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Renovation: Bathroom Blues
My father had some very good qualities, but when it came to renovating the house in a timely manner, he seemed to have several things going against him. For instance, as a policeman, he worked shift work. Shift work can lead to sleep deprivation, which is especially trying when one is trying to sleep off-hours with dogs, cats, birds, and kids running around the house. In his job, he often dealt with some energy-draining situations. Let’s face it, being a policeman in some cities does not bring one into contact with the finest folks in town. He also tried to get as many “union jobs” as possible to scoop up the extra pay. Union jobs were basically where the police officers could be hired as security for companies. For instance, the local McDonald’s franchise liked to keep spaces open in their parking lots for active customers, which could be difficult on Friday nights with teenagers hanging out. So, they would hire off-duty police officers to walk the lots and keep the kids moving. Poor sleep habits, lots of overtime, and dealing with the dregs of society and teenagers (but I repeat myself) did not make Dad the most energetic guy when he was at home. He wasn’t champing at the bit to keep the house in shape or renovated.
My mother was not someone who believed in nagging. Nagging takes more energy than just doing something for oneself, if one actually has the skills to do it. But my mother really did not have the skills to renovate a room well, but after asking nicely a few times, she just got tired of waiting.
I don’t remember the exact year, although I would guess we had been in the house for at least ten years. When we moved into the house, my eldest brother was seven; my middle brother was four or five, and I was three. My mother decided she wanted the bathroom renovated. It had been an ugly pink color, and had seen hard wear with five people, especially three growing boys. It at least needed a good coat of paint. Updating the fixtures would be good, too, since the tub enamel was chipped and for God’s sake, they were all pink! It also had a flooring of patterned tile that had various shades of small pink and white tiles inlaid where many of the small tiles had come loose and been lost over years of abuse.
I came home from high school one day to find my mother and the lady next door in the bathroom. They had put down a dark blue shag carpet over the old tile, without pulling the old tile up or installing padding. They were painting the room blue. This was not done in a professional manner. There was tile up the wall from the tub, for instance. Unlike the floor tile, it was a consistent white with a black edge border frame. At least, it had been when I had gone to school. When I returned home from school, it was a uniform light blue in color, the same as the walls.
My mother and Mrs. Next Door were not capable of changing out the fixtures, so this sea of blue was still accentuated with a pink tub, pink sink, and pink toilet. My mother had, however, bought a toilet tank and seat cover to match the carpet they had “installed.”
My father woke up from sleeping to get ready for work that evening. He got up, probably smelling the drying paint fumes, and traced the smell down the hall to the bathroom. Now, I mentioned that my father had some very good qualities, but he also had some not-so-great qualities. The same sleep deprivation factors that led to his not being energetic for renovation projects also led to his having a rather short fuse. He was also an only child who was terribly pampered and spoiled by his mother, meaning he lacked in some areas of character development until he was in his fifties or sixties. No two-year-old or modern college student or professor could out-tantrum my father. He had also been in the army and taught how to shout by drill sergeants. Generally, these were not a good combination of traits when something went wrong or did not go his way.
So, there my father was, staring into the bathroom. My mother came down the hall to stand beside him.
Instead of screaming, surprisingly, he asked a question, “What happened here?”
“I have asked several times for the floor to be fixed and the room to be painted. You do not seem to have the time to do it, so Nancy and I did it.”
My father nodded, showing amazing restraint, “That probably is not the right type of paint for the window trim and, uh, why did you paint the tile?”
“We did the best we knew how,” my mother said and stepped around him to continue down the hall.
Again, my father merely nodded. He went into the bathroom and got ready for work.
For a few years, until my father did get the time and energy to renovate it properly, that was our lavatory: a sea of blue and pink. The paint did not hold very well to the tile Mother had painted, as one would expect, so it slowly peeled away to reveal the old white and black pattern. Dad also learned that when Mother said she wanted something done, that it would get done, for good or ill.
Do y’all have any stories like this? Have you been involved in renovations gone wrong?
Published in Group Writing
Our first house was built in the early 70’s as part of a large development and we lived there for about 30 years. At some point, the tile in the master bath just above the tub was loose and cracked. By then, we had replaced at least two tile floors and figured “how hard could it be”, so we pulled out the lowest layer of tile and went off to find replacements.
That is when we found that “modern” tile was a different size and we couldn’t find replacements. So, we figured that we would just replace all of the tile, after all, ” how hard could it be”.
