HERE WE GO. It’s finally time to tell you about A. One of our biggest partners on the farmhouse and B. Show you what this house is actually going to look like – starting with our bathroom.
Rejuvenation and I were both born in Oregon in the late ’70s, likely on a rainy day, both strangely in plaid, with a bird on top. I’ve been shopping here since I was a teenager – interested in their vintage, antiques, and salvaged anything. And in the last 20 something years we have both changed and grown-up (and yet kinda stayed the same), so after moving back to Portland it was time to properly reunite. It’s a real Hallmark movie – girl moves away, tries all the fancy city lighting, resists her roots, comes back, and has an unexpected moment with a sconce in the store on Grand Street, etc. While still carrying their carefully restored Antiques & Vintage collection, they have become a true resource for all things interior design – all hard fixtures, furniture, and decor. Everything from exterior lighting to cabinet knobs, bathtubs, ottomans, rugs, and pillows. It’s all high quality, classic/timeless, and stylistically they have such an incredible variety (industrial, mid-century, contemporary, classic). This is why I’ve bought and worked with their product for the last 10 years, but the reason I reached out about the farm – in addition to loving the design/quality – was three-fold – the customization, assembled/based in Portland, and the people/ethos.
The Level Of Customization In Lighting (And Plumbing) Is Incredible
What does customization even mean?? Being able to ‘customize’ your hard fixtures means that you can make your lighting (and plumbing and hardware) totally unique to your house and do something you haven’t seen before OR go with their many classic combinations that are guaranteed to look good (with an extremely wide selection). The Rejuvenation design and lighting assembly process (at their factory in Portland, making it easy for them to oversee quality) has it dialed in and is able to execute this level of customization and still be affordable. I love this because it makes it VERY easy to stay within the same ‘lighting family’ without using the same fixture in every room. We always say we want the lighting throughout to feel like ‘cousins’, maybe a quirky aunt or uncle here and there, brothers and sisters for sure, but you don’t want a bunch of matching ‘twins’ throughout the house (no offense to octuplets). And listen, using the same fixture throughout can work but signifies more of a ‘builder grade’ move where a designer wasn’t necessarily involved, but if the ‘twins’ are well-appointed, awesome and the matching minimalist look is what you want then go for it.
Dozens Of Metal Finishes, Countless Shade Options
We employed my ‘siblings + cousins’ lighting world throughout our house, and used the Fairview Collection because it’s super classic with a bit of a sweet industrial bent, and then customized it differently based on the design and function of each room.
You have options for the color, material, and shape of both the fixture AND the shade, which totally changes the vibe and light of the room. And not only that but many of the lighting collections come in a variety of fixtures, including single, double or triple sconces, a pendant OR chandelier and even a flush mount or semi-flush mount ceiling light. AND lastly, you can customize the length of the rod of the pendant – hanging lower over an island and higher in a stairway, for instance. It’s INCREDIBLE.
Their site makes it very easy to do this – and will render each option with a click of the button. It’s always great to come into a showroom and see the finishes and scale for yourself, but honestly, they are pretty darn properly represented online in the photos.
It’s A One-Stop Shop. Seriously.
Another reason I was excited to work with them on this project, our farm, is that they sell everything – lighting, faucets, sinks, cabinet knobs, medicine cabinets, vanities, toilet paper holders, pretty P-traps!, doorbells, pretty light switches, doorknobs, exterior lighting, not to mention every type of furniture, decor, and textiles. You can truly make your life so easy and work with one respected source for so many of your needs with less runaround and still customizable. Now getting your decor and hardware from a million different sources can certainly make for a really curated and special home, but as a professional renovator at this point, it’s also really, really lovely when you can reduce the runaround, have one point person, less coordination nightmare, and avoid the lost spec sheets.
We aren’t sourcing every single thing in the house from Rejuvenation but certainly could (we are mixing in vintage and custom:)). Again if they didn’t have such a wide selection of styles and finishes I wouldn’t recommend getting so many things from one place, but the sheer variety of pretty home products can make your house still look custom and thoughtfully curated (with the ease of one store). Now every house we do (including the River House) will have the right partners that we’ve selected and curated to fit the project. For this home – our home – we are so happy to be working with Rejuvenation.
The Lighting Is Made And Assembled In Portland
Lockdown shifted my entire paradigm on waste and sustainability. While I’m not going to be perfect, for our home I really, really, really want to work with and feature as many local brands and makers as possible. I know that not everyone has the luxury of living in a larger metropolitan city with a robust creative population, but being able to support and feature a locally based company deeply rooted in Portland (the store is a landmark, on SE Grand) with a strong ethos for its people is really important for our home (and they have antique/vintage lighting as well – win/win/win!). Locally based, local economy, local production and heck, I can even pick up from the store if I want to avoid shipping (or if I feel like shopping :)) Again, I’m VERY lucky to live near a large city where creative companies are based, but even if you aren’t near the PNW you can shop at any of their other 10 locations across the country.
