The room that will not die

There is a room lurking in my house that has been the bane of my existence for five years. First, I was tormented by its ugliness and nastiness. Then, I learned that someone died in it years ago and that just freaked me out. But now…now that we’ve ripped away the ugliness and come to terms with any ghosts, the room continues to taunt me like my 5th grade nemesis who called me Lez instead of Liz.

I am, of course, referring to The Ugly Bathroom.

See? Its ugliness is undeniable. And what makes it even uglier is that 4 boys grew up in our house and practiced “aiming” at that toilet, which was surrounded by orange carpeting. With mysterious spots on it. Well, maybe not so mysterious.

Plus, there was a window in the shower.

Do you know that means? Neighbors saw me flailing about to cover up with the shower curtain when the blind few up, cold drafts in an already mediocre shower, and water from the shower leaking through the window to the kitchen below it. In short, this bathroom has been a pain in my ass since day one…and that was about 1,825 days ago.

Ironically, since we first moved into our house, we’ve remodeled everything (three bedrooms, a hallway, foyer, living room, dining room, kitchen, mudroom and built two bathrooms) but The Ugly Bathroom!

However, we did gut it (over a year ago).

But here it sits…

…mocking me with its longevity.

And the worst, most infuriating part is that we literally have every element we need to remodel it.

The tiles are in the attic…

…the original trim is in the attic stairwell…

…the sink and toilet are in the basement…

and the tub is in the garage…

…under rotating mounds of crap (give me a break, we’ve been remodeling for years).

They’ve patiently been awaiting our attention for about 2.5 years. I guess you could say we got a little distracted with other projects around the house.

And now we face the biggest distraction of all time.

A 12-pound, drooling, squealing, “you’re-not-doing-anything-but-play-with-me-or-feed-me” baby.

In an act of New Year optimism, I’m trying to remove some of the stigma surrounding this project and have renamed The Ugly Bathroom “The Interior Tool Storage Unit” and find it’s really taken some of the pressure off. In fact, I can even walk by it now without cursing. Instead I just flip it the bird and smile, because I bet the neighbors who used to see me in the shower now think I’m giving them the finger.

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