We pulled off the old tile and found out that the wallboard was just normal plasterboard and not what was required for a shower area. So we figured we would replace the wall board with “blue board” (I think that is what it was called)…. “After all, how hard could it be”
After pulling down the wall board, we found that the space behind it and between the studs was not insulated. (“No wonder the tub is always cold!”). So we decided to insulate before putting up the blue board before we put the new tile in. “how hard could it be”
Eventually, we got it all done and even put in some decorative tile at the top. But to this day, bathrooms scare me to death.
As an aside, we now live in a log home built in 1803. There is also a separate stone garage with upstairs living space built in the 1970’s. The home has clearly been “renovated” multiple times in its lifetime. There is a clear correlation between the age of the work and the care taken in doing it. I have done my best to reverse this trend in the work I have done.
My parents bought their first house, in upstate NY, around 1970. Despite being in the middle of a medical residency, Dad repainted it the color that Mom picked. She didn’t like it. He repainted it in a better color, bless his heart.
My first place, with my wife, was a little townhouse. It had saltillo tile and a dry bar in the living/dining room. The bar was made out of this annoying adobe-type brick that was so soft that you could gouge a hole in it with a butter knife, and it slowly shed dust and dirt onto the floor. Without telling me, my wife energetically removed the dry bar one day, without considering the fact that there was no tile underneath it. We ended up with a bare concrete floor space about 2′ x 5′, surrounded by saltillo tile that was about 3/4″ thick. I had to pay a tile guy to do the best fill-in that he could manage.
I learned that you can get very close to divorce if you try to wallpaper a room with help from your wife.
The great seducer of project ideas!
Stories like this are why, much as we like seeing houses of old character, we decided in our recent move to buy a house of brand new construction rather than deal with the uncertainty of what’s been done to an older house over decades.
Why I went out to wash the windows and screens (all 25 of them in our then-house) the one and only time Mrs. Tabby wanted to re-wallpaper the dining room. (She later decided to remove all the wallpaper and apply paint, but got a friend with lots of experience to work with her. I again chose to wash the windows.)
No guarantee unless one really knows the builder.
The course of wisdom, as we say.
Is she admitting guilt?
Look upon my remodel and despair!
Lucky. I’ve only managed to accidentally seal a Fortunato in a wall.
Heh. Accidentally.
Noice!
Says the Moderator.
Had a friend, she bought a new house and installed this lovely dark red wallpaper on her walls. She got her mother to agree to help put the wallpaper up. Her mother got there, looked at the living room, noted the angles, the windows, the spaces and says “If you hire someone I’ll cover half and we won’t hate each other when we’re done.”
“Deal.”
Worked out marvelously.
When we had the house we live in now built in 1995, my wife and I put down the floor tile. There’s about 800 sf in the kitchen, breakfast area, laundry room, and all the bathrooms. I was in my mid-40’s then, and still could barely move at nights after putting down tile that day. I wouldn’t even consider doing it now.
Does improperly painting doors black and then white again count? Or partially painted walls? I have a couple of those. Honestly, though, most of my house has been painted solo by me, so I’m thinking it’s not too shabby.
My favorite renovation story, though, is when my crush fell through our ceiling at my 13th birthday party during hide & seek… he took my hiding spot but did not know the tricks of the currently under construction portion of our house like I did. He walked on dry wall and left quite an impression on the downstairs guests with his zebra striped shoe…
You remember the bathroom I posted about here in 2017? I had to redo a substantial part of last year due to a busted sink fitting that caused a slow leak. The slow leak got under the vinyl floor where it sat and soaked. We might not have caught it save for that it one day turned into a very very big leak that soaked a lot more things besides… including the room immediately below, and the one below that. I had to pull out the toilet and all the cabinetry, and found the floor rotted underneath, along with lot of water damage to the drywall. At least this time I didn’t have to remove the tub, that part was and still is quite solid.
To quote @willowspring, “How hard could it be?”
Too small for a tatami mat.
Today I took a break from putting down tile in the a hallway and utility room. I’m just about to the point where I need to remove the washer, dryer, and laundry tub so I can work there. Then the pressure will be on, partly from me, because cleaning my work up each day without having that laundry tub or an outdoor garden hose is not going to be fun. As it is, each cleanup requires many trips outside to dump out the cleanings. The others will be counting the days until they get the washer and dryer back.
The shape of the space and the design is such that I can put down only between 1 and 2 sq yd in one session, then need to put down a raised plank so people can get through. Not letting people get through is not an option.
For this room I went with a diagonal pattern. That means a lot of use of a tile saw for cutting and fitting.
My problem with renovations is that during college summers I worked for a masonry and concrete contractor, and learned enough to get myself into trouble. If it wasn’t for that experience, I would not have tackled some of the projects I have tackled, and would have been better off.
