Improvements

I knew a few items around my new home would need fixing or upgrading before I decided to make the purchase and had budgeted for them. The only thing that slowed down my start on these projects was the Shelter In Place order for the pandemic. Now that restrictions are loosening up a bit, I took the first steps.

Today, I can mark off a few items from my list:

1. Water heater replaced – the old one was from 1985 and has been getting progressively noisier in the few months I have been here. It apparently has never been flushed either, so the plumbing contractor had his hands full wrestling it out of the closet! The water I was getting out of it was hot off the start but rapidly dropped to just warm and then colder over the course of a short shower.
2. Kitchen faucet replaced – the old one had a busted O-ring or two and leaked at the tap, and every once in a while it leaked under the sink. The new one is very shiny, has the dish sprayer which I like to use, and doesn’t leak.
3. Garbage disposal replaced – the old one may have been original to the construction back in 1973. It was completely rusted out and I was afraid to turn it on due to the horrendous noises it made the one time I flipped that switch. The new one makes a powerful growly purring sound. I don’t use the disposal much, but when I want to I want it to work. Now mine does!
4. Downstairs toilet checked – there was concern about a possible leak and maybe needing to be re-seated. It is now secure, with no signs of leaking from the toilet.
5. Downstairs shower checked – this is the leaky item in that bathroom. The construction is such that, as you open the door to exit the shower enclosure after bathing, water sheets off the door and onto the floor. And while you are showering, there are significant gaps between the door and the frame, so water can spray out there as well. The only thing for it would be to tear that enclosure out and replace it with one of a different design. If any shower is getting replaced, I would rather put my money and effort into the upstairs bathroom first.

For the upstairs bathroom, I would love to tear out the bathtub and shower as they are now. I haven’t used a tub since I was a little kid. I was raised in California during a drought. The school system did a very thorough job of impressing on me how wasteful a tubful of water is, so I have become adverse to the idea over the years. So I would prefer to install a grown-up, walk-in shower enclosure with a low lip to step over and non-skid surface to stand on.

The current showerhead comes to just below the top of my shoulder. Yes, I said BELOW my shoulder. Washing my hair is ridiculous in there. So that needs to go up, which means the shower walls need to go up as well.

The countertop in that bathroom also makes me shake my head. There are two sinks and the countertop runs the entire length of the bathroom, so once you pass the second sink, there is a large expanse of countertop extending off into the distance (or to the far wall, same thing). The countertop comes to mid-thigh in height, shorter than any bathroom counter I have ever had before. And it has no drawers. None whatsoever. Not a one. There is a single cabinet under each sink and the space under the empty expanse is… also empty. No cabinet, no storage area, just blank space going back to the far wall. It makes me think of the ladies’ vanity tables from a previous century or two ago, but this place was built in the early 1970s. Go figure. Oh, and the mirror runs the entire length of that wall as well.

My vision is to tear out the entire sink wall as it is right now, put in a standard height, two-sink cabinet with drawers, build a storage cabinet of some sort in the rest of the space to the far wall, install two smaller mirrors (one over each sink), and straighten up the lighting. There are three fixtures in there, two of which are crooked. It makes me twitch.

With the tub torn out, I want to tile/stone/glass/something cool the three shower walls to the ceiling, raise the showerhead, put in a non-skid floor of some sort, and have most of the shower as a solid glass wall, with a small shower bench and the door at the far end away from the showerhead. And I have seen wire shelves built into the tile/stone wall corners for holding shampoo, soap, etc. One or three of those would be nice.

I have no idea how any of that works, looks, costs… so I have some homework to do. I am currently thinking of painting the room a soft, cool gray so I can use accent colors of almost any hue. And natural wood – