Color Squares

It's a work of art, it's a bit of daylight....it's our new bathroom window!

After three months of renovation, our tiny hall bathroom is finally finished. After gutting the space, the contractor said he used every tool that it takes to build an entire house. Bathrooms are a complicated piece of work, and oh so essential to the well being of ourselves, and our marriages! Here is a before shot--

Our house is about 85 years old, a craftsman cottage on one of the prettiest streets in town. Comparable in a small-town way, to Summit Avenue in St. Paul, but not nearly as grand. There are a couple of other more stately streets, Baum and Chambers, with many mansions. But our street is a straight-away connection from one end of town to the other, like Summit is.

With each decade, the various owners kept changing the face and service of the bathroom we just renovated. When the gutting began, we discovered several layers of wallboard, evidence of a former laundry room, a long-extinct chimney, and a blob of cement the contractor was sure was a secret vault. I believe it's an old set of stairs when there was an entry to that side of the house. In the end, we gained at least 2 inches all around in that tiny room, and with the natural light from our artist-commissioned stained glass window, the space seems so much bigger.

We started searching for a contractor in January of 2006, and finally got our roofer from last year, to start the bathroom in October. Who knew how many things could go wrong in the renovation process? The tile guy was killed in a one-car wreck on Thanksgiving morning. The contractor's dad, who had terminal cancer, died right before Christmas. My husband had to be out of town for 3 weeks. There was a gaping hole in the back of our house for 6 weeks. The curse of the bathroom, I call it. But now, finally, I can say it's finished to our satisfaction. (Except for some gaps in the caulking.)