August 29th, 2017

Here it is, the evolution of a bathroom floor.  Originally it was the Terracotta tile on the left, then after the plumbers finished completely replumbing the house, just concrete, but now after our awesome tile guy finished, new beautiful tile floor.

I don't actually mind the original terracotta tile, but alas, we cannot find any more of it.  And we have looked everywhere including online.  In fact, we asked several tile stores and they report that even they cannot get it anymore.   The house was built in 1962 so honestly we weren't all that surprised that they no longer make that particular tile. So the best we can do is the best we can do and we are doing the best that we can, to paraphrase Captain Kangaroo.

Happy to report, we now have two functioning bathrooms once again. Hurrah!  And all is once again well with the world.

Call it whatever you like:  bathroom, restroom, ladies/gentlemen's room, the lounge, potty, can, john, outhouse, wee room, toilet, lavatory, powder room, comfort station, washroom, water closet or WC, loo, commode, latrine, head, crapper, jakes, the necessary, throne, little girl's or boys room,  or the small room, it's all the same thing.  At minimum, usually a toilet and a sink.  If you are lucky a shower and or tub as well.  And in our culture, it is absolutely essential to our existence to have at least one.

Most of the many houses I grew up in had one bathroom.  And whether we were a family of three (my mother, my sister and I) or five (add in my dad and my Nana) we made do.  And never really gave it a second thought.  Oh yes, I do remember vividly the moments of anxiety, 'Will they ever come out of there?" while doing the pee-pee dance in the hallway.  But at least we had indoor plumbing!  My paternal grandparents had only an outhouse until I was in my teens.  I do recall making use of that delightful little facility.  But one does what one must!

I think the first time I lived in a house with two bathrooms was Connecticut.  My parents  had a teensy tiny extra bathroom attached to their bedroom.  I believe it had a shower so that would be a 3/4 bath.  It was a godsend!  We all marveled at the idea.  Two bathrooms!  Wow!  We really felt that we had come up in the world.

The first house that Tim and I bought together had one and a half baths. Perfect for us and the kids.  It worked.  The full bath upstairs and the half bath down.   Also an older home, built in 1940 so a bath and a half which was quite extraordinary for it's time.  Then of course, when we moved to Colorado, just Tim and I mind you, we suddenly had a house with two full bathroom and a powder room downstairs.  That's 1/2 more bathrooms than people! Kind of silly.  But I guess we became accustomed to the convenience of it all.   In fact, when we travel, most hotel rooms that we stay in have just the one standard bathroom and suddenly I have a moment of ridiculous anxiety.  One bathroom?  Two people?  Hah!  How quickly I have forgotten. 

But we managed to survive the summer with just the one and it worked out fine.  We went to a few model homes this summer (hey it's free entertainment so hush) where there were actually more bathrooms than bedrooms!  When I read the papers on the house, before we toured it, I thought it was a typo. Nope.  4 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms it said.  And it delivered.  Crazy!  I don't want to have to clean that many bathrooms, frankly.  Although Tim has pointed out to me that if we could afford that house, we could afford to hire someone to clean sooo a non-issue I suppose.

Every once in awhile when Tim and I are driving somewhere we will play the lets pretend game.  He might say, if you were going to design your perfect master bedroom (for example) and money was no object, what would it look like.  One of the things I find myself saying is that it would have two bathrooms.  What?  I can function perfectly well with just one bathroom in the entire house and here I find myself saying that the perfect master bedroom has two separate bathrooms?  Yup.  In a perfect world, which this isn't, every single person would get their own separate bathroom.  Of course then each person is also responsible for cleaning their own personal bathroom.

  Like I said, in a perfect world.

Meanwhile, I'm just so happy to have two functioning bathrooms in our house again. Hurrah and Hurrah one more time.  It takes so little to please me.