Showering in Angry Tears

Any reader knows, we have needed to reconstruct our large bathroom for some time now. We have had a leaking problem into the 3rd floor apartment's bathroom for over 2 years now. You can see the dozen related posts if you are interested.

When we returned from vacation, Ron went to the local bathroom showroom to find a definitive person to diagnose our woes. After cutting a portion out of our glass brick wall and then the tub, they found the leak. Prognosis: the tub has to go and so do the pipes under it. Up to this point, I was having visions of sugarplums dancing in my head. Opps! Wrong metaphor. I was having visions of Martha Stewart sweeping through to glamorize the new remodel. When my feet touched the ground again, I did major Internet searching for bathroom designs and remedies. 

I still have not settled on a theme or color scheme when the emergency sirens, bells, whistles, and alarms sounded sending us to a bathroom showroom far, far away from the one around the corner. There we choose a new shower with glass door. Our glass block wall will be replaced on one wall. Okay, I have resigned myself to no longer having a tub. I am going to miss that once-a-year, long, leisurely bubble bath that I indulge in, but in reality, I am too hyper for baths. I can spend a half-hour in the shower, but not sitting in the tub. Too many movies that portrayed the tub as some romantic bastion of refuge alone or sharing, so those delusions linger in my memory.

Here is the difficult part...ordering tile. Yes, agreed, I am a spoiled American when it comes to wanting choices. When I had my bathrooms remodeled in California, it took me weeks to make decisions about tiles because the choices of tiles was so vast. Materials, colors, textures, coating and so on kept me awake at nights visualizing, planning, and scheming. Here there are no such problems. There is boring, less boring, least boring. When you finally find something that could actually seem livable, it turns out that it was a sample glued to the display board for the showroom in Kazakhstan and was never removed when put on display here.

Under duress, I picked out tiles, mosaics, for the shower walls. They were shade of dark blue, royal and navy. This would not have been my first pick, but I had perused the web sites of a half a dozen tile stores and found nothing more interesting. Ron put his foot down on ordering from Italy or Spain. I could live with this tile. It would not have been my first choice had I had choices, but I could live with it. There was something unnerving when the lady wrote up the order. I just had "that feeling", but without the language, I could not say anything other than point to the tile sample we wanted repeatedly. She kept responding with "Igen!" meaning "Yes". That was over four weeks ago, because no one keeps stock on hand. It has to be ordered. If a store needs to run from the tax office, they don't need to worry about liquidating stock. Now you see them, now you don't. 

Four weeks later, our tile, shower, shower head and the pipes arrive. I know immediately the tile is not the tile we ordered. It was on the same display board, but not the same tile. This tile is shades of azure blue with mottled salmon mixed in. The surface is flat, not the textured type that I ordered. The real dilemma is that the bathroom is totally ripped bare. All of the old tile is removed, the toilet, sink, bidet, and bathtub are all missing in action. What was once a water closet is now a vacant shell that resembles a bomb shelter after it was bombed. There is no option for returning the tile and ordering anew unless we want to be without a functional bathroom for the next four weeks while a new order comes in. My sense is that the tile we wanted was no longer available, so the woman gave us the second best option. Hey, after four weeks, who will remember what they ordered. Um, duh! We weren't drugged or drunk at the time. There was no blackout to distort the memory.

Now to add insult to injury, I thought I would have time to shop for the balance of the tile for the rest of the walls. Hell no! It all has to be done at the same time for humidity leaking reasons or some such nonsense. I think it is because the workers want to get it done and move on. Having been home sick for the last two weeks, I cannot go running around tile shopping. The doctor has me home bound until Friday. Friday, I am out of here like being shot from a cannon into the stores to find the rest of the tile where it is ready for delivery. I will have my bottle of aspirin in one hand and my sobbing towel in another.

For the whole hairy mess, click on the photo below to see the album of current events.

Bathroom remodel

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