Interstate 95 Antiques • Summer - Fall 2011
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Save the pink bathroom By BIRGITTA WADE Contributor
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here’s a wonderfully fun website called “Save the Pink Bathroom,” designed for those who don’t shriek in horror when they tour a potential house purchase and -- gasp! -- discover an original 1950s bathroom. In pink, perhaps turquoise accents, with glass blocks, black tile border, and “outdated” fixtures, Mamie Eisenhower for one made the look the hottest trend in home decorating in the 1950s. Today, it’s often the kiss of death if you want to sell your home with that dated bathroom intact. But not everyone wants to rip it all out and “upgrade” to a bathroom just like one seen on your home decorating TV channel. Dawn Ledwell of Walterboro is one homeowner who spent the better part of a year on her bathroom remodeling project, from finding matching vintage fixtures to doing tile work, installing new old lighting, and laying a new floor. It’s not, however, a pink bathroom, and she didn’t actually save one, but rather went back to an earlier time than the 1950s. Her pre-1840s Low Country cottage now sports a purple bathroom with a time stamp of 1929. Purple? Yup, seriously purple. Why purple, we asked. “I was a triplet, and my Mom dressed us in different colors. Mine was purple, and I love the color.” Picking a time period between today and the date the house was built, the Art Deco period is where Dawn landed. There’s definitely a shock value to the bathroom, and that imperial purple fits her notion of pushing the envelope to see what she could get away with.
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It worked. She now has a fully functional bathroom that rescued an era that often is recycled straight into the dumpster. The result is a room that inspires her, and is in the true spirit of an earlier era. But it wasn’t easy. Dawn spent months hunting down the purple fixtures that are the backbone of the bathroom. She finally located an all original matching bathroom set in the right color, tub, sink and toilet, in Pasadena, CA at an architectural salvage store. The fact that she didn’t have to assemble a set was a stroke of luck, and that she even found the color purple was even more amazing.
Crated and shipped cross country, getting the set to Walterboro was a daunting effort. “Worth every penny“ says the proud owner. Bathtubs have shrunk over the years, but her depression era one is fully six feet, and “huge.” The deep tub has a hand held shower, the toilet has a wall mounted back, and all pieces have porcelain knobs -- purple too no less! Wall mounted lighting is off white porcelain deco sconces with hand painted flowers (an eBay find), and instead of
the nasty linoleum floor that came with the house, it is now diagonal tile with a chair rail and white subway tile on the walls. “A pretty good compromise,” she thinks. Plus, Dawn takes particular pride in the fact that everything in her remodel was made in the USA. So we didn’t find that saved pink bathroom we read about after all. But
Dawn Ledwell didn’t save a pink bathroom.. she created a purple one! The original matching fixtures traveled from an architectural salvage store in Pasadena, CA to her Walterboro, SC home. photos by JORGE RUIZ
after looking at the photos here, we think you’ll agree that Dawn’s purple one is bold, beautiful and best of all, preserves great vintage design in a very old house for a very new age. Yes ma‘am, gotta love that purple bathroom!
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