Autumngal, I love your windowsill, apron, moldings and baseboards! I hope you choose to keep them. The tile walls are more recent (I dunno, guessing 40-50 years old), so from a preservation standpoint you don't have to keep them, but from an I've-got-kids-and-other-things-to-do standpoint, what if you keep the tiled walls, and get white and blue hex tiles that coordinate with them? That would be both period appropriate and work with the walls, making less work for you. White with blue daisies might be lovely. Actually, with those black edge trim tiles, you could do white hex with black daisies. To add to the general discussion of victorian bathroom floors, I plan to do encaustic tile similar to that in fern4's link in 2 of my bathrooms, 1" white hex with an intricate mosaic in black hex, kind of like a medallion in the center, with a border and some field stuff going on, in another bath, and finally another cool mosaic of mostly 1" white hex with some 1" carrara marble hex hand inserted in another bathroom. I'm also a big fan of Daltile's octagon and dot, especially the cobalt. Wish I had more bathrooms so I could use it too. Incidentally my neighbor has an 1895 victorian with more recent spattered tiles in their bathroom like yours. They carefully chose a paint color that matched the spatters, and their bathroom looks great. In general, when you have something distinctive like that, it's best to either embrace it or get rid of it. I think your bathroom already looks cool and it will only get better!

Truthfully, that cat door was a source of amusement for all the trades that worked on it. I'll never forget the great, hulking foreman of the drywall crew making it his own personal responsibility to properly mud the bullnose edges of what he smilingly described as the "little kitty-cat door". The finish carpenter - bless his heart - took the time to painstakingly route the custom arch out of a piece of MDF and fit the base and shoe to it. The painters treated it with the same care and detail as every other bit of trim - giggling all the while. The space inside is not large - only a square foot or so - so the vacuum wand works dandy. There is another proper catflap set 90 degrees to the decorative doorway that then goes into a small 'catroom' where I can keep the food dishes and dirtbox. Doing the doorway in the wall like that was much easier and cleaner than trying to put the catflap in the 'people' door. As for the builder - since I was the designer/owner/GC/foreman/gofer and chief ditch-digger I pretty much got what I wanted - eventually.

Great find! Before you close up the wall with the items inside, you might consider taking steps to conserve/preserve/protect the items so that someone in the future will find them still in good condition. That's if you didn't choose to keep the items out (and conserved and stored correctly and perhaps passed along to future owners). Frankly, I'd be tempted to keep them out, for my own pleasure. I'd take them to the local history society and see what they have to say about dating them. Handle the fabric very carefully. I'm quite jealous as all I've ever found were old razor blades, small mammal skeletons and mouse poop. But I live in hope ..... If you do replace the items inside the wall, be sure to take pics to keep, and of course, be sure to add some notes about how you found the stuff, and a bit about you and your life in the house. That will make the cache doubly valuable at some future date.

I just got my order, which included stretch boot-cut jeans--to the waist. Actually, they call them the "no waist" jean because the waistband is a smooth extension rather than a separate entity. Less bulk. I tried them on and love 'em. Great deal for $14.99 (reg. $39.50).