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Ossuary Bathroom

Ossuary : A place where the bones of the dead are deposited.

Originally this bathroom was to be an Eastern Oasis. However it directly connects to the Vampire Lair bedroom, and looked pretty out of place. Then one evening for movie night, we were watching Cemetery Man and it hit me like a lightning bolt... an ossuary! So I grabbed my sketch pad and started drawing up the plans for this room.

This room is my current masterpiece, being the first time I ever attempted doing a full-fledged simulated environment in a domestic setting.

The challenge here was to either completely disguise the modern components or to make the fixtures look like they belonged in an old courtyard ossuary.

It took about 3 weeks to get the base down, and then about 6 months worth of free-time weekends to build all the kinky little details. I don't think it will ever be truly finished, as I get new ideas every time I take a bath in here.

Disguising the shower stall was a bit tricky, and I still have to install some old wooden doors to complete the look. But the idea came to me to make it look like part of a building on the outside.

The sides were made by literally mortaring in pieces of stone-looking tile and then using various aging techniques to distress it.

White gauze hangs from above the stall doors.
I then built a faux window on the outside of the shower stall to make it more convincing as a building.

Inside the barred "window" there is a mirror that is draped with ivy and Spanish Moss. The effect is that anyone who passes by it will catch a faint glimpse of movement that seems to be coming from inside the "building".

It has been known to give people a start, especially since the window is located right near the commode.

Here's the whole set-up for the commode. I use colored lights for various effects, simulating everything from late night to just before dusk.

The commode itself is painted black and the seat cover is disguised to look like a pile of fallen leaves. This way it blends right in and is hard to see when the lighting system is on.
A close-up of the death mask.

All it took was a cheap plastic mask and some textured stone paint. Mounted on a grey plaster plaque and draped with Spanish Moss.

The skull lantern was just something I found during Halloween and thought it was appropriate for the room.

This was done in blatant defiance of one of my decorating class instructor's golden rules - never put a religious icon in a bathroom.

I cast the crucifix in plaster and then faux-painted it to stone.

Below it is a rather large snake shedded-skin that I kept when my 6ft python managed to get it all off in one piece so many years ago.

You can't see it in the photo, but there is also a bird's nest on the ledge with a bird skull in it. My sense of humor.
Speaking of dead animal parts, there's an awful lot of them in here.

I needed bones, and I didn't know any humans who would volunteer theirs for the sake of this bathroom decor. So I accepted lots of animal bone donations.

In the basket with reading materials is a couple pairs of goat horns. There's also a few deer skulls around nearby.

You can also see part of the floor here. It looks funky in bright light, but in dim lighting it looks sleek and eerie.

Since the bathtub is used frequently, making it difficult to access was out of the question. So I decided to build up around it to make it look more like a natural formation.

Most of this was done with foam and plaster coming off the walls and surrounding the tub basin.

The tub itself was painted black with a speckled bottom to make it appear to be a rock basin filled with dirty water.
Of course, I had no right calling it an ossuary without having some corpses around.

This is my full-size corpse, who has since gone through a revamp to appear not quite so fresh.

Nearby are the caged candles that illuminate him when the lights are dimmed.

Candles are the secondary lighting in this room, and they do tend to completely change the mood when in use.

I use scented candles in here in order to add to the overall feel.  There's a company called Dark Candles that carries some wonderful graveyard-themed fragrances. I use a combination of "Corpse", "Crypt Moss", and "Coffin".
Further proof that you don't need a huge decorating budget to pull something off.

These containers were made from simple chip-board boxes and an old coffee container.