The Ancient Basement–Gathering Materials

We have a specific look in mind for our basement–a 1930’s English pub–and we’ve been on the hunt for era appropriate items that you might have seen in a pub at that point in time. I was hunting around for a trough sink and went down the rabbit hole of Etsy (did you know they sold such things? Me neither.) and I found lots of really cool old vintage items, but there was a specific sink that just wowed me from Hudson Valley House Parts.

I love the way the cabinet is rounded like the sink. We are planning to use this in the bathroom.

So, I was prowling around a little more on Hudson Valley House Parts’ website and found this tub.

It is so art deco and fabulous!

The original plan was that when Hudson Valley House Parts had enough stuff coming south, they would deliver the items to us, but the guy (owner) who normally does the deliveries is having health issues. Our delivery date kept getting pushed out, so we decided to drive to Newburgh, NY (12.5 hours straight through) with a 6′ x 12′ U-Haul trailer to pick these beauties up. It was a lot of driving, especially with a giant trailer behind us.

We stopped a few times to prowl through antique stores and found these items:

We also stopped at the Lyndburgh Mansion in Tarrytown, NY–fabulous, highly recommend–on our way to Newburgh. After picking up our treasures, we wended our way back home stopping in Malvern, PA and then went to the Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, WV. Then finally we drove the rest of the way home.

Here they are in our house:

We definitely have some cleaning to do on them and I’m pretty sure that we are going to strip the cabinet and paint it back to its original green color. We’re going to reuse the cabinet hardware, but not the faucet. They are so fabulous.

Closer to home, my husband worked with a friend cutting lumber for the basement project and last weekend he and my youngest son brought home the beams that we are going to use on the ceiling. I hope that they are installed before we have to put the jet skis in the garage this fall.

There are also oak 2 x 4s that we’re going to use to trim around the beams. They are still really wet, so they were HEAVY–and fresh oak isn’t the best smell.

We’re continuing to work on putting the stone on the large block wall in the basement, but it’s slow progress.

I was hoping that we’d get all the open projects buttoned up before summer started in earnest, but that doesn’t look likely. We need to get the pallets of stone out of the driveway.