Hofmann Design Build Articles

BATHING BEAUTY

A Victorian master bath suite in Short HIlls that's long on livability.
All alone on a house-hunting trip, Steven Goldstein, a business executive, found a dream: a mammoth 1885 Italianate Victorian complete with a piazza, a porte cochere and a grand winding staircase. "He bought it with no contingencies--without me even seeing it," says his wife, Varda Goldstein. Still, she was pleased, but her view of the Short Hills, New Jersey, land mark was more reserved. "It's got great details," she says of the six bedroom behemoth, "as well as a few not-so-great ones." All the fixtures in the master bathroom, for instance--from sink and tub to toilet--were perched atop a strange tiled platform two steps off the floor. And there weren't any closets. "Well, there was something called a closet, but you couldn't hang anything in it. I told my husband it's going to take us three hours to get dressed in the morning, just to find our clothes. Something had to change."


This newly renovated 13-by-15 foot master bath looks serene now (above right) - with its marble floors, custom cherry vanities and freestanding tub - but a massive overhaul was required. Aside from radically changing the period style of the previous room (above-left) the owners wanted to eliminate the raised platform but disovered structural surprises beneath it.

Fortunately, when it comes to houses, the Goldsteins are experts at making changes. Traveling around the world on business, they have lived in nine houses during their 23-year old marriage and have renovated five of them. "Some of them we did because we wanted to, and some of them we had to," says Varda Goldstein. This house fell somewhere in the middle. Originally built as a finishing school for girls, the three story structure had been renovated with great care by the previous owners, in the early 1990's . The Goldsteins, however, wanted to build a separate bathroom for their 15 year old son, Billy, and a closet for their 18 year old daughter, Lauren, a college freshman. The bulk of the work would focus on their own master bedroom, bath and dressing room. "At first I thought we were just going To do a little bit here, a little bit there," says contractor Ernie Hofmann. "Of course, as things turned out, it got a lot more involved."

RICHARD TRETHEWAY SAYS:
"Adding radiant floor heat to a bathroom is probably the single best investment in comfort you could ever make-- especially when you consider that you're going to be in there most of the time without any clothes on."

Just how involved quickly became more evident. The couple loathed the raised platform in the bathroom. "It was bizarre. I wanted it out," says Varda Goldstein. Ripping up the floor, Hofmann discovered the reason for the platform: it covered up a 4-inch-diameter cast-iron waste pipe that had been laid atop the floor joists during a previous renovation early in this century. At that time, the pipe had not been tucked into the joists because, it would have had to cross over a large wooden structural beam that could not be penetrated with out the house falling down. After gutting the bathroom, Hofmann had to reroute a new waste line through a wall in the living room and dining room downstairs- at a cost of about $8,000.

The surprises didn't end there. For the Goldsteins, the whole point in renovating the bedroom and bathroom was to reconfigure them. The existing bedroom had a sitting room attached to it and tiny closets. "But honestly, I never sit in my bedroom," says Goldstein. "I may collapse into bed dead tired at the end of the day to watch TV. But sit? Never." Working with architect John James to make use of what they considered wasted space, they came up with a plan to turn the sitting room into a dressing room and enlarge the cramped bedroom by moving the partion wall 3 feet into the too-large bathroom. The result would be a triumvirate of balanced, useful rooms.

THE MASTER SUITE PLAN

In laying out the 13-by-15-foot master bedroom for Steven and Varda Goldstein's 1880s house, architect John James created a casual feel by arranging the tub and vanaties like furniture in a room and consigning the shower and toilet to adjacent alcoves. "That way, they don't become dominent features. They almost seem as if they are outside of the room," he says.

He reconfigured the master suite by enlarging the bedroom, making it 15 by 17 feet ad creating a new door leading out into the hall. The suite had previously included a sitting room, but James turned that into a dressing room, which--at 14 by 19 feet--he calls "the mother of all dressing rooms." Because the room already contained a fireplace, "we went formal," he says.

That included adding a 7-foot-long marble-topped island, useful for laying out clothes for buisiness trips, "or just setting a cup of coffee on while getting dressed." The room (right) is "almost like a grand boudoir", James says. "People spend a lot of time getting themselves ready for the day and, with this, you feel like you're in a very nice space, as opposed to being stuck in the closet." One other advantage: Kepping all the clothes in a dressing room frees up the bedroom form a lot of clutter. "And that should make it a lot easier to sleep at night," he says.

The solution seemed perfect, until however Hofmann, project manager Alex Szewczuk and the crew once again began poking around with sledgehammers and crowbars. The partition wall turned out to be a major load-bearing wall. "Removing it could have brought the third floor crashing down," he says. Rather than abandoning his plans, Hofmann brought in a structural engineer who specializes in historic buildings. He quickly came up with a plan to install laminated beams, whick allowed the the wall to be removed and the third story supported-at the cost of $18,000. Then Hofmann discovered that the span of floor joists-about 17 feet-exceeded what the buildings code now allows by several inches. Bringing them up to code (no code had existed when the joists originally were intalled) called for bolting a laminated beam to each one. That would cost $8,000, but the structural ordeal wasn't over yet. A major dip in the flooring on the third floor-and a companion dip in the master bathroom ceiling below-proved ti be more than a vague "settling" problem. "two of the posts upstairs were resting on the floor joists instead of the beams that could carry that weight," says Hofmann. In came the engineer with more laminated beams as well as another bill--this one for $3,000. "Every time I hear someone call, Mrs. Goldstein!' I cringe," says the renovation-weary home owner. "I know it's going to be bad news."

