More suitable MB sink

I sold the Crane Drexel and got an era-correct (for the house) sink for the master bathroom. As has been discussed earlier, the master bath had a sink from '40 which is when I believe the master bath was created in what was originally the only bedroom's changing room. 

Since the lower bath is pretty good shape and the upper bath, also from '27 it appears, is pretty good except for the shower. To make things cohesive, I decided to make the master bath into a '27 appropriate style. 

Naturally I started looking for a wall sink or pedestal sink. I found one in good shape for $275 from '28 that is 27" wide which is PERFECT. The plumbing fixtures in the house that are original are dated '28 because the house probably took a year to build since plumbing fixtures are installed very close to the end of construction since they get in the way during the finish construction (except the tub which goes in before the tile if it's a built-in). 

The faucets have been replaced but are style appropriate and don't need to be refurbished with gaskets etc. 

A side note - you can see the '28 sink is about 3" below where the Drexel sink was set. The '28 sink is 30" tall (to the flat top surface around the sink). That would make the Drexel 33" tall. Modern pedestals are 33-36" tall. Why are sinks getting taller? I was reading on deabath.com that was for two reasons. People are healthier 90 years later and therefore taller. Another reason is people used to wash up in the sink while sitting on a chair. The sink stopper is much less used these days because people used to boil a kettle of hot water to pour in the sink and use to wash up their hands, face and hair etc. for the majority of their washing needs. Now that hot water heaters are ubiquitous, people use the sink mostly for hand washing and to wash the face before and after bed. Everything else is done in the shower. Baths are less common because it was so much work to draw water for a bath, by lighting the boiler in the basement, that one really wanted to relish in the luxury of hot water.

Anyway I think the sink looks fitting for the house. It looks decent next to the $100 dual flush toilet from Home Depot that I think is pretty awesome.  That's a crazy price for a well made, good-looking dual flush toilet! A vintage toilet would match better, but  we're in California and we have a drought so you'll just have to get over  it.

Next I'm looking around for a good center drain tub for the master to replace the vanity make-up desk. It would look amazing for a center drain tub there because the window is centered on the symmetrical desk. 

HOWEVER - center drain deco tubs are insanely expensive because they are so rare (and so cool). I might have to get something new which is... 2K used if you're lucky. Sigh... 

Crane Drexel Repair

I decided to sell the pretty-cool-but-not-right-for-the-house Crane Drexler ca. 1940. I hooked up the new hoses to the new copper supply lines and turned it on and it acted like it was possessed, rusty water squirting everywhere. I needed to fix this if I wanted to get good money for it.

Off the wall ready for repair

Had to get clever with pieces of pipe and the crescent wrench to get the valves out

Since the spout of the sink is integral to the sink body, the valve bodies themselves are sealed to the body and empty into a chamber that mixes hot and cold and then they water goes out the spout. The valves were leaking where they were sealed to the body. 

Once I got that valve out of there - the part on the right is the valve body that seals to the porcelain body of the sink to go to the spout. The hole is where water from the open valve goes into the sink body. On the left is the cartridge which is two pieces and threads into the main body. At the bottom is the valve seat washer which combined with the valve body creates the "water gate" actuated by a threaded shaft and cross handle.

Valve body is 1&1/4" so 1&1/4" sink drain gaskets work well

Little Vaseline for good measure

This is the valve seat washer. Very warn compared to new

Cleaning out where the old gaskets were leaking

A little pipe thread sealer

The valve body should be tighter to the sink body than the cartridge because the cartridge is supposed to be serviceable so you don't want the rest of the valve to turn when you try to take out the cartridge to replace the seat washer. 

That thing in top opens the drain and was working. 

I got it working! 

So that's how you service a Drexel sink. 

More plumbing fixtures

Couple things I mentioned in the last post. ..

Here's that lavender bath set I mentioned. The house has wall tank toilets. This one doesn't have its tank but I have a white one from the original downstairs toilet. I would like to restore one of these 5 gallon flush wall toilets for the master bath and convert it to dual flush. But for now I'll stick to regular toilets until I have time.

Lavender bath set circa '28-30s. '28 is the first year for color and wall tank toilets were phased out sometime in the 30s I would guess. The toilet would have a brass tube that comes out the back and curves up into a 5 gal. tank bolted to the wall.

