Guest Cottage: The Vintage Plumbing Fixtures We’re Using In The Bathroom + Our Final-ish Floorplan

If you were worried this bathroom couldn’t get weirder, you will be happy to know that it will, in fact, not only have a black urinal but an adorable (if not disgusting) powder blue toilet from the 1960s (and matching sink!). Yes, vintage plumbing! I swear I’m not rage-baiting you; I’m just genuinely excited to get a non-white toilet in a color that looked good with the stained glass door colors. And once I found this one, I squealed in absolute delight (and a tiny bit of disgust)! If this were for a client or if I were on a deadline, I would do the normal person thing, but this project, this room, is my chance for fun, learning, and experimentation, and I needed to check my “powder blue toilet with a ripped up puffy upholstered vinyl seat” box on my life bingo card. Bingo!!!

Now, this toilet was originally found at Portland’s beloved Hippo Hardware, where the owner himself (founded in the 1970s) charmed us with his passion for salvaged architectural pieces… and his wife, who recently passed away. It was all so sweet, and as a sucker for a sentimental dapper man and fearful that these would get snatched up like a package of nerd clusters surrounded by a group of 8-year-olds, I panicked and bought them. Mine! The sink and toilet were $500 for the pair, which felt expensive and yet reasonable. Of course, we didn’t know how much restoring them would be. That was a future Emily problem!

So we got the first quote back, which took weeks because apparently the few people who are still interested in refurbishing vintage plumbing are retired and don’t like to answer texts or emails (which is how I’ll be in my 80s, no shade). So the 14-day return period expired before we could get the quote. I was the owner of these two broken, busted fixtures without knowing how much it would cost to make them usable again.

The quote came in at $2,200!!!!!!! That is two thousand two hundred dollars to fix a gross old toilet (and sink that we don’t need).

“It’s not firm”. Ok? He said it might be a “lot less”. That he was “just preparing me for worst case scenario.” Listen, I have so much respect for makers and tradesmen, especially those who do something really historic and specific. But $2,200 after $500 stopped making sense to me (I’m literally laughing out loud right now, is common sense still a thing for this project?).

So instead of buying a normal person toilet, I found another retired and passionate antique plumbing fixture repair person who thinks it will be more like $600 for the toilet and not sure about the sink (but I loved talking to him on the phone – such passion! And he LOVED my toilet!! Such validation). At this point, I can’t return either, and I really want to make this work (clearly I’m invested in all the ways). But at the time of publishing, we still haven’t confirmed the exact price of restoration.

But I wasn’t buying vintage plumbing to save money on a toilet. I knew it would be more expensive than a new, simple white toilet. I bought it for the perfect color that you can’t get now. Not to mention the vintage vibes. The soul. The history. Think of all the people who have sat here and all the thoughts they had in the 1960s and 1970s. The Vietnam War. JFK assassination. The Nixon Era! Watergate happened right here.

Oh, and I also thought that restoring it would be a good learning experience for me and the seven of you who would ever attempt to do this. I can’t be the only lady off her rocker who has wanted a vintage colorful toilet from FBMP and wondered if it was doable? I figured I could walk you through my experience, and then those of you who have been waiting for the internet’s crazy person to do this would glean some information. Today is your day! Kinda!

There she is. The up-close moment she’s been waiting for. It’s been a long, hard life!! Kaitlin was like, “So you want me to professionally shoot… this??” I paid for her professional photographer rate to take these photos. And then when she didn’t get close enough, I was like, “Lady, get on in there. Give the people what they really want”. So she complied.

You’re welcome.

Ok, let’s get some facts straight here:

1. The toilet will be totally cleaned and restored inside the tank. Like a Brazilian wax – shiny and smooth as a baby’s butt.
2. The exterior will look brand new – it’s covered in grime, not poop, I promise. There are no cracks or stains.
3. We’ll reupholster the seat in a fun vintage fabric. Thinking of my Boro fabric, I have a lot of scraps leftover.
4. I’M JOKING. The seat will either be a new blue seat, a colored seat that doesn’t match but looks fun, or a wooden seat. All will be brand new, I swear on the lives of my children, I’m not a disgusting toilet-hoarding person. Yet.
5. The sink will also be restored, likely with a new faucet. Mounted to the wall. Maybe skirted. Maybe with legs. Sexy AF.
6. We’ll have another sink in the main part of the bathroom, so technically we don’t need this, but you can’t separate these two. They’ve been together for 75 years. Only a monster would separate these lovebirds.
7. This is not a mid-year April Fools’ joke.

The toilet and sink will live inside the outhouse on the back wall. Now America’s favorite urinal will live on the right wall, behind the doors, so that when the doors are open, you can only see a little bit of it, but it’s not in full view until you walk in. The floor will be carpeted with the Flor tiles that I love. JK.

