Too Bungalow for me
This book is an accurate representation of bathroom styles in the first quarter of the last century. The purists will love it. If they ever plan to sell their home, I won't be interested.
While my home dates back to 1931 and I intend to remodel its original first floor bath to fit within its modest style, the baths illustrated are simply out of date. I don't believe that today's home buyer appreciates such precise historical accuracy in a bathroom. People want comfort and style even in an 1800s victorian. You can do stylish with subway tile but pink accent tile and stained oak wood trim around a clawfoot tub do not fit my definition. A spa bath is not appropriate but a bland, uninteresting, and frankly sometimes just plain ugly bath is worse. This book is full of the latter.
There are some good ideas on how to workaround the pitfalls of an older home's plumbing, electric layout and free-standing column radiators. My 19-year-old son also found the narrative very interesting.
So much fun to read and look at !
I'm a huge fan of old house bathrooms and kitchens, and this book is an absolute delight to look at and read. The pictures are spectacular, the book is filled with them. And there is a lot of great historical information as well. I think this book is especially useful if you are renovating an old house bathroom and need some inspiration or help with tile colors/shapes, fixtures, lighting, and decorative details. But it's also just plain fun to look at. :) This is definitely a book I will pull out over and over again.
Excellent source of restoration ideas, not "update" ideas
I just finished reading Bungalow Bathrooms (checked it out of the library) and found it to be very similar in spirit and execution to her companion book "Bungalow kitchens." I was amazed at the incredible variety shown in bathrooms from the 1900s to the 1930s, and the simply shocking variety of colors available 70 years ago! The book does have a LOT of history at the beginning, which is entertaining of not particularly useful, but as the name suggests its main focus is the era of the bungalow, though the text does frequently mention how to apply historically accurate concepts to Victorian homes.
I felt like the pictures are most useful for their detail work, as there are fewer "wide angle" shots in this book than in her kitchen book. This is likely due to the small space inherent with old bathrooms; it was probably just not possible to take an all-encompassing photograph in such a cramped room! That said, there are enough "big picture" views to give you a taste of how the old bathrooms "feel." Come to think of it, some of the pictures probably accurately represent the slightly claustrophobic feeling of some old bathrooms!!
The "Obsessive vs Compromise" sections are much more compromising in this book as opposed to her kitchen book, while still being completely true to original bathrooms. My guess is there there may just be more historic precedence for "Modern" luxuries such as twin sinks, etc, than there is for polished granite countertops.
Overall, I felt the book shared the same quality of work and integrity of spirit as her (excellent) kitchen book! Why four stars instead of five? I'm not sure, but for some reason I didn't find the book quite as engaging as her other book... perhaps I just don't love bathrooms as much as kitchens!
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