Not just touching things up
When Buckley and I first bought our pad 21 years ago (!!), we set aside about $30,000 to:
-
- Completely gut renovate our front bathroom.
- Fix the shower in the back bathroom.
- Completely redo the floors and several panels of drywall in our basement.
My apartment is a one-bedroom that, for some odd reason, has three bathrooms, which is pretty darn convenient I gotta say, despite how odd it is.
The front bathroom was the one that everyone used because it was so nice.
The back bathroom, was essentially just used for emergencies all these years.
After all, it didn’t even have a working radiator, so it was effectively unusable three months outta a year.
It was a huge waste of space.
This is what it looked like when Alison was here.
Whoever thought that pink and red was a good colour scheme for a bathroom probably wore parachute pants as well, because – like the pants – it definitely didn’t stand the test of time.
Always told Alison that it would be the room that we renovated together.
But, as you know, that and so many of our beautiful plans never came to be.
In any case, when the Firecracker moved in, she wanted to leave her mark here so I said that, if ever there was an occasion, we’d fix the back bathroom.
Me: Alison always hated it and I’m not a big fan either.
Her: OK, well, maybe we can start small and save up money to do a complete renovation as some point.
Well, the other day, we had dinner with the ABFF and she had just done her bathroom and had a ton of tiles left over.
She offered them and her guys’ contact information as well.
One thing led to another, and before you knew it, the Firecracker was demoing some of the red tiles.
But that actually wasn’t the very first thing we did.
The very first thing I did was take down the cheapo shower curtain rod that Buckley and I bought some quarter-of-a-century ago when we first moved into it.
That’s me holding it in the main picture above.
See, he and I lived in the building since 1997 and in that apartment since at least 2000 before we bought it in 2004.
In any case, the ABFF’s people took over the demolition and made quick work of the bathroom.
That was the start of a three-week (insanely dusty) project that I’d been waiting to do for 25 years, and it went from “touching things up,” to doing a full gut-reno.
They just wrapped it up last week, but I’m beat so, I’ll tell you more about it in the next entry.
Location: the bathroom, admiring it
Mood: drained
Music: I’m on the outside, looking for a reason to change (Spotify)
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