Should I keep you in suspense here? No? Okay, well LOOK WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK.
That, my friends, is a bath. In my house.
It’s been four years (almost to the day) since I moved out of the Memorial House with its gorgeous beachy bathroom, and a master bath with a huge soaking tub and fireplace. And, listen, there is no doubt my life has become infinitely more awesome on this farm, okay? I was just thinking about this yesterday while I was on my tractor mowing my back field… when I first bought this place I considered myself a reasonably competent human being (and licensed builder) and I still had to call my grandpa and get step-by-step directions on how to operate the damn riding mower. And I didn’t exactly want to learn how to operate a tractor, but I needed a tractor, and someone was going to have to operate it, so..
Here we are. I love that tractor. I’m so grateful for all the awesomeness on this farm and all the lessons it teaches me, but, also? At the end of a long day?
I WANT A DAMN BATH.
I don’t even give a shit about fancy tubs or fireplaces anymore. I would just be happy with an option that doesn’t look like this…
Yeah. That’s what the one working bathtub in this house looked like when I moved in.
And a year ago (an actual year, that is not an exaggeration) I decided I would do a “quick fix” on the upstairs bath to make it useable. You know, just swap out the tub and the surround… maybe a little tile. No big deal. I said multiple times in this post that it would “just take a couple of weekends.”
Ha. Ha ha.
Okay, so, I might have underestimated the timeline a little bit. (Seriously, I’m both entertained and exasperated at myself right now.)
The best part is that out of the last 52 weekends, there was only one that I had a fever and complete inability to breathe through my nose… and that was the day I decided to finish my tub.
Actually, a big thanks (and a lot of credit) goes to my girl Sarah at the UggDuck (which, for the record, I just typed as “UggDick” so… yeah) who put so much time into tiling this bath surround when she was here. I would still be hours and hours away from having this complete if it wasn’t for her.
As it stood I just had to cut and install the bottom row of tiles, and a few mind-bendingly tricky pieces like this…
WITH A FEVER.
Well. Technically I should have pried that whole piece of window trim off and made this work a different way, but a.) 150 year old windows (and I was not opening that can of worms) and also, b.) FEVER. So I decided to make the most intricate tile cut I’ll probably ever have to make in my life. Totally makes sense.
But it worked.
Anyway, there was a day of cutting and installing the last of the tile, and then a day of grouting.
And at the end of the day I didn’t have the wherewithal to finish installing the trim for the fixtures (which would have required using a blowtorch) or caulking the bottom joint of the surround.
This is as far as I got…
And then I basically just gave the spout a middle finger and turned the valve on anyway.
But I did find five minutes to pull some scrap wood out of my pile to put together a makeshift bath tray…
It was seriously 5 minutes. I just ripped down the piece of wood…
Then I cut it to length (and used the scrap for “legs”)
And a little sanding and wood-glue later…
I basically built this while the tub was filling. It’s not pretty or finished, but it’s damn handy…
There’s still a fair amount of work to do in this bathroom (starting with the floor tile) but even though its got exposed subfloor, and a copper pipe sticking out of the wall instead of an actual spout…
This is still the best thing that has ever happened on this farm while I had a fever.
(And I’m 100% better now, by the way, but I’m still playing catch up from being sick for a few days… and by “playing catch up” I mean “reading books in my bathtub” obviously. Can you blame me?)
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