Do you get Cottage Living magazine? My style is similar to yours and I love this magazine. Some 'cottagy' stuff is too much for me, but I am constantly dog-earing pages in Cottage Living. Just great, clean looks with a value put on vintage/old/antique.
Lynn

I suggest taking a look at the design center & sourcebook at oldhouseinteriors dot com.

What Patser said about Old House Interiors. It's my second favorite magazine (after American Bungalow). Half eye candy, half useful information. Every so often they run a special issue called "Early Homes" which you might like.

If you want to be fitted into a pigeonhole, based on those two pictures I would say the Shaker/Colonial/farmhouse end of the cottage/country style spectrum. They evoke for me the simple, slightly minimalist, functional but still comfortable look of an 1800s vernacular farmhouse.

Pigeonholing is good. That's how I find things. But that is an awfully big pigeon hole, johnmari :-) Many cubby holes. It's not so easy as "modern mediterranean". Just you try a search on shaker/colonial/farmhouse/cottage/country style!

I've haven't bothered with a subscription to Cottage Living, bestyears, because I find that I don't really fit the cottage mold: Don't like frilly or cute or distressed. I've looked at their website and like some things but I'm stuck trying to figure out what bathroom to put in this half-Cape of less than 900 sq.ft. Hubby wants everything easy to clean, i.e, Corian.

Haven't looked at oldhouseinteriors.com on line, though I have bought a few of their magazines. I'll give it a try.

I'm finding it hard to translate the style I want in a tiny cottage.

dj, you have my style judging by those photo's you posted. I love wainscoting and would have it in every room, but DH sighs when I suggest it. LOL So I'll only have it in a couple of rooms. I call my style traditional with some country flair. Or if you want an official style, call it Traditional Country or Country Traditional. Have you gone over to the gallery side of this forum and checked out the hundreds of pictures Oceanna so nicely posted for us? She has a cottage style link, a bath and kitchen and I believe a couple of others. Look through all of these (if you have a couple of hours), and see what appeals to you. You'll know what your style is by the things that keep catching your attention.

No I haven't, brutuses. Do I click on the blue Gallery next to Conversations?

djdoggone, actually I did exactly that, run a whole slew of Google searches, when I was confirming my instinctive reaction to your inspiration pictures. There are a BAZILLION substyles underneath the "Country" and "Cottage" umbrellas, so that was the closest refinement I could make without overly restricting you or making your mind slam shut. :-) So it's not a very large pigeonhole at all - no slam intended to Brutuses at all, but "Traditional Country" is a significantly larger pigeonhole! If I had just said "cottage", it would have generated exactly that knee-jerk reaction of "don't like frilly or cute or distressed" even though that's not everything that cottage style is. That is why I described cottage/country as a spectrum, and why I explained further what those particular photos brought to my mind ("the simple, slightly minimalist, functional but still comfortable look of an 1800s vernacular farmhouse"). Try searching for one thing at a time, like "shaker decorating", instead of trying to do everything all at once.

As for that bathroom, you can't go wrong with a simple generically-vintage-flavored bathroom in a Cape given the style preferences you've described - white-painted beadboard or board-and-batten wainscot, plain white fixtures, chrome or nickel-finished faucets, a mosaic tile floor (gray grout!) like American Olean's Chloe or Daltile's Octagon & Dot, a classic Shaker-door vanity with a granite or soapstone top (you will probably be able to find a preassembled unit with top and sink included for a good price from Lowes or Home Depot; I'm assuming you need a vanity for storage, although a pedestal sink would make the room less cramped-feeling). The tub and surround can be anything if it's hidden behind a pretty shower curtain (maybe a ticking stripe?)... shower curtains can hide a multitude of evils ;-) along with softening the whole atmosphere of a very hard room. Take a look at the bathroom in the Brickman House blog - there may be elements there you like. A book you may find useful is called "Bungalow Bathrooms" by Jane Powell - the title is misleading because it covers many, many different styles, and has handy information on shoehorning all the bathroom necessities into a tiny space. (I haven't been hanging around there lately since my own bathroom reno in this house is being put off which is depressing, but you are spending time over at the Bathrooms forum, right? Their advice and input was invaluable when I was working on the two baths in my previous house.)

I wouldn't totally write off "Cottage Living" magazine. If you're not inclined to subscribe, maybe you can take a look at some recent back issues at the library.

