A series of essays….
A PORTION OF THE WET ROOM
IN OUR NEW BATH
….as seen through my eyes!
By: Jacqueline E Hughes
Do you remember spending the day at the beach, hauling sand into the car at the end of the day, and creating a mini-beach on the laundry room floor after extracting towels, blankets, and clothes to be washed from a colorful, canvas beach bag? I know some people who won’t even go to the beach for these reasons. I can’t imagine forfeiting sun, sand, water, and stimulating exercise because the sand gets between your toes (and many others places) during a seaside adventure.
I wonder if any of these same people are adverse to putting up and living with all kinds of home improvement — especially when dealing with drywall and its various stages of installation?
All efforts are geared towards the final product, of course.
And, you may decide to vacate the premises as work is being done. However, the process of getting to the end, the completion of all of the long, difficult work in order to enjoy the fruits of your labor, is a topic well worth looking into.
Patience my friend—it requires a magnitude of patience, understanding, and fortitude, especially when doing all of the work ‘in-house’ with your husband heading up the entire operation. Don’t get me wrong, we have saved quite an exorbitant amount of money with Dan at the helm! Paying for labor alone would have eaten up an enormous chunk of our expenditures. His accumulated knowledge of all aspects of construction (residential and commercial) for over fifty years has certainly come in handy each time we decided to improve our immediate surroundings.
We knew that moving up to our little cottage in Kalamazoo would require planning and lots of hard work. There were quite a few major improvements we wanted to make with the kitchen being at the top of our most pressing list of to do’s. Enlarging and modernizing the original 1941 space required incorporating a back porch area that actually doubled the original layout and has provided us with ample room for cooking and entertaining.
However, before moving in August of 2018, Dan had already changed the façade of the living room fireplace, improved the original bathroom with shiny, new fixtures and paint, and sanded, stained, and polyurethaned the hardwood floors throughout the lower level. Dan and Matt, our son-in-law, demolished the back porch walls in anticipation of our kitchen remodel.
And, all this time, Dan thought he had actively retired from the construction business!
Not so, my friends! We have been living at the beach (so to speak) ever since inhabiting the cottage full time going on six years now. Drywall dust has crept into every crack and crevice of this house for the past several months and has left its fine coating of off-white powder on furniture, draperies, light fixtures…well, just about everything that is exposed within our 1,600 sf cottage. It’s inescapable!
But, if you said that the end justifies the means, you would be absolutely correct. Dan, seriously, began this latest project, turning the second bedroom into a main bathroom and the original bathroom into my writing space, back on November 1, last year. Disregarding a small ‘punch list’ for the bathroom and finishing touches to my office, we have rearranged our home to meet our personal needs and have been pleasantly happy with the outcome.
Even as I document our progress I know that this little beach party isn’t over yet. A tiny portion of our leisure time conversation includes planning the future ‘all seasons’ room just beyond the new kitchen, improving the main bedroom closet, and, possibly, adding a porch to the front of the cottage. I will tell you that these ideas keep us going; give us something to look forward to and plan on.
Retirement doesn’t have to mean sitting in a rocking chair and watching the world go by. It doesn’t have to mean crumbling into old age and forfeiting the ability to dream by improving your life and keeping the mind active and healthy. The day you stop dreaming about something new, different, and exciting is the day you stop living life to the fullest. It doesn’t matter how old we are…there is something new to learn and extract from the past, present, and future that will broaden our minds and enlarge our lives each and every day. Never stop learning! Never stop dreaming!
So, which shall it be next for us now that the new bath is functional and quite beautiful? I say the back room off of the kitchen. It would be a great spot to daydream in, read a book, and watch the squirrels navigate their own super highways as they zigzag across the backyard chasing one another with joy and non-stop enthusiasm! I know that I can live with the new construction and drywall dust. Dan will say, give me a little bit of time to catch my breath, and then jump into our next project with both feet.
We know that the pride and joy we feel after each project is completed keeps us going strong and that one of these days (years), our renovated little cottage will give back everything and more from what we put into it after all this time. All in all, this arrangement fulfills us both in so many ways. For the most part, it keeps us dreaming!
(Let me know if you’d like to see more pictures of our progress and ‘before & after’ pictures of the new bath.)
Copyright © 2024 by Jacqueline E Hughes
All rights reserved