VANITY FAIR
Good-quality bathroom cabinetry can be ordered from a variety of manufacturers, but unusual item-such as the twin cherry vanities in the Goldsteins' bathroom--often require custom work. "We can do things like match details in bedroom furniture or exisitng trim, things you can't get anyplace else," says Angelo Santoro of Creative Woodcraft in Dover, New Jersey. Int he Goldstein's case, that hard-to-find detail included a curved-top drawer, which was difficult to find ready-made.

To make the drawers, Rich Lusskin at the Creative Woodcraft factory cuts a wooden sandwich out of a layer of cherry veneer (photo left) glued atop several layers of straight-grained plywood known as wiggle wood becasue it bends so easily.

The sandwich is pressed onto a sturdy wooden form built out of 3/4-inch plywood. Rather than clamping the wood in place while waiting for the glue to set, Lusskin uses a process called vacuum-bagging. He slips the entire form into a tough 40-millimeter-thick polyurethane bag and seals it. Using a vacuum pump, he sucks out all the air in the bag until it draws tightly against the form--with a pressure of about 2,000 pounds per square foot (photo right).

When the vanities are completely built, Santoro covers the unstained cherry with three coats of catalyzed lacquer, and sands between each coat with 320-grit paper. He does not use a polyurethane finish coat because he things the final look tends to be artificial: "There's a fine line between making a cabinet as durable as possible and making it look like it's been dipped in plastic." When installed (photo left, Julio Belioso preps the vanity for a marble countertop), the finished pieces are stunning, the result of 160 hours of labor.

Custom-made rosettes for the window trim and Edwardian-style details, such as the sin faucets and the three-pendant light fixture, add to the room's period appeal.

TOM SILVA SAYS:
When adding a tiled shower, make sure to use cemet backer board rather than ordinary plasterboard under the tile: "If you put the wrong stuff on, it will absorb moisture, and your tiles will fall away. Cement board, however is indestructible.

For the bath itself, the Goldsteins went for a low-key yet elegant approach. The architect designed a 13-by-15 foot room with toilet and shower in alcoves, a free standing tub positioned between two windows, and a pair of custom-built curved cherry vanities along opposite walls. The existing Edwardian-style tub faucets were reused, and the architect specified custom made rosettes already in the house. "The idea wasn't to go back to an exact period in time, but to give the room an older feel, like it's been there all along," says James.

Helping that ambiance is an absence of radiators: The Goldsteins opted for radiant floor heating set into lightweight concrete, at a cost of about $5,000. It takes the chill out of the white Carrara marble tiles covering the floor and shower. When all was nearly done, there remained one more unforreseen bill brought about by the renovation.

All that smashing of plaster from the demolition and what eventually turned into a whole-house makeover left the place swirling in dust. Getting rid of it turned out to be a full time job for a seperate work crew, which pored over every inch of the house. "you won't believe this but my cleaning bill was $6,000," says Goldstein. "And the vacuum cleaner bag gets filled up every time it's on"

Even so, she doesn't count this as the first one, a 40-year-old Colonial just down the road in Short Hills. "Then, we didn't know what we were doing at all." But this ranks as the biggest. She manages to keep calm, as a workman bellows from up above: "Mrs. Goldstein".

TOOLS FOR TILING

Marble and other natural stnoe tiles may look like they piece together without effort, "but believe me, you have to work at it," says Vincent Carramusa of BCG Marble & Granite Fabricators. "I'm telling you, it's an art." While ordinary ceramic tiles can be cut by scoring their faces and snapping them in half, the brittle 3/8-inch thick marble tiles for the Goldsteins' master bath required considerably more machinery. The most important is a wet saw, which spins a smooth-rimmed 6-millimeter-thick blade encrusted with 32 industrial diamonds per square inch. They slice quickly through the hard stone as a continuous stream of cool water keeps the smooth-rimmed blade from warping under the heat. Because the blade can't cut curves, Carramusa uses another method to fit tiles around bathroom fixtures:

1) He traces the curve onto the marble with a wax marker and makes a series of cuts 1/4 inch apart at right angles to the mark. 2) Then he carefully breaks off the narrow bits of marble with carbide-tipped nippers.
3) A 4-inch diamond blade grinder smooths the rough edge left byt the nippers. 4) Once the tile is cut, Carramusa smears thin-set mortar on the floor with a 3/8-inch notched trowel. Using the same trowel, he then butters more thin-set over the entire back side of the tile. "If you just use a flat trowel, the mortar will be thick in some spots, thin in others, and it could eventually fall off, " he says. Two other crutial tools for tile work: a margin trowel, which cleans mortar off the edges, and a sponge, which mops up after the final grouting. "Nothing can ruin good work faster than a messy grout job," Carramusa says.

The Porcelain tub is new but takes on a period look with the addition of vintage-style fittings. The chrome faucet set is mounted on stems leading to water pipes in the floor (Photo Left).

To prepare one of the cherry vanities for an undermounted sink, Julio Belloso, above left, takes a "very, very careful" pass with a jigsaw to trim the frame inside so that the sink will fit. Coworker Jorge A cisnero, above right, affixes the sink to the green marble countertop with bolts, then applies silicone caulk to the perimeter of the entire countertop underside. When the silicone sets, the whole unit will be caulked and bolted into place.

To install the frameless shower door, above left, Jamie O'Brien bores a hole for a hinge screw. Made of 3/8-inch clear tempered glass, the door is held in place by two wall-to-glass hinges. The 1/4-inch-thick clear mirror above the vanity, above right, is muscled into place by O'Brien, with an assist from Mike Granata, and affixed to the wall with three types of mirror mastic, adhesive formulated so they do not attack the mirror's silver coating.