I'm not sure their website reflects it, but I've found the past year or so of their issues show much more of a streamlined, pared down version of cottage/bungalow decorating.

I'm not drawn to the frilly, cluttered, shabby chic side of cottage either, and I've found a lot of inspiring looks in their pages.

I am going to be keeping a close eye on this post as I have noooo clue what my "style" is.

If I brought everything into this house that I fell in love with (as opposed to falling in Lust
with, because that is short-term), my home would look like a cleaned up version of the Sanford and Son home and yard.

When I first started coming to this Decor Forum I read a lot of comments about "If you love it, it will work in your home".
Um... so not true in my case. I am the big exception to that rule.

In fact, there have been many times I'll bring something home that I have fallen in love with, one or more of my adult kids comes by, sees it and immediately starts whistling the Sandford and Son theme song.
Sad, huh.

djdoggone,

Thank you so much for starting this thread.
I wish I could be of some help to you but sadly I'm in the same boat. But you starting this thread might end up being a help to more than just us---And that's a good thing! *s*

Sorry I'm late answering your question, but yes, next to conversations.

Thanks, everyone. johnmari, you are right, of course, I seem to pull a little from this and a little from that. County Traditional is too confining, I think, but not sure, else I would never have written the note.

Your description of the bath is exactly what I had in mind. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to share with me your thoughts. It helps a lot. And thanks very much for the link to the Daltile's octagon. My husband had said no because of the expense of laying that tile individually, but I see there is a much easier way. Do you think I can do a grecian-like, geometic border without making the tiny bath feel tinier? Do you think that would be too over-blown for tiny half-Cape? I'd do the white and light grey combo.

Like you, I've wanted to put in a pedestal sink to ease up on the sausage feeling of trying to cram in everything in a tiny bath. But where to store the toilet paper?

Thought tiled walls would be too much. Beadboard less so. And you seem to think so too.

The bathtub has to have a shower. That is where I stumble. There isn't room for a soaker tub and separate shower. And I'm enough of a minimalist to want a frameless shower door. The little bits of color will probably come from cobalt blue flower vase -- I LOVE fresh flowers (This is the Garden Web, after all.) and will give up clothes and food to buy fresh flowers during the New England winter -- and ? maybe Burleigh soap dish. Just a touch.

BUT how do I frame this bath?!? I go to sleep thinking on it, but no inspiration comes. I'll check out the Bungalow book.

Thanks, brutuses. Who knew there was all that?! I always figured Gallery was just another way of seeing the conversation dialogue. I have so much to learn about computers/websites/the internet/cell phones.

amity, have you watched that HGTV show I mentioned? I'm betting you would benefit from her approach. Of course she tells people what their style is -- though it can't always work because she would get me all wrong if she came to my current house -- and then helps them decorating by giving them restrictions. I'm guessing that's what you need, restrictions. And she tells you how to find your style. Check out her part of the HGTV website. Maybe it will work for you; it didn't for me. I look at a beautiful, charming classic Victorian cottage, and while my initial response is to feel warm, enveloped and cosy, I know that if I had to LIVE in it, I'd start chucking out stuff. (My husband lives in fear of me and my tendency to throw stuff out. "Off to the swap shed!" is my cry.) A charming Victorian parlor looks like a housekeeping nightmare to me. Less is more. Sorry, got side-tracked. amity, it sounds as though you want more unity and that comes from restrictions, which that woman (sorry, can't remember her name) seems very good at.

Thanks all.

Take a look at the Kathryn Ireland site. There is also a link to her blog, The Huffington Post, located at the very bottom of the home page. She has a book out called Classic Country. I would describe it as traditional with a country twist or vice versa.

Here is a link that might be useful: Kathryn Ireland

I love your inspiration pictures and I also like the HGTV show Find Your Style. Now keep in mind, when they're doing a room it's exactly that, a room at a time, and they're usually keeping at least one element already existing (like a sofa or wall color). You're starting from scratch.

I'd be feeling overwhelmed if I had to think of a whole house at once, so what about starting with just one room? I mean, let's start with thinking about one room (your choice). I bet if you selected your four elements for Room X, it might prove a great starting point with what and how to carry on to the next room, etc. Does that make sense?

It reads as if you're already starting to think about your bathroom, so that could be your "first room." Like maybe Karen would call your style there: Modern Cottage (or Cottage Modern!). If chrome is one of your elements and white one of your colors (your second element), then you just need to think of your accent colors (like the grey in the grecian border) and maybe ??? whatever makes you smile when you see it in conjunction with the other elements. (That periwinkle in your v. first picture would look great, for example.)

