There was silence on the other end of the phone. Then my daughter said, with hesitation, "You're kidding... right?"
My oldest daughter is stylish, chic, elegant, appearance conscious - all adjectives that do not apply to me. Her home is tasteful and coordinated, with mostly new furnishings. My downstairs bathroom has been out of commission for years, and the idea of having it redone delighted her, but the idea that her mother, a grown woman, would deliberately choose a theme park ride as decorating inspiration did not sit well with her.
"No, I'm not! I'm serious! It'll be great! I'm already shopping at thrift stores for decorations!"
"Oh, Mom."
This bathroom is now my favorite room in the house. It makes me very happy.
(It is also a point of pride with me that Pirates was one of my favorite rides going back to the early 1980s. While it's fun that pop culture is embracing them, some of us loved the whole idea before it was cool.)
Our house was built in the early 1970s. It originally had 2 bathrooms, one downstairs and one upstairs. The original owners added onto the house, so we now have, among other things, a 3rd full bathroom off of the master bedroom.
A few years after we moved in, the downstairs toilet started to leak, so we stopped using it. Then the sink leaked; we stopped using it. Finally, the tub started to leak. We just closed the door and ignored the room for years. Hey, we had two more full bathrooms. We had limited money and a house full of children. Don't judge.
Eventually, we started tearing things out. We did it bit by bit until we hit a real stumbling block - the tub. It was a cast iron tub/shower enclosure. It had been set into place before the walls were built, and it was too large to fit through the doorway. We were stumped - how did we replace a tub that we couldn't remove? We closed the door again, and pretended that the room didn't exist for several more years.
Then, my feet needed operated on. OK, they'd needed it for a long time, but we finally had youngest children who were teens capable of taking care of themselves and me. When my doctor first suggested it, my oldest kids were in elementary school, and I had a one year old; bed rest was not going to happen. The younger kids were now also homeschooled, so we'd rarely need to leave the house while I spent the projected 4 to 6 weeks off of my feet.
But, that meant a working bathroom on my ground floor, since going up and down my stairs would be next to impossible while I recovered. We had to get the bathroom up and running before I could schedule surgery.
We finished demolition, including sawing the old tub and shower in half. Yeah, that was interesting. We tore out the water damaged drywall. Finally, we tore up the rotted, splitting floor. The room looked like this:
My husband intended to do most of the work himself, but between his 12 hour shifts and life in general, this was not a good plan. A friend helped us get to the point that we then hired a pro to install everything and finish the room. Instead of a tub, we went with a handicapped accessible shower.
God bless talented contractors!
I was in such a hurry to paint it. Of course, "hurry" is a relative term. My almost 15 year old had never used the bathroom. Then my husband installed the flooring.
Normally, I like white walls and white blinds, maybe with white curtains over them. I know, very institutional and bland. I like it anyway. It's restful. If I add colors, I want to add blue, any shade but navy, and other pale colors. My daughter's room is a pale pink and my son's is a pale gray. Both are so light that they're almost white. The upstairs bathroom is white with blue and green sponge paint, and an ocean theme, with my collection of beach sand in decorative jars (yes, I collect beach sand), shells, and a shower curtain with dolphins and palm trees.
Downstairs in the new bathroom, I went with a totally uncharacteristic color palate. I wanted amber, ruby and deep brown. I wanted it to look like it could belong below deck on a pirate ship, or in Disneyland. I wanted the feel of a storage room heaped with treasure.
I'm a competent stage technician in many jobs, but my area of expertise is set dressing and prop making. The last show that I got to "dress" was A Christmas Carol, and I loved it. When my kids have had proms to attend, I dress the photo backdrop in our bedroom studio to match the theme. I've done "Arabian Nights," "A Night to Treasure," "A Night at the Museum," "A Night in Paris" and more with things I have on hand anyway. I'd also been collecting things specifically for this bathroom for a long time. That ring of iron keys is one of my favorite purchases.
There's a lot of memories in here. The beads are from trips to Disneyland, Disney cruises, and my niece's 20s themed wedding. The ornate silver piece holding the coins and gems belonged to my mother. So did the silver goblet. The amethyst is from my rock and mineral collection; so are the onyx goblets and the marble globes. The egg shaped boxes were gifts from my oldest daughter. The jade elephant is a childhood gift from my brother. The shiny rock behind it is my sample of silicon that I used while teaching K-3 geology. The Egyptian figures were things I bought just because I liked them, and they ended up being used in my son's archaeological dig project for our homeschool co-op. I bought the carved parrot in Nassau.
I don't have a medicine cabinet, so I use the cute box.
I'm not a stickler for historical accuracy unless I have to be, so this room isn't a period piece. If it was, I wouldn't use my son's Lego set, or the photographs we took in the Disney ride. (Those are printed on metal, to keep the humidity of a bathroom from being an issue.) The print of a pirate ship was a gift from my middle daughter, as was the plaque with words on it. She used the metal trays when she catered a dessert buffet at a wedding.
I originally wanted an oval mirror with an ornate, gilt frame, but the mirror came in a set with the vanity and sink. I'm OK with it.
I love this bathroom. I love that it allowed me to get the operation that I needed, but I also love just looking at it.
A pirate's life for me.
