Light the Way

 

After hours and hours looking for just the right wall sconces, we decided to go with the cheapo Lowe's ones. They are kinda western looking, but we ended up really liking them. If I ever take them down and paint them matte black instead of the current brown "bronze" they will match our other fixtures better. Put that on the to do list... we were just trying to speed things up with the "temporary" install. 

(Note to readers: at this point wild laughter should accompany anytime you see the word "temporary.")

We put "Edison" bulbs in them since the the bulbs would be seen on the way up the stairs, and since they were some of the dimmest we could get (thinking of their use in the middle of the night, since they will shine into the bunk room). 

On one of the Electrician's visits, he left a long list of things we needed to buy. When I got to the store I saw items in the electrical department that I had wanted in the house, but didn't remember when the house was being wired. The boys were able to swap out some outlets and switches to accommodate my wishes (example: nightlight switches in the bathrooms!) but the little tiny side lights to illumine each stair at night? Too late. 

I thought that finding, choosing, and buying light fixtures would be the fun part of this whole construction process, but it ended up feeling like another big waste of life! Not because we were looking for organic, free-range light fixtures (thankfully, we know nothing about toxic light fixtures... yet), but because there are MILLIONS of choices, and NOTHING is matching the picture you have in your mind's eye. And, after hours of looking, when you find just what you want the items are out of stock. 

We toyed with making our own wall sconces out of wood, which would add yet another potential DIY burden to our list. 

Then one day out of the blue, a lighting consultant showed up! She had a list of new builds in our area and was visiting every single one offering free consultation. Was I ever impressed! Now someone else could spend hours on the internet finding our lights for us! What a luxury, so I thought. When her recommendations came in with NO prices, I had to get online yet again and figure those out myself. Alas! "Back to Lowe's we go." 

Second Floor

 

Now lets go and see what the flooring progress was upstairs to forget the struggles of plumbing...

We used tongue-and-groove wood (not engineered) and although there were a few rough spots, I did not spend a week on my hands and knees filling in all the knots. We would just fix any rough edges as needed. We tried wood filler in a few places, but it didn't work out. So we have the pioneer look, knotholes and all.  

When I come upstairs, I feel like I'm in a 100 year old farmhouse. 

I still get excited looking at this-- well any room this clean is exciting. 

Now for the finish...

In a way the second story feels so different from the first story. More drywall, a bit brighter, lower ceiling. The flooring is narrower than my "general store" style downstairs. Our idea was that the upper rooms would be a bit more "refined" than the all-wood look of the first floor, but it still has a feel of an old, established house up there. 

We did a couple wee floors. The reading cubby 

(which still needs to be stained, along with the stairs... you would not be impressed if you knew how long I have been putting that off...)

And the "dollhouse." I think I may have blogged a while ago about our struggles with the builders over the necessity of a built-in dollhouse so I won't elaborate here. It has a nice, matching floor like the rest of the house. 

"Just don't drink the [lead-free] water."

(A long rant today, skip it if you are not in the market for a faucet!)

When we decided to go as healthy as we could with building materials for this house, we were surprised at the lack of resources in this day and age of "awareness" about so many things.

Since we had gone to all the trouble to have reduced-chemical plumbing pipes (in the house at least, can’t control what was outside), we naturally wanted our "finished" plumbing fixtures to be as free from toxins as we could. That, my friends, was not an easy task.

Trying to keep excess toxins out of this house build is just as frustrating as when you go on a special diet and try to avoid certain things– only to find out that they are everywhere and in everything and you can’t eat anything but lettuce. 

And as long as I’m complaining here, I’ll tell you about the many days of labor that I have no pictures for. It was too boring for photographs. Days of combing through the web looking for lead-free faucets.

 If any of you have done the research, you will know that in the USA lead-free doens’t mean exactly that. I’m not even sure “zero lead” means that either. The rules allow for a little bit of lead to be present in all potable water faucets. It's no big deal, according to almost everybody, but since we had had a cancer scare, things like that are a bit more of a thought process for us. What other parts are we connecting to this? Do certain metals react and leach? What about the chemicals to glue things together? This part isn't regulated by that law yet, is there a substitute for that part? Etc Etc. We were looking for more than an ordinary person would look for.

Somewhere along the way, I found out that all the pretty, $30 Chinese faucets on Amazon aren’t in compliance with the low-lead law, and indeed are illegal to install in a new build. So as long as we had to look at faucets three or more times the cost of what we had hoped, we may as well buy the most  absolutely lead-free faucet we could find. When I did find one, it was rather ugly or hugely expensive (or both). 

