I’ve talked about my childhood in therapy.  My career.  My neuroses.  But I never imagined I’d spend an entire session talking about how I’m not good enough for my recently remodeled master bathroom.

From the moment my husband Jer and I bought our house eight years ago, we knew that remodeling “the cave” – our nickname for the master bath – was inevitable.  It was small, dated, tub-less, and dark…  very, very dark.  One time when nature called in the middle of the night, I dragged myself into the bathroom, sat down on the toilet and found myself on my husband’s lap.  Neither of us had seen the other.

Taking advantage of low interest rates, we refinanced and pulled out what we thought was a generous sum to fund this remodel.  I fantasized about creating a space stylish enough to grace the pages of the home magazines I scrutinized for inspiration.  I knew this was too big a project to launch into without professional guidance, so we found a wonderful interior designer, Michele, whose appreciation for mid-century style complemented our desire to have the new bathroom reflect our house’s 1960 origin.  She envisioned a makeover so true to the period that people would wonder whether the room had ever been touched.  That didn’t completely fly with me.  For what we were spending, I wanted a room that screamed, “I’ve been remodeled!”  In a subtle way, of course.

At the time of this project, I was working as a Co-Executive Producer on a network sitcom and co-parenting our five-year-old daughter with my husband.  Neither Jer nor I ever get much of a break, and we envisioned the new bathroom as our sleek sanctuary.  When we found out that our contractor, Jerry, wouldn’t be available for six months, we decided to take advantage of this delay by getting all our ducks in a row.    We knew Jerry was worth waiting for and figured we’d save time and money if he arrived to find every last item waiting for him.

We wound up six weeks behind schedule and twenty grand over budget.

As estimates flew in, dreams flew out.   First to go was my fantasy of an oversized electric skylight.  Not only was the cost prohibitive, when my husband went to pull permits he discovered that we were adjacent to the Mulholland Drive Scenic Corridor.  This meant that any skylight larger than 2’x2’ would have to go through a complicated – and expensive – approval process to determine whether or not it would offend the senses and views of some errant hikers.  Next to go were the quirky 1” x 2” tiles Michele chose for the shower walls, which clocked in at $42 a square foot.   I did a tile search of my own and found some 1”x1” Cepac tiles that managed to convey a sixties feel for only $6.50 a square foot.   When the whirlpool tub arrived, the neck jets were in the wrong end and the dimensions for the heating unit hadn’t been included in the instructions for the frame.  Additional jets had to be added to the opposite end of the tub, and Jerry, our contractor, was forced to reconfigure the frame he’d just completed.

The nadir of construction came when we ran out of terrazzo tile halfway through laying the floor.  Someone – and despite much finger pointing on everyone’s part, we never figured out who – had miscalculated the amount we’d need.  We bought more, only to discover that since we’d purchased the original terrazzo so far in advance, the new tiles were from a different dye lot.   After several hysterical phone calls on my part, our supplier managed to find three boxes of our dye lot collecting dust in their warehouse.  Needless to say, all this maneuvering ate up time and money.

My parents’ annual winter visit happened to coincide with the bulk of our bathroom construction.  My father, a workaholic whose one luxury was long whirlpool baths, immediately called dibs on our hot tub.  Jer and I bleakly joked that at the rate we were going, Dad probably wouldn’t get that soak until his next yearly visit.

Then things slowly started coming together.  When the vanity stool I coveted proved out of our price range, I managed to talk the store into selling me a floor model in perfect condition for half the price.  Unable to find hardware I loved, my husband and I decided to re-chrome the original fixtures from a beat-up built-in that we had to demo in the dressing area. 

Finally our master bath was finished.  And to us, the room looked straight out of the pages of a design magazine.  My husband and I stared at the gorgeous space and thought, what good is this room if we’re the only ones who see it?  I briefly considered inviting another couple over for dinner and setting up a table in the bathroom in order to share it with our guests.  And soon elation over the project’s completion was replaced by a surprising emotion -depression.  I felt that I didn’t deserve my bathroom.

When Jer and I first bought our house, we envisioned afternoons lazing in the backyard and nights relaxing in front of the living room fireplace as we sipped wine and chatted with friends.  But somehow we’d managed to turn our home into another workplace, a series of projects and deadlines.  We’d lost the heady fun of home ownership, our emotional connection to the house.   It took an entire therapy session to show me that my father, my career role model, could also set an example when it came to appreciating our new bathroom.  No one worked harder or longer than Dad – at 78, he was still commuting to his advertising office in the Empire State Building.  Yet when he got home, he felt no guilt about hopping into his hot tub for half an hour or more.

I gave myself permission to take pleasure in the sharp aqua and soft green hues of our terrazzo tile, and the warm walnut of the beautiful cabinets Jerry built for us.  I relished pushing myself closer to the vanity table I’d asked for, on my steal-of-a-deal wheeled vanity stool.  I luxuriated in our roomy two-person shower stall.

My dad never got to enjoy our whirlpool bath.   He died unexpectedly only a few weeks after the bathroom was completed.  I’d like to say that we immediately honored his memory and the example he set for us by christening the tub ourselves.   But I’d be lying.  Despite our new attitude and best intentions, it took us a full year to find the time to read the instruction manual and actually use the thing.

            I guess it’s a good thing I’m still in therapy.

 Ellen Byron

 

OCCUPATION:  Television writer/producers

 

RESOURCE GUIDE;

Tub – Hydrosystems

Tub fixtures – Dornbracht

Towel Rods – Danze

Towel and robe hooks

Sinks – Kohler Thoreau

Sink faucets – Grohsafe

Toilet – Toto Supreme

Shower trim – Dornbracht

Shower heads – Hansgrohe

Towels – Target

Cups, soap dishes, wastebasket – Target

Floor and counter surfaces – Bisazza

Shower tile – Cepac

Vanity stool – H Studio by Shlomi Haziza

Mirror lights – Alinea

Cabinets – custom-made by Jerry Swink of J&D Construction

Cabinet fixtures – vintage

Paint – Dunn-Edwards

Magazine rack – vintage

CATEGORY:  BEST REMODELED MASTER BATHROOM