Bye Bye Bad Bad Bath

I could tell you a sad story, something that happened 3 years ago. It’s about my husband going through depression. It’s about him being tired and cranky and overworked and sad. It’s about my family living in a house that should not have been deemed livable. It was a dark time for our family. But here we were in our new house, a house that needed to be rebuilt from the slab up, and it felt consuming. It felt like it would never get done, there weren’t enough hours in the day to make this crapshack our home. With a lot of hard work and patience, we have. But we’ve been stuck with this bathroom that hubby put in 3 years ago. It was the first room he’d ever remodeled. He did it through depression and confusion and he did it quickly so that he’d have a place to shower instead of outside in a hose and somewhere to go to the bathroom other than at work. It was a bad job from the beginning. Sure, it looked a lot better than the 60s blue bathroom, complete with blue tub/shower, blue toilet, blue sink, and blue tile. But it wasn’t what we wanted. The craftsmanship wasn’t his. It was that of a man in a bad place in his life that showed in all he did. And for years he clung to it. He didn’t want to change it. It was almost like he enjoyed the reminder of how bad things were and how far we’ve come. Well, me? I’m not all that deep. I thought it was ugly, impossible to keep clean b/c of unsealed grout and cracks in the walls and doorways. For two years I have asked for something simple to make it look a little nicer, cleaner, more pleasant for us. Hubby finally agreed to let go of the bad, bad bath and move on. To make it a reflection of who we are today instead of holding on to what we were then.

So, over the weekend, we took this

and did this

and then this

so that this

now looks like this

all the better for playing dinosaurs on

There is a LOT left to do. Like, actually install that baseboard. Paint everything. And do the other side of the room, which involves removing our toilet and means the kids and I have to leave for a day, which we can’t do because we are all sick and no one wants to see us. We have two cases of pinkeye between the three of us and a fever. I hope you don’t get sick through my blog. We’re contagious. So, it’s on hold until we can remove ourselves from the house so the rest of the tile floor can go down, the walls can all be painted, and the shower can be tiled. I have a lot more thoughts about this project that I’ll be sharing with you as I share progress.

Thanks, as always, for being here.