Making your own faucet is not exactly a DIY project you want to take on when building a house, although that thought did cross our minds.

For the kitchen, thankfully there was an acceptible option at the big-box store (Delta Diamond seal). I was able to find ONE bathroom faucet for under $100 from an obscure company that claimed it had no lead. My next dilemma is to find a tub-filler that has little or no lead, because there is no regulations on tub fillers. Yeah yeah, I know, "just don’t drink the water…."

Looking for lead-free plumbing was exhausting, demoralizing and frustrating.  Although you can find completely lead-free kitchen faucets and restaurant faucets (not just saying “lead free” and meaning “minimum allowed by government” but all lead-free), there’s no such thing for the shower or tub faucets. And to top it all off, people think you are really a nut-job if you dare to even look for no-lead plumbing. 

We had gone to a lot of trouble to keep our water supply as low-chemical as possible, but could not control the one little plumbing connection (that is fully leaded because the gov’t hasn't regulated it yet) or this or that portion of the system that allows some lead. You just can’t escape it. At least we have minimized it to even beyond “government minimum” levels. (And wouldn't you know it, our area had a water emergency for a short time which necessitated us putting in a drinking water filter anyway. So we are pretty sure our water is safe to drink, if you want to come over for tea!)

Moving on from the faucets, we had other bathroom fixtures to find. How about a replacement for my claw-foot tub? 

We were initially sold on a few acrylic freestanding tubs. Acrylic is light weight, warm to the touch, etc. You just have to be careful cleaning it. If it gets scratched though...hmm...oh dear.

What is this stuff made out of? They mix things with the acrylic… what do they mix in? Chemicals? Does it leach if scratched? What do you use to repair it?  Sometimes you have a simple question about something, maybe you never thought about questioning before...We reached out to companies and people who watchdog toxic house materials, with no results. Apparently no one had thought these thoughts before.

The little bit we could find out about things made out of acrylic mixtures (mostly baby cup research) made us shy away from having plastic anything as a surface material. We were sick of the whole thing– tubs, showers, water bottles, baby cups, pacifiers. Bah!

I felt that we were wasting our life trying to figure it all out. When you look at the time spent in the course of your life researching things on the internet (because local building suppliers are no help on this subject)… it’s depressing.  We could used all that time to compose a symphony, write a novel, or run for President. I find it hard to believe, but either we were pioneers in non-toxic house building, or Google wasn't smart enough back then to give us the results we needed! 

The Clawfoot Tub Saga

I'm sure when we started this project, my family expected to have some heavy lifting to do. I'm not sure that they expected to carry a cast-iron claw-foot tub up and down hills and stairs as often as they did!

 We had created a place of honor for it under the arch in the Master bathroom, but it was too tight of a squeeze once the wallboard was on (measure twice, I know... ). And just as we had realized that new difficulty, my husband read something that said 75% of tubs made before 1970 contain lead. It is not a problem unless there are nicks, scratches, or any damage to the tub, and ours had quite a bit of those. One lead test later and this thing had to go! 

Yes, I know that the water would dilute the lead. Yes, I know that if we didn't drink the water it would be okay. Yes, I know we could have told that to the toddler twenty times per bath. 

We looked into re-glazing it, but we had to consider what our priorities were with getting in this house, expenses, time, etc. and at the moment we were not up for that. You have to reglaze every ten years or so (and knowing us, we would have to find out what chemical soup was involved in the reglazing process). We decided to be done with it; maybe someone would like a DIY project. 

I listed the tub online as "free," stipulating that football players were needed to lift it. My husband figured it was worth giving it away if he never had to lift that tub again. 

I then spent time fielding the most objectionable takers! "Oh just don't drink the water." "Just don't lick the tub." There were also a lot of folks who thought they didn't need to bring help. I guess not too many folks know football players.

While I was answering texts and emails about the tub, giving out our address to people who didn't show up, reading mocking comments about our listing, and other things that make for a nerve-wracking week, the builders decided that they needed to finish that floor underneath the tub. Forget the football players, my fellows would be carrying that tub again. Downstairs, off the porch, down the hill, to the bottom.

We re-listed it for $100 after that. 

(I should have had it listed for $200, with $100 going to me for emotional distress!)

Eventually a man and his young son came to get it. He didn't care that it was all scratched up and contained lead. He wanted it for an outdoor bathing experience. So, the tub went full circle. And of course my boys had to help lift it for him.