Bathroom Renovation

Every fall, for the past couple of years, we’ve been doing something to upgrade our little house. We’ve definitely outgrown the starter home we bought almost fifteen years ago. Back then Little One was a clump of cells in the Mrs.’s belly, and I, not allowing the merest scent of paint fumes to waft her way, painted every room in the place that summer before our family grew from two to three.

Four years later Patch came. A shared upstairs office was transformed into a toddler bedroom for Little One and the basement was refurnished (painted, drop ceiling installed, laundry corner walled off) for our desks and PCs. Then, the clothes came. Since our tiny little starter home was built in 1942, when people either didn’t use closets or only owned two sets of clothing each, we had precious little space to put them. School clothes, summer clothes, winter clothes. Jackets. Rain jackets. Boots, shoes, sneakers. Toys, toys, toys. And, of course, my six hundred books.

Where was I going with this?

Oh, right. Though we’ve outgrown our starter home, New Jersey economics has prohibitively forbidden us to move up to a larger one, at least in this area. So we’ve made due over the years. And in addition to regular maintenance and upkeep, we’ve done some improvements to the house. For instance:

2014: Had a new roof installed.

2016: Replaced the rusted out furnace.

2017: Added siding instead of repainting the exterior, saving us some serious energy $.

And every odd year I’ve painted a room a new color – master bedroom, Patch’s room, Little One’s room, dining room.

Now, for 2018, we’re having our upstairs bathroom redone. It’s a bathroom that could fit comfortably in a pre-World War II submarine, but it’s ours. The floor tiles were coming undone. The light fixture flickered. There was no outlet in there to use a hair dryer. The fan had stopped working years ago; indeed, a vigorous coating of rust continually mocked me with the taunt of potential mold damage. And the damn terlet overflowed twice a week no matter what preventive maintenance I tried to do (“Girls! Poop, then flush. Wipe three times, then flush. Wipe three times again if necessary, then flush!!”)

Fortunately, my cousin’s husband is in the remodeling business, and he’s taking good care of us. In less than four hours he and his guys completely demolished the bathroom. Down to the wooden beams and nails. It’s amazing. What would have honestly taken me a year took them a little over three hours. He said that there were three layers underneath the tiles and walls we saw. That meant, over the past three-quarters of a century, that bathroom got smaller and smaller every time they renovated it. So now I might get two, maybe three inches in every direction. Psychologically, I’m going to feel I’m in the bathroom of the Taj Mahal. Going forward, two of us can be in the bathroom at once if need be. What a luxury!

Unfortunately, that upstairs bathroom holds the only shower in the house. Said shower currently does not exist. We have a bathroom on the ground floor, but it’s a half-bath: toilet, no tub. So I cleaned out the laundry room last Friday, brought down a stool, a pail, a basin, and a bunch of beach towels and sorted them by the big sink next to the dryer. For the past couple of days we’ve been washing up down there. It’s serviceable and survivable; I don’t stink, but I don’t exactly feel spring fresh, either. Tonight I’m going to shampoo and condition my hair in the kitchen to try to feel somewhat human again. The girls have friends who will let them shower over at their houses, and we have generous relatives a few towns over offering their facilities. But we don’t want to impose.

This week my cousin’s husband is getting permits and having the plumber and the electrician get over to do their part. The tile guy is going to deliver our new toilet, vanity, and tub, and, uh, tiles. Classic black-and-white checkerboard. A working fan is going in, and it will be moved over away from the shower so it shouldn’t rust right away. The whole ETA on this thing is another two weeks or so, especially playing the whole permit game with the town. I’m expecting a new bathroom by Thanksgiving, so I’m hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

So there’s that. Pics when it’s all done. Right now I’m ready to get into a bathing suit and have the girls hose me down on the deck, but it’s currently 55 degrees out. Oh well. Training for the zombie apocalypse, I guess. When’s the last time you saw Rick Grimes take a shower on that damn show?