The Bathroom Situation

The Set-Up

When we first moved into the Homestead McCollow, there were two full baths – one on the first floor and one on the second. And this blog post is all about the one on the second. The tiny one.

Picture this:

-You’re brushing your teeth at the sink,
-Your calves are touching the toilet bowl behind you,
-Your left elbow is touching the glass shower door next to you.
All at. the. same. time.
And you’re standing at a pedestal sink which is a sink on a stick with no storage below. You’re staring at yourself in a mirror that hangs flat on the wall (aka: no storage behind mirror). Where do you keep your stuff? Well, how about on a window sill? This bathroom had a window sill to right of the sink that was actually wide enough to store a few bathroom necessities.

We (…ok, I) had that window sill filled with make up brushes, a toothbrush, a hair dryer.. you can imagine all the things. And while I never cared to see for myself, I’m sure all these toiletries were visual from the outside. Classy, eh? Pete’s storage space consisted of his toiletry bag sitting on top of the toilet tank.
*My apologies – I don’t have a photo of this situation to share with you. I can’t imagine why I never thought to take one. HA.

On the Daily

The Layout:
The toilet and pedestal sink faced each other and were positioned next to the shower. And if you’ve ever opened a shower with sliding glass doors, you know that by the time you slide one door over to the opposite side, you only have half of the total length of the shower as room to get in. Well, the halfway point where the sliding doors met on this particular shower, happened be right in the middle of the space between the toilet and sink. See photo for reference:

So your daily routine included a sideways shimmy, first between the sink and the toilet, then between the sink and the shower opening so that you could slide in around the sink, step over a 2-foot tall ledge (this thing came up to my knees!), one foot at a time while being careful not to scrape your shin on the sharp metal piece that sat on top of the ledge, and you’ve made it into the shower! Success! The process of getting back out was everything I just described in reverse and then stepping onto a scrunched-up bath rug because there wasn’t one small enough to fit between the sink and the toilet.

We had a tiny closet on the other side of the window where we could actually store our clean bath towels. So you know, that was nice. Don’t ask me where we had to hang our wet towels.

Wait a Sec..

But Morgan – didn’t you just say above that you had another full bath downstairs? Why’d you even bother using this one?? Well…we used this full bath regularly because this one at least had a window. The full bath downstairs has no window and no exhaust fan, and its right off the kitchen.
What’s it called when you mix the aroma of a home-cooked meal, and the odor of a just-used bathroom together? I’m not sure, but I have experienced this scent first-hand and it’s not lovely one. So, we figured the upstairs bathroom was really just the lesser of two evils.

The Beginning:

Our entire house has plaster on its walls and overtime plaster tends to crack. And since our house is about 150 years old, you can imagine it’s got plaster cracks literally everywhere. The plan (before we started any serious renovations) was that Pete was going to patch all the cracks throughout the house.
Without a whole lot of experience in this area, he wanted to start out somewhere discrete – The tiny closet in the the tiny upstairs bathroom volunteered as tribute.

Four days and various YouTube videos later, his closet crack patching project was complete. There were a lot of cracks to patch. He did a good job, and so all we really needed to do next was to paint over it and the entire project would be complete.

However, after a few days time, that same closet and its surrounding walls would become non-existent.

To Be Continued….