I would like to add a bathtub to the master bath. A tub like this is very similar to the original in the house. Circa late '20s

For the laundry, I think something like this may have been there originally.

The reason I say that is - 

-There is a tile backsplash that is 46" long, 46&3/4" if you remove the plaster, and this one below is 47".

-This is something that was used in the '20s

The holes in the back of it are to bolt it to the wall with large washers.

Summary: 

The concrete sink is readily available and affordable. It is era correct. It fits the space. I think it will work well

Sink-in'

Got a sink today for the downstairs bath. Upon realizing 2 of 3 bath sinks had been replaced around '39-'50, it became glaringly obvious that they did not match the other fixtures or the house. A lot of time when working on old houses, I aim for cohesion. Along with updating the plumbing, foundation, electrical etc, I try to clear away the years of random fixes and "updates" done to the house because they are usually crappy. If I can afford to buy the house, it's usually so ugly and crappy that banks won't even finance it because it's unliveable. 

My logic for making the house cohesive is simple - I use the original style as a guide. I usually love the original style of houses made in the '60s or before. I just have to undo the "updates" they did in the '70s, '80s and '90s which match the style of the time but usually look dated in retrospect. It's easy to make the house look right - you just have to go with the flow and not force hard lines of modernism onto your craftsman bungalow, for example. 

I'm ranting again. Anyway... 

Sinks of the 1900s to 1920s and 30s are round. They have round, large radius edges. All the way through 1928 when Crane came out with first colored porcelain bathroom sets (which are super cool and I want to use for the master bathroom), they were round. I don't know if this is because they were usually cast iron during this period instead of solid porcelain or glazed steel, but it may have something to do with it.

Here is the original 1927 tub. Round round round. Round edge, round basin, round knobs:

And here is a sink from the upper bath, possibly original. How nice and round the bowl.

Then here is the sink from '47 that was added at some point, on the left:​

SQUARE. It's seems as though someone invented square fixtures, and it blew everyone's mind because nearly all sinks switched to this style in the '40s. Above on the right is another sink I am selling. It is a pre-war Crane Drexel sink which was made from around 1930-1970. It's rounder, but still square edged. (You can tell it's pre-war by the knobs which were bon bon shaped after the war.) It's a beautiful sink, but my plan is to make the bathrooms all '20s, even though the master bath was probably added when a lot of work was done in '39. Again, I'm going mostly for cohesion and not so much accuracy to the additions made through the '50s because this house is a mess design-wise.

Drexel hanging out in the M bath has got to go. "It's not you, I swear. I think you're a great sink. It's just that we're too different... not to mention the 13 year age difference," said the house. 

I found a wall sink the right size and feel at Ohmega Salvage in Berkeley (so awesome). It was $75 which I think is fair. It has round edges! I know it has a similar shape to the old one, but it fits better I think.

It didn't come with the metal hanger brackets so I had to make some with steel washers and long zinc coated bolts. They feel solid. 

I wanted the main sink edge at 33" high. Kitchen sinks are 36" high for reference. The '47 sink was this high so I went with it. Pulling off the '50s bamboo weave exposed bolt holes, likely where the old sink hangers were. It's hard to see in the picture, but the front edge top of the sink is exactly 4" from the bottom and the hangar lip is 8" from the bottom.

11" on center (O.C.)

It's up! The sticker glue on the side needs to be cleaned off. The wood trim sticking out on either side is for hand towels, I believe. Putting fresh towels on there will give it a nice fresh old-bath-still-being-used-and-loved feel.

Many sinks and toilets have a stamp on the bottom, often the date, but not always. The cross knobs would be unusual for something from '51, as would be the overflow style (those three holes for in case you leave the water running) and cast iron build. 

The two late 30s to 40s sinks earlier in the post are both porcelain. It makes sense for something hanging from the wall to be less heavy so that if the porcelain sink comes off the wall, it might be held up by the chrome uprights (water supply lines) and the chrome p-trap drain. If this sink comes off, it's going down and ripping out plumbing with it and that would be a big mess. Better tighten down those hangers and make sure to tell roomates where the nice new red handled water main shutoff for the house is located...