Yes, I bought the urinal. And it’s beautiful.

Now I seriously considered not having the urinal because I don’t like it when people aren’t excited about my ideas – it kinda takes the fun out of it, especially as a content creator. I love it when you guys connect with what I’m doing, care about it, and glean ideas from my design process. But as much as the anti-urinal brigade was coming at me, my in-house, the “urinal enthusiasm” club held strong. Brian and all of his friends (who are my friends, too) and Charlie and all of his friends were so excited (I didn’t ask his friends directly, I’m not that creepy of a freak. Charlie told me). And while I’m not a traditional people pleaser (at all), I’m extremely motivated by other people having fun and enjoying themselves in rooms I create. And the men in my family are so excited that no internet pushback could stop this urinal train. But it’s less visually prominent now, so you guys won’t have to look at it, and only the women in my life will have to suffer in person. I promise 🙂

So here you can see how it might look. There is going to be about 10″ of framing on each side of the door (thus obscuring the urinal). The stained glass is dark, mostly opaque. I haven’t decided what the walls inside are going to be. Maybe painted beadboard and wallpaper. Maybe carpet. Who knows!

The Vanity Sink

But we aren’t done salvaging and repurposing vintage plumbing fixtures, so we removed this sink from upstairs, and it’s pretty great. We almost used it in the kitchen, but I really wanted to explore powder coating it a color, and I knew that washing dishes in it would likely reduce its longevity a lot. Powder coating cast iron with a porcelain glaze is not a permanent finish; it’s prone to the paint chipping after years of use. So it’s not recommended, but anecdotally people say that if it’s in a bathroom that doesn’t get a ton of use, it can last for years and years, so I’m willing to take the risk for the learning experience (and to have a fun color).

It’s going to be centered on this wall between the wall and the shower. We’ll inset it in a table or vintage dresser/credenza. We might do what we did in the powder bath, which is to find a vintage table and cut off its back legs so it can be mounted to whatever depth we want and then skirt it. Or we find the right vintage case-good that we can inset it in. I’m open.

The faucet was already removed to get re-plated in polished nickel. But I haven’t got the quote back. I told the restorer that if it’s under $1k, I’ll do it, but if it’s more than that, I’ll buy a new bridge faucet (for much less). A few things as you are looking at that:

1. The flooring will be a dark red brick in a herringbone pattern.
2. The vanity is a placeholder for something vintage. It might be the perfect dresser or, again a skirted vanity that would allow me to bring in more color and pattern.
3. The tile inside the shower is TBD (we are deciding this in conjunction with the sink color).
4. Mirror and lights, TBD (location of lights is fixed).
5. Walls will all be clad in our reclaimed fir, which is tonally the same as what we have.

But it’s worth it to me to see if we can get this old lady working again, in her new dress, rather than shove a new face on its neck. But the powder coating color is still up in the air. We aren’t 100% set on the tile of the shower yet, so that might make a difference in what color we ultimately choose, but here are a few of the colors we are getting samples for that Gretch mocked up for us:

Now my first choice was to powder coat it the color of the toilet, but there isn’t one that is close (we have more samples coming). And while I like that blue a lot (and will pop off the wood wall so nicely), there is a lot of blue already happening in here (the shower and the water closet are both in blue-painted structures). The green is a safe, awesome choice, as it’s one of our accent colors and will pop off the wood but work seamlessly in the design. The mustard could be the weird moment we need, OR be a huge regret. We haven’t chosen the tile yet for the shower and could incorporate some of these tones in there (or in the fabric that we might skirt the vanity in). Now the dark red would be AWESOME, but I fear that it won’t pop off the wood wall enough. But maybe that’s ok? Maybe it would catch the light and be a really dark, moody, and cool tone that is a bit more tonal with the walls?

What do you think? I know you don’t have alllll the information yet, but if you have a gut response, let me know. Vote below!

I’m still flushing out all the ideas. I’m drained from going back and forth on the urinal. But I’m back in a flow state and sinking into the reality that we’ll have a finished bathroom by September. 🙂

I want to give a shout-out to a longtime beloved reader, Kirsten Bell, who reached out re: the urinal conversation. Kirsten is an anthropologist who wrote an upcoming book called The Baggage We Carry, about the hidden anthropology of everyday life. There is a whole chapter about the history of the urinal and how, not shockingly, there are a lot of feelings about it. She referenced our conversation here in the book, which I felt very flattered by. Turns out I wasn’t wrong to think that the pushback was not just about the presumed issues with sanitation. Her book comes out in November and is linked here. I thought it was so funny and smart. Not what I was expecting at all, and boy, would I love to be in her anthropology class. Thanks, Kirsten. xx

*Photos by Kaitlin Green