Right now I cannot think of what it's called, but there are those half-wall glass doors which fit above a tub. What is it called??? Shoot. Shower guard, maybe? (I've been seeing them tons on Save My Bath.) Anyway, those can come frameless and that could be your Modern element.

Storage in the bath is hard without knowing the room's dimensions and how strongly you feel about the pedestal sink. I love the way a pedestal looks but they drive me insane because of no place to put anything. In the house in which I grew up (as a girl) there was a pedestal sink in my bath (and it was my attached bath -- no one else used it) and as I got older (starting wearing make-up, doing my hair, needing tampons ...) I complained to my parents about not having any place in the bathroom to put these things. My mother wouldn't brook my complaints, always favoring form over function where it didn't affect her. (and you'd better bet she had an enormous vanity in her dressing room!) I'm now 38 and still ticked about that -- it's certainly informed my parenting, I can tell you that! Anyway, hence my aversion to a pedestal sink anywhere in my home.

But that's me and not you. There are many different storage options in a bathroom so you don't have to go with a vanity -- you can do a pedestal and get a hanging cabinet or standing cabinet to store your sundries.

I have to say I LOVE Kathryn Ireland's prints. Love them! In this month's House Beautiful there is a spread on her Ojai compound. (so that's how the other half lives -- on a compound!)

Good luck -- I look forward to reading / seeing what you come up with!

rmkitchen, thanks for the hand-holding. You're right about the vanity, I suppose. I mean, toilet paper out in the hall linen closet will not do. In my current house I had hubby build a concealed cabinet (works in an all wood bathroom) beside the toilet that fits between the studs and holds one 4-pack of toilet paper and one box of feminine napkins. It's always filled so there is no running out of toilet paper.

The new bath will probably be 8' wide by 9' long. There will be a two foot run along the right-hand wall when entering that is the side of the outside hall linen closet & plumbing wall. Across from the door will be the biggest window I can fit in the space. (If I were rich I'd live in a cottage by the sea. I love the light.)

Clearly you have the Find Your Style thing down. Will work on the bath as you suggest. Thank you for taking so much time with me.

amck & bestyears, you will be happy to know that I've subscribed to Cottage Living in the hopes that the recent trend continues.

And, johnmari, the local library is getting the Bugalow Bathrooms for me from another library, so I'll have a look/see for inspiration.

Thanks, all.

Sorry I didn't get to this sooner, djdoggone, and sorry this is long but I can go on forever about bathrooms. LOL If it's too much to digest at once, you could save it to your "clippings" (look on the right side of the screen) and read it in bits. Glad your library is getting you the Powell book. Even if you find absolutely nothing else useful, which I doubt, there's some great eye candy in it! :-)

However, 8'x9' is not a small bathroom, it is quite generously sized! When you said "tiny bathroom" I was thinking more like the 5'x6' bath that's fairly typical of a small house! Do you have a floorplan? I was able to fit both a soaking tub (a clawfoot, yum) and a shower stall into the 8.5'x8.5' master bath in my previous house; in the same-sized upstairs bath (oh, do I miss having separate baths) had a shower/tub but a double vanity and good-sized linen closet in the same size room.

Very rarely do you have to lay mosaic tiles individually - they pretty much always come in sheets for easy installation, thank goodness! Unless you cough up for custom made borders (yeowch) or use a simple strip border, they have to be put together by hand but you can set them up on mesh mosaic sheets beforehand, which are then just laid onto the thinset. I had eliminated the small mosaics because you had specified "easy to clean" and that's a lot of grout! (I was unimpressed with the so-called stain-resistant epoxy grout. It DID stain, had a bit of a plasticky look, cost a lot extra for both materials and installation, and just wasn't worth the hassle in the end.) While Greek key borders can be had premade they are virtually always either glass or stone which isn't really appropriate for the style of house you're aiming for.

One of the other nice things about the Daltile octagon-and-dot, it's dirt cheap. :-) You can do a simple but attractive border by cutting out the small tiles in, say, a double line around the perimeter of the room (before installing the sheet) and replacing them with those of another color. It is very classic and goes pretty much anywhere. (Some people will insist that you have to use large floor tiles with a small bathroom "to make it look larger". I disagree, especially if the color values of the small tiles and the grout are similar which minimizes visual clutter and busy-ness. I also disagree that small spaces must be automatically made to "look larger" - we have in this culture an attitude of "bigger is better" even when perhaps we should really embrace compact efficiency.)