They Do Good Things For People And The Earth – 60% Of Their Skilled Craftspeople Are Immigrants And Refugees
Big companies have a PR problem – it’s hard for them to tell the world how good they are in a not “look at us way” (I suppose this is a universal problem is it not?), so as a partner of Rejuvenation’s I get to help tell that story. So not only are they still committed to selling Antiques & Vintage (more on that later), for almost 40 years, they have partnered with local nonprofit the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO) to employ immigrants and refugees new to the States looking for work (it was very lovely to chat with them briefly), and they are committed to offering competitive pay, extensive benefits, and the opportunities to learn a marketable skill or skillset and build a resume.
NOW… THE MAIN BATH DESIGN PLAN
We love a fun orientation rendering – hopefully you can understand where we are in the house. This time around we aren’t doing these in SketchUp (which is so realistic you feel like you’ve actually seen the design) so these renderings that the wonderful ARCIFORM team (looking at you Anne and Stephyn) are paired back – less textures and less realistic (but still great information – keep reading).
The Material Board
She’s quiet. Calm. Inviting. And very us 🙂 First off, the mood of this bathroom matches most of the rest of the house in that it’s paired back, more minimal. Not busy, without too many decorative elements, more textures (wood/stone) than patterns in the permanent finishes, soothing, big windows, and just easy to look at and be in. Not a lot of places to put clutter. We want it to feel airy (white tile behind the vanity, the rest just drywall), wood (white oak on the vanity and windows from Sierra Pacific) blue handmade tile (custom color from Pratt + Larson), brushed gold faucets (I love a wall mount), and classic honed carrera stone. I couldn’t love it more. The inspiration? Our mountain house bathroom (but in a more classic farm way).
I LOVE this bathroom so much and when I asked myself ‘why’ it was easy to list the reasons: it’s grounded by a darker floor, with the tub as the focus (as it should be for professional bathers like me), with big pretty windows, and the rest is just simple – restrained and again, easy for your eye to understand. While visually it’s not as fun or wild as other bathrooms out there, I just want the farmhouse version of THIS. There is a real sense of calmness and space when you walk in there and my hope is that this is the same thing.
Introducing Our Faucets And Tub
1. Connor Cross Handle Wall-Mount Faucet | 2. Marella Cast Iron Soaking Tub | 3. York Floor Mounted Tub Filler with Handshower | 4. Round Contemporary Shower Head | 5. Connor Lever Pressure Balanced Shower Set with Handshower | 6. Modern Linear Shower Drain Assembly
Here we go. Another reason I reached out to Rejuvenation so quickly is how much we love the Conner plumbing fixture line. It has soft old-world lines, with that nice arch and sweet little cross handle with hot and cold (no confusion here:)). It says traditional/sweet/farm but with more elegance than something that could have gone more industrial. It’s perfect. We used the full suite in the showers, keeping it simple with just one overhead shower head and hand shower for shaving/cleaning.
As you can see they have a huge selection of faucets – many traditional like ours as well as modern (specializing in the in-between). And once you choose the faucets you can add on the toilet paper, hand towel, towel bar, toilet flushers all within the same suite and same finish. Even mirrors (including pivot) and medicine cabinets. And for those of you who know what a P-trap is (for exposed plumbing of which we have two in the house), you’ll want to have pretty supply lines and P-traps. They have you covered.
For the tub, we tried out a few of them and landed on what is the most ergonomic tub that still fit the space/style. Because of my bathing habits (frequent), I’m not a “pretty but uncomfortable” tub shopper. Comfort is my top tub priority but this one is also so pretty so win-win. I just love how it supports your back really well as the sides cradle you in a great way that isn’t too crowded or tight. It’s not TOO long because I feel that super long tubs are hard to reach with your toes unless really tall, so you are constantly sliding down and almost dropping your kindle. And while I like a wide tub, this fits us both nicely (together or separate) and fits the space. This is cast iron which means once hot it retains heat and feels so stable with its steel skirt. I have a lot to say about tubs, y’all. A LOT (I still love my tub from the mountain house FYI – it has a bigger footprint but the interior is smaller due to the jets).
Our Lighting Selection
1. Fairview Traditional Single Sconce | 2. Fairview Traditional Pendant
We chose the Fairview single sconce and went with three for ample lighting and because it looks pretty 🙂 We went with the unlacquered brass because we like the patina over time, so yes we are mixing the unlacquered brass lights with the aged brass faucet and we are GREAT with it. As I wrote about here you really do have to maintain it and while I took that risk somewhere else (stay tuned) I really didn’t want to deal with that potential issue in all of our most-used spaces. We used the same line throughout – with a pendant in the hallway and a sconce in the WC (we tried a double in there and it was too big).
There is so much more to tell you – i.e. how we are dealing with privacy with that huge window? Why do we like a shower “room” versus a large glass shower? Why have a vanity niche if it’s not a built-in vanity? Where is the tile going to go and most importantly – will I ever, in my whole life have a medicine cabinet???
Stay tuned for post #2 on our bathroom – coming at you soon.
Thank you, Rejuvenation, for partnering with me on this project, our home. And thanks to you all for supporting the companies that support the blog and bring daily design content. More to come (including vintage lighting I found in their Antiques & Vintage department – I LOVE IT SO MUCH).
*Photos by Kaitlin Green
THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED HERE.