Once this is done I’ll do the bathroom, and then the pressure will really be on, because that’s the only place in the house to take a shower.
Yeah. I’m still working on that.
My Dad ended up being quite a handyman (different comment).
After a home improvement project (I think it was re-doing the playroom for the kids) that the lovely and talented Mrs. Mongo outsourced for expertise and competence, I walked in on her berating my father.
“How come you didn’t teach him anything!!”
“How did you get the playroom done?”
“I hired a contractor to do it, while he sat on his butt drinking beer!!”
The old man takes a pull of scotch and says, “and that’s why I didn’t teach him anything.”
This thread seems to be producing an unusual number of memorable comments.
So, I threatened a Charmin or baño post, and @arahant doubled down! Very nice.
This conversation is part of our Group Writing Series under January’s theme: Renovation. There are plenty of dates still available. Have a great home renovation story? Maybe with photos? Have a terrible home renovation story? How about furniture, or an instrument, a plane, a train or an automobile? Are you your renovation project, or someone else’s? Do you have criticism or praise for some public renovation, accomplished or desperately needed? Are you a big fan, or not so much, of home renovation shows? Unleash your inner fan or critic. We have some wonderful photo essays on Ricochet; perhaps you have a story with before and after photos, or reflections on the current state of a long project. The possibilities are endless! Why not start a conversation? Our schedule and sign-up sheet awaits.
I’ll post the February topic and sign-up sheet mid-month. I’ll consider topical suggestions.
My old man was from Mass. Started in Southie, the family then moved to Chicopee, then Holyoke. Each residence was a tenement or tar-paper roofed row house.
My grandmother (on the down-low, to keep her alcoholic, abusive, and petty husband from finding out) signed the parental consent paperwork for my father to enlist at 17. He mustered out, and didn’t go home again for about 12 years.
At some point, he (as a burgeoning CIA guy) he got a 3-year tour back in the States. The folks bought a little townhouse near Sterling, VA.
I have never (I think this was 3rd thru 5th grade for me) seen somebody throw himself into as many home improvement projects as the old man. He put up a wall (and took down a wall) to have a guest bedroom. He put up mirrored tiles on one wall to “open up” the dining room. He poured a concrete/random-stone patio in the back yard. And on. For the first time, he was a home owner–of a respectable middle class home–and that property was going to be tip top.
His best civilian friend at that time, a Dutchman who would eventually become a biggie at the World Bank, and was a neighbor would join with, plan and execute all types of projects.
I’ll never forget them sitting down to drink scotch (Military Special was the budgeted brand back in those days) at the end of the day, and talk about what they did right and what they did wrong.
I have a couple of particular memories:
-The guys that delivered the home-brew concrete mixing equipment the old man rented busted their butts in the summer heat to negotiate the equipment into the back yard. When they were mission complete, the old man asked them if they wanted a beer and they said “sure.” Dad (never a beer drinker) came out with a six pack of white, black “beer” stamped cans that he’d picked up from the A&P. Guys said, “Thanks. No thanks.”
-For years, I thought “Gott Verdammt” was a cool way to say ouch when you hit your thumb with a hammer.
-When one project went horribly awry on a Sunday eve, I stood next to my father while he surveyed the damage and weighed his options:
“Welp, I got a hammer and I still got duct tape, so we’ll be able to make it work ’til next weekend when I can fix this.”
Yep.
Tomorrow morning I shall post part two: Bathroom Blues Redux.
I may have posted this story somewhere before but it’s a family favorite:
At some point, when we were kids, my father decided to paper the upstairs bathroom. He chose a print that met with full approval from my sisters and me — pretty, delicate flowers, with tiny hovering birds and butterflies — bright, cheerful and just feminine enough without being so terribly “girly” that we’d immediately outgrow it.
He’d just finished the most challenging section, papering meticulously around the edge of the tile and following the slant of the wall above it, when my mom came up to take a look. She stood behind him as they both examined the odd-shaped bit of wall.
“Wow,” said Mom. “That must have taken some time. It looks perfect.”
“Yep,” replied my proud perfectionist father. “That was the worst of it. East wall will be a cinch after that.”
. . .
“Wait,” said Mom, “are those birds . . . flying upside down?”
After a moment of stunned silence, all Dad could manage was a choked whisper of warning: “Get. Out.“
He slammed the door behind her, tore his work to shreds (with some colorful commentary) and redid the entire thing.
Aside from that little hiccup, he really did do a great job.
Oh, I am laughing so hard.
The birds upside down make it more valuable. Like the famous postage stamp with the upside down plane.
Good point.
Also, one that no one in my family would have been brave enough to stay in that tiny room and put forth, at that particular moment.