Five Years a Writer

Blessings of the universe on the makers of helpful YouTube how-to videos! We bought our house almost 24 years ago, because Val and I liked the layout of the main floor, which enabled us to knock out several walls to open up the space. We redid the kitchen from the ground up, taking down the wall into the dining room to create one large light-filled cooking, eating and living space. We knocked the two small bedrooms into one large one. But we left the bathroom alone. It was functional, the pink colour scheme was bearable in the short term, and our bank account needed time to rebuild itself. Three years in, we mapped out a plan for a new bathroom — from the studs out. We hired the necessary contractors, developed a razor-sharp project timeline, and then headed to the cottage for the duration of the work. Remarkably, the reno went according to plan and we returned to a modern bathroom. (Albeit with the solid and supremely heavy original iron bathtub still in place; that was simply too muc