60s Clawfoot Tragedy

As disinclined as I am to poke fun at someone else’s idea of a stunning remodel, lest my grand schemes be held up for judgment someday, I saw pictures today that knocked my jaw so far down, my tongue just can’t help wagging. I give you, dear people, the worst treatment of a poor, helpless clawfoot that I ever did see.

Are we talking castle fetish, renaissance fair obsession, stoned and overly literal-minded? What!?! But at least they carried the theme around the room.

That sink suggests that this wasn’t even done in the 60s. Was this thing sponsored by Medieval Times, perhaps?

Here’s why I feel free to lambast this loo: It’s in a house in Glenview, Illinois, that’s going to be demolished soon. No doubt in favor of a McMansion. So there is hope for the defiled clawfoot—with any luck, someone attending the demolition sale will free it from its prison.

Also at this sale is a cool, old Chambers stove.

So there was some stylin’ going on at home.

Roper weirdness

Calling all Roper stove owners! I’ve been corresponding with a stove restorer about his work on what looks to be an early 1940s model that has some details he’s trying to replicate. The stove in question has a double oven. And it has some chrome-looking metal strips that work like spring bronze weatherstrip to seal the doors and prevent heat from leaking out. There are also iron straps screwed onto the door frames, and one of the chrome strips is attached to that in some manner. Anyone seen anything similar? Here are the pics:

Here’s the host stove:

Repair guy says the doors get hot really fast when the ovens are turned on. I think those non-original metal handles might be part of the problem.

My stove is a 1941-ish single oven on the right with broiler on the left. Here’s what the door frames look like:

No heat seal of any kind around the doors. And I find it an odd idea that Roper would’ve covered up the speckled porcelain with a strap of iron to attach a heat seal. So my amateur opinion is that those straps and weatherstrippey heat seals are add-ons. Anyone have other ideas?

Plumbing mystery of the century

… in my house anyway. What bathing device would be about 27″ high and 38″ at its widest? There was a small, square hole in the floor in front of where this thing was. The plaster wall behind the mystery object is scraped a bit as if a rim was jutting against it. Here is a photo that shows the paint shadows that whisper of the very small bathing fixture (I assume, but you know what they say about that) that used to inhabit our downstairs bathroom:

There is a date from 1946 written on the wall above this area, which indicates when the previous owners abandoned the plaster walls and put up drywall (on furring strips from an old packing crate, so this plaster wall was left intact).

The room this is in is about 5′x5′, though it was originally smaller. The room was bumped into the adjoining pantry to make the space where this mystery fixture was placed. 

Any idea what this fixture might have been? So far as we can tell, the upstairs did not have a bathtub until 1929 or later. The house was built to hold at least two families at a time; it is essentially a two-flat with a kitchen and bathroom on each floor. We saw the shadows of high-tank toilets on both floors. And both bathrooms were originally smaller but expanded into neighboring rooms, probably in the 20s, from what we can figure out. I’ve already asked an expert in antique plumbing fixtures, and he couldn’t come up with anything he’d seen that would fill that space.