I’ve been dreaming about a bathroom remodel for a while. For a little over four years, to be honest. I describe the original bathroom as an example of everything that was wrong with bathrooms in the 1950’s on a jumbo scale. We wanted to get this done last winter, but quickly discovered it was impossible to think about projects while I was teaching six academic classes and thirty-three piano lessons every week.  So it sat all alone and ugly for a while longer than we wanted, and spring break turned into a bathroom disaster when our one working shower’s tile walls started coming off in sheets. This conveniently occurred just before hosting six adults and a toddler for a weekend in our two-bed one-bath home. A sheet of orange plastic protected the bare plaster in the stall from getting entirely soaked when we showered.

The plastic sheet stayed there for three-and-a-half months. Shameful.

My birthday weekend included some help from my dad with our new tub/shower combo tiling situation.

Then eventually, piano recitals came, and classes ended, and it was summer. And it was time to buckle down on this debacle. (Yes, this doesn’t look any better, but it’s always darkest just before dawn.) 

After a difficult season that included blood, sweat, tears, Aaron declaring he doesn’t know if he can remodel anything again ever, and another visit from my parents (we are terrible slave drivers), we no longer have a plain old bathroom. No, we have a Bathing Suite.

The bathtub is now also a shower with tiled walls, with no further awkward questions about the efficacy of bathing in a dark, slimy stall.

The brown fake tile from the walls was ripped off, and because I was not ambitious enough to get the plaster underneath smooth enough to paint, I hung beadboard-imitation-paintable-wallpaper on the bottom half of the wall. In retrospect, I’m not convinced this was the best course of action. I bought it before we made some other final decisions that might have pushed me towards actual bead-board paneling, but it’s done and it’s fine.

We have a spacious and effective linen closet in place of that old shower, a slim vanity, and amazing flooring. I love this floor so much I would sleep on it. (I suppose that’s not something I should actually say, because I usually sleep in the bathroom if I’m really sick and I don’t want that to happen.)

We saved most of the original towel bars, and I’m really happy with how they fit in with everything else.

Clearly, we are bathing in absolute luxury now! I still can’t believe it’s done after years of hoping…