , · Leave a comment