Bathroom Adventures

With finals behind me, I have been better able to jump in with house tasks with Andy, which has included painting the rest of the deck, installing a new mailbox (involving learning about concrete), planting some new trees, and other bits and pieces around the house that have left us quite exhausted this last weekend.  

AND we started work on the bathroom.  More specifically, we have a contractor working on parts of our basement, that whole corner now walled off with plastic and painter's tape.  It has a very satisfying billow when you walk by it quickly.  Getting the the laundry room is a challenge but still possible.  We've made a few interesting discoveries--two cups embedded in the wall that have definitely been there before we broke through, some really dumb wasted spaces, the original linoleum was green, and they did not use greenboard.

I spy with my little eye...

For those unsure about that last one, let's expand a bit.  Drywall.  It's the kind of wall that most houses are made of.  The "regular" kind is white and as the name might suggest is meant to stay dry.  There is a different kind called greenboard, which is moisture resistant.  The BATHROOM in our BASEMENT next to the UTILITY room was NOT made with the water resistant kind and there was no ventilation built into this room.  The possibility of mold, wall-breakdown, Lord knows what else was waiting in the walls.  We're immensely glad that we have started this project sooner rather than later, for the health risks if nothing else.  We're definitely curious what other shortcuts some of the previous owners might have taken, but in the same breath I cannot spare the energy to think about it.  

Instead, I'm thinking about what our bathroom will be.  For example, we'll have more than half an outlet--there was only one, and the light fixture plugged into one of the spots.  Two of the switches on the other side of the bathroom would not work independently of one another, always giving priority to whichever was flipped last, meaning lots of heavy sighs to walk back across the room and flip one back to flip the other--we're going to fix a lot of this ridiculousness when the walls are down.  I'm still aghast at the decision to waste a 3x3x2 solid shelf-worth of space within the walls, twice--when they had created so much built-in shelving already, that they did this twice instead of finding a better solution astounds me.  

Of course, though, I am thinking about my ostomy sink.  This has been no small amount of puzzlement in the back of my mind.  I'm so accustomed to adapt to a situation in the bathroom, that I have to stop and change the discussion:  "what would work best for what I need?"  What I mean to say is I have so many strategies on how to adapt but only a few concreted ideas on what it would look like to be built for me.  

What I know:

• It should be at waist height.  No more bending over or squatting to negotiate a favorable positioning.
• It should not require a second step, meaning that I want toilet paper to go in the same place (instead of twisting around to throw it in the trash or toilet) or that I don't have to wipe everything down each time--a flush and it's done, heading straight into the septic system.  
• There should be significant counter space.  Putting my bag supplies out when doing a bag change should be easy to spread out and work with.  

So we have a flushable sink of some kind and a counter being built for it that will have it at the right height and have a good bit of space.  Check, check, check.  

...now what?  Namely, what I'm struggling with most is where I want to put the toilet paper and how I want it to roll.  I know what does and doesn't annoy me about standard setups, yet the question of right vs left, top vs side, I cannot figure out what makes sense, trying to pantomime with muscle memory I don't have yet.  

And that's part of the magic of this process, though, that I have the opportunity to figure this out over time.  I mean, I'd like to have as much of it sorted while we're in immediate contact with knowledgeable persons, where we can easily add pieces as we go, but we do have the flexibility to make some changes as we go.  I can figure this out in stages, just like how I've adapted to the ostomy everywhere else.  

That conclusion sapped away a great deal of anxiety. There is time to fix.  There is time to improve.  We've started the first steps in making space for these things.  

Additional updates forthcoming.