Bathroom adventures!

Tom started gutting the upstairs bathroom, which will become the public bathroom.  Here's what it looked like before:

Nope, don't even want to know what those reading materials are...



The drop ceiling and light/fan.

And here's what it looked like after Tom took the groovy 70's paneling down...

It looked like there was black paint over the brick, then they painted over the black with green, then they paneled over that in the 70's. 

Our plan is to knock out the wall in between the bathroom and the gross black janitor closet and make it one large bathroom. 

As Tom was gutting the bathroom, we discovered several interesting things.  First, we realized that originally it was probably two bathrooms, his and hers, next to each other - we assumed the gent's was originally the one on the right because it was much smaller (guys don't need much room, right!?)  We came to this conclusion because there's a board nailed to the floor covering what was probably the hole where the toilet was. 

The the original door hinges remained on the doorway on the right, even though the door is long-gone.  The beauty and ornate detail, even for something as ordinary as a door hinge, is truly amazing:

After Tom took the paneling down, there were a few disturbing holes through the wall into the original ladies' room.  Peep hole?  I don't know, you be the judge...

It looks directly into the whole bathroom.  Creepy!  Yes, we will be covering that up with paneling again!

We really didn't know what was over the drop ceiling, so it was a mystery as to what we would find up there.  Tom was betting on Jimmy Hoffa.  I thought perhaps a colony of extremely pissed off bats, but fortunately, neither!  No, it was actually good news for once!  The drop ceiling was hiding yet another gem that had been hidden away.  Double windows that have long been covered, but not anymore.  We've decided to open up the bathroom all the way up to the high ceiling and keep the double windows exposed. 

No point to showing you this, except for the cool dramatic lighting!

Finally letting sunlight in after decades of being closed off




Sunlight happy to be streaming in once more!

 

We had two more surprises with the bathroom:  one pretty cool, the other not so much.  First, the not so cool surprise.  When Tom broke the wood out from the window, some bees came at him, which he valiantly fought and killed.  They left behind a few honeycombs.

 

 



 



The big surprise, though, came when Tom was cleaning off the top of the drop ceiling on the right side and a ladies boot came out!  WTH??  Don't know how it would possibly get on top of the drop ceiling, but I just hope no one stashed a body up there!  We haven't taken the other half of the ceiling down yet, so who knows?  If you drive by and see yellow crime tape around the building you'll know why. 

Stay tuned for the "after" pictures!