The old bathroom with an avocado bathtub. (Photos by Susan Barnett)
I hated our main bathroom at the sight.
We bought an old Delaware County farmhouse three years ago and there are a lot of things that I love. It’s one of the nicest little farmhouses I’ve ever seen. There are roses everywhere. Three massive maples stand in front of it like friendly guards. The views are long and pretty much shut out other houses.
But inside? Oy.
The whole house was “updated” in the 1960s, which means dropped ceilings, siding, carpeting and recessed fluorescent lights. But the biggest horror in my opinion was the main bathroom.
Like most old houses, the bathroom was likely created out of a closet. Moved a wall to make it a little bigger, creating a strange run in the upstairs hallway to get to the bathroom and the nearby bedroom.
And from then on it only got worse. They removed the stairs to the attic that led to the former closet. They installed retractable steps above the main staircase to ensure that one day the local paper would print “Local Woman Dies in Christmas-Decoration-related Fall”.
They built a small window on the north side of the house. Calling the light “anemic” is an exaggeration.
They added half a wall dividing the newly created small bathroom in half and moved the tub on the dark side.
And then put them in the tub. The avocado green plastic tub.
I hated this bathroom. I hated the narrow cabinet they’d created on one side of the stupid tub. Its only function was to show you where the pipes were frozen on the coldest day. I hated the exposed insulation and the mouse poop in it. I hated that stupid half wall that made the tub side of the room as dark as a root cellar. I hated the closet they made where the stairs used to be. It had nothing but a large basket in the bottom that we never used.
But most of all, I hated this tub.
I am not difficult to please. Give me a light, airy room and an old claw foot tub and I’ll be a happy camper.
So this year, as a gift to myself to survive 2020, I tackled the bathroom.
Unsurprisingly, it fought back.
I salvaged a sink on the side of the road. I found a small claw-foot tub for sale behind a house in the village. I found a shower cubicle that looked like an industrial phone booth. It looked like it belonged in Paris somehow, and I really wanted it. But I didn’t buy it, and it turned out to be a good thing.
My daughter-in-law is an interior designer. She gave me great ideas on how everything could fit together. But the dimensions of the room are so strange, so strange that it all felt crowded no matter how we rearranged things. And for budget reasons, the toilet had to stay where it was. The sink couldn’t move far either. Moving sanitary facilities is expensive. Adding a window was out of the question. That was tile. This had to be done quickly to fit into the contractor’s busy schedule. And it couldn’t cost a fortune.
My dream bathroom just wouldn’t happen in this room.
I spent hours online discussing it with my partner and we eventually came to a less than satisfactory decision. I ordered a shower set that matched the space the avocado tub took up, unfortunately gave up my Paris telephone booth shower, and told the claw-foot tub with regret that it would remain in the garage for a while.
Our local contractor finally showed up three months later than expected to start work. He’s busy.
And then the real fun started.
He took out half the wall and the tub. I clapped as they left.
The author’s bathroom, in the middle of renovation.
He removed part of the wall that was shared with the adjoining bedroom and found that the wall that was created when the bathroom was expanded is not held in place with wall beams, but with a chain. Lots of heavy chains. A genius had decided that instead of building a proper retaining wall, it would be a good idea to run six chains from the floor to the attic.
“I’ve never seen that before,” he said.
I’ve since been told by a licensed house inspector that this is a very bad idea as it puts additional strain on the roof. But that’s a project for another day.
Then he started putting everything back together. He rocked the walls. It was a raw room, but it was easier to imagine what was coming and it was definitely an improvement. We were ready to survey the ground. He put down a piece of the waterproof “hardwood floor” that I had bought. He put the sink on the plinth against the wall. We all stood back and looked.
“I hate it,” I said, looking at the floor.
“Yeah, it looks cheap,” agreed my partner.
So I dragged six boxes of flooring back to our big box store and traded them for hardwood.
The paneling went up and my plan to paint it suddenly seemed to be a mistake. Once wood is painted, it’s forever. So I got some stain and got to work. My job was to dye and paint over the weekend so the floor could fall off on Monday.
We finished on Monday. I chose a dark spot because I thought it would be a great contrast to the light walls.
“It looks like a saloon,” said Partner after a few minutes of consideration.
“He’s right,” agreed the contractor. Then he laughed.
I couldn’t shake the saloon picture. The stain had to go. So after a long weekend of stain and poly, I got out a piece of sandpaper, roughed it all up, carefully covered the new floor, and primed, painted, and repainted.
I went with bread dough white on the paneling and a pale gray that looked almost blue on the walls. It followed on from the light gray shower border. It looked nice with the white sink. It was light. It was clean. I liked it! Alleluia.
In the meantime, our contractor’s usual partner was not available to provide an extra pair of hands so his wife jumped in to help. She climbed up and down the stairs while her husband barked instructions, and her usual sunny smile soon faded.
“I can kill him,” she gasped.
The work went on and it turned out that so many things were, um, not as expected.
The shower base is not properly supported, so it wobbles a little. The house is so crooked that the floor next to the bathroom door is a full two inches higher than the back corner of the room. Even though we left the insulation open, we are pretty sure that there is no insulation behind the shower wall, which means we are going to be cold this winter.
The plumbing for the sink looked so strange that I sent a picture to our friend, our favorite plumber in Kingston, to ask for advice. It hurt his sensitivity. He drove two hours to get here and he did it all over again.
The finished product.
It is finished. The mirrors are up, lots of what makes the most of this sad window. The towel hooks are in place and apart from some persistent complaints about our water pressure and two different shower heads, we have an updated bathroom. I like that. Most of the time.
The tub is still in the garage and we plan to put it in a window in the next room. It means taking down a wall between the bedrooms and creating a dressing room. There’s just no way you can expand the bathroom without creating something even stranger than what’s already there, so the bathroom is what it is. The tub has its own room.
The house wins. We learn to work within its limits.
Since that tub appeared, we’ve only wanted one bath. Never in my life have I wanted a bath so badly.
Home improvement is such a good time, isn’t it?
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