If you live in a chilly location, electric floor warming mats are probably the best few hundred bucks you'll spend in a bathroom project. On average they use about the same amount of electricity as a light bulb, and you can get a programmable thermostat as an option. I loved mine and the people who bought the house were totally jazzed about having such a "luxury". (It cost about $300 for the mat and the fancy thermostat - Home Depot and Lowes both carry the Suntouch brand, which is what I used.)

Per the pedestal sink... maybe I'm just strange (okay, that's nothing new) but having pedestal sinks has always made it much easier for me to manage the clutter factor in the bathroom, because it forces me to put things away when I am done with them. When I have plenty of horizontal space like a full countertop, it accumulates "stuff". Some pedestal sinks have wider decks than others, too, giving you more room to set things down while they are in use - American Standard's Retrospect and Standard are two right off the top of my head, as are many of the wider pedestal sinks from Kohler (Bancroft, Kathryn, Devonshire, for example; the narrower versions have skinny decks). Toothbrush holders and suchlike can be wall mounted to get them off the sink top, or a glass shelf placed above the sink under the mirror or nearby. If there is floor space, a small standing cabinet (here's a spendy one at Pottery Barn, but it gets the idea across) can be placed next to the sink.

As for toilet paper storage, there are attractive cylindrical storage containers especially for TP (Wal-Mart, Target, Linens & Things, etc.) that hold a four-pack and can tuck behind the toilet, keeping the "stash" within easy arm's reach. If you get monster packages, the remains can be stored elsewhere and the in-bath container kept filled from that. You obviously already know about recessed cabinetry, which is usually your best friend in a small bathroom - a wood-framed recessed medicine cabinet (VanDykes.com has a nice kit that is cheaper than a similar readymade from somewhere like Restoration Hardware) over the sink is stylistically compatible with beadboard etc. and holds some stuff, and if you use beadboard on the walls you can use a beadboard door on your recessed wall cabinet to help it blend in, and keep your trim very narrow. I had a tall, skinny (I'm talking like a 10x15" footprint) freestanding linen cabinet tucked into the corner near the toilet to keep the standard bathroom things in; things that were not used often were stored in the closet of an adjoining room. A pretty decorative cabinet can hang over the toilet to hold yet more - in the upstairs bath in the previous house that's where TP and such lived because we could just reach over our heads to get a fresh roll! LOL I am not much for the "spacesaver" sort of over-the-toilet cabinet, although some people like them. If you think the right way you can cram a positively ridiculous amount of storage into even a small bathroom.

Can you do a pocket door? They are some of the best spacesavers in the world, and they have come a LONG way from the flimsy things of the 60s and 70s, more like the heavy and durable ones of the Victorian era (many of which are still functioning just fine today!). There is even locking hardware available.

I understand the PITA factor of the combo shower and tub in a vintagey bath, I'm in the same boat. (Complicated by the need for a deep soakable tub for the 60" niche - I'm a daily soaker - in a lighter-weight acrylic tub in this 107yo house, feh! I love the feel of cast iron, but reinforcing the floor joists to permit the cast iron would require tearing up the floor in the hallway and one bedroom, or tearing down the ceilings in the dining room and kitchen. Uh, no.) Pretty shower/tub faucet sets are available - I love the one in American Standard's Standard Collection and it's very reasonably priced. Subway tile (white with light gray grout) would look especially lovely for the tub surround but if the hubby is being super stubborn then a solid surface (Corian type, but there are several other brands now) material would be attractive behind that glass and easily cleanable. A light gray with a subtle granite-like flecking, perhaps, although Corian does make a pretty solid light gray (Pearl Gray).

Not quite sure what you mean by "how do I frame this bath" - can you clarify further?

Have you visited the Smaller Homes forum? It's going through a slowish patch now but it has flurries of activity, and if you post questions you'll almost certainly get plenty of answers.

johnmari, thanks awfully for your considered response. I have saved it so I can read it again, but I am eager to reply now.

First, philosophy. I absolutely agree that I do not want to use large tile in this bath and give it that modern treatment. I have no need to make it feel larger. I love small. I love small and simple and clean and quaint and efficient and light-filled. I could easily live two to a 800 s.f. cottage if by the sea, where a small window brings in heaps of light and air. This is where I grew up. Now I live in the country, surrounded by woods and I am panicking about getting light into this cottage which is designed to replicate an old-fashioned half-Cape so it has small and few windows, and the room layout forces most rooms to have but a single outside wall, so no chance of bathing in light. I know I will cheat with bigger windows; hopefully I will not ruin the look. But the layout already exists, so we have to work with it.

Okay. Now. There is no house plan yet as I am trying to use the basic plan of a house already built and tweak it for us -- only there is something about roof lines that prohibits me from having free rein. The current house's bath is 8' wide by 7' deep. Because I am pushing out the wall to increase the kitchen to 9' deep, the bath will go with it (roof line thing), so it will probably end up 8' by 9' deep. Today there is a linen closet on the outside wall that cuts into the bath, and I think we will keep it. So, when facing the bathroom door the right wall will have a linen closet that is 3' wide (thought that would be a good size, but it can change) and 18" deep. If need be, the back of the closet can house a 6" deep plumbing wall so the total depth of the linen closet would be 2'. The outside wall is directly across from the door, so that is the only space for a window. If I were building a bungalow, I'd do an entire span of casements. Maybe I can double team double hungs. I will have to try out pocket doors to see if they are arthritis-friendly. My ancient knowledge of them tells me "no", but you say they are a different breed now. Can not handle a door knob, only a lever.

That's it for the layout. The kitchen is behind the right-hand wall, but there is no problem with running plumbing to the left-hand wall. Behind the left-hand wall will be the closets for the bedroom so it can easily be increased to house plumbing. There is a full basement, being a New England home, so full access from below as it is a single-story Cape. It is being built so floor reinforcement is not an issue for a cast iron tub. We are planning radiant heat in the floor so warm floors it will be! And I've asked that the heating run beneath the tub so that should help keep bath water warm. Oh, and the bathroom will be on a separate zone so I can stay toasty while soaking. I might even install an electric bathroom fan/heater in the overhead light like I have now.

As for Hubby. He will do anything I ask, even after forty years of marriage and getting the bum deal of having a wife with rheumatoid arthritis. I try not to take advantage. He loves the old ways as much as I do, but with having to pick up so much of the load, we are trying to lighten that load by changing our ways. We are moving from a shingle home, that requires a lot of up-keep, to a vinyl-sided cottage, as small as we can make it and still be comfortable. We are trying to use the materials we love as much as possible, but incorporate easier to clean items as much as possible. For instance, in our current house all fixtures (bath fixtures and wall sconces) are solid brass and uncoated so they must be polished to be cleaned. With hard water, that requires a lot of effort to keep the bathroom looking good. It was a labor of love for me, but one Hubby can't possibly keep up. You get the idea.

After writing a note in the Bath forum, and getting suggestions there, we went shopping to see what the new linoleum was like. As improved as it is and as easy to clean as it might be, we agree that we are just not ready for a linoleum floor in the bathroom yet. And the one-piece acrylic bath/shower will wait until such time as I can no longer walk. So, right now we are trying to find the best materials that are easy to clean and feel good to us. (Pretty counts) So, tile it will be.

Now, if I can only figure out what you meant by the border... I don't think I grasped this remove-a-dot-before-laying-the-tile concept. I love classical so if there is a "traditional" way of doing the border, let me know.

The tub surround issue: I thought I'd have to put the soaking tub and shower in one unit with a bath as small as 8' x 9'. That would preclude a beadboard-surrounded soaking tub. Instead, I'd have to put in a tub/shower surround of tile or Corian or ? I can look at a picture and know what I like but I don't know how to get the look because I know nothing about design/decorating. Your knowledge is invaluable to me. I had no idea that grecian key designs would be of a different type of tile and therefore inappropriate for the type of house I am trying to construct. I had no idea that a gray grout would get the look I probably had in my bath as a child (living in a turn-of-the-century home). Does one put tile on the ceiling? How does one "surround" a bath/tub combo?

If I can fit a separate shower, how big should it be? I read where people said a 36' shower results in bruised elbows. After I figure out whether it is one tub/shower unit or two separate, then I'll figure out the vanity/pedestal sink issue. I love unfitted kitchens so an unfitted bath would work for me. I just don't want it to feel cluttered/squeezed.

Thanks so much. Deb