A few weeks ago our shower became a lethal weapon and took a shot at me. Fortunately I don't move too fast in the morning, so the bullet, in the form of a diverter valve button, missed me by a few inches as I was stepping into the shower.
And so began a chain of events that is finally drawing to a close. What started as a simple (albeit expensive) shower body replacement turned into a mini renovation. Once you open one wall, you must patch the huge hole in that wall and replace the corresponding tile on that wall. Once you replace tile on one wall, it doesn't match the other walls, so you have to re-tile the other walls. But you can't just re-tile when the walls are in bad shape from water damage stemming from a bunch of tiny cracks in the grout lines that have been letting water seep through between the tiles and the walls for 10 years, so you have to strip the walls down to the bare studs and put up new shower walls before you can install new tile. Now if you're going to rip down all that old wall tile, you might as well rip out and replace the baseboard tile so that it matches the new walls. Don't forget about new rugs and a new shower curtain to round things out!
Once you've gotten the shower and baseboard all shiny and new you realize that the bathroom sink hardware looks ratty and dated next to the shiny, new shower hardware so you buy the matching hardware for the sink and call the plumber back to replace that too. But then you realize that the new sink handles are much taller than the old ones... in fact, so high that they interfere with your use of the electrical outlet that sits just above and next to the sink so you have to call an electrician move that outlet. Moving the outlet, of course, leaves a gaping hole in the wall, but since you already have several other gaping holes in all the walls from where you impulsively ripped out the soap dish, toothbrush holder, toilet paper holder and towel rack, which looked hideous next to all the new tile and new hardware, it's no big deal. So you call in a handyman to patch it all up.
Once the handyman is done, you figure you might as well paint all the un-tiled walls, but what color? Gray. Gray would look nice since the floor tile is gray (oh yeah, we re-grouted the floors tile when the wall tile went up) and two accent rows of the wall tile are gray. What shade of gray? There are so many shades of gray! Off to Janovic I go to load up on Benjamin Moore sample jars, in my quest to find the perfect gray. 12 sample jars later the walls look like Piet Mondrian and Jackson Pollack collaborated on an art installation for our bathroom. The good news is, Benjamin Moore's Sidewalk Gray is the perfect gray for the bathroom. Ugh... but who is going to paint? Not me. I picked the color. Let someone else to the dirty work. Scott Moran comes to our rescue tomorrow morning at 9am sharp to put the final touches on our "new" bathroom. Sidewalk Gray, here we come!
And now I'm pretty satisfied with myself, having gotten most of the benefits of a full bathroom renovation, without the headache of doing an actual full-on renovation. Then again... the old medicine cabinet, with it's 3-panel mirrored doors and dressing-room vanity style lighting is really starting to bother me...
...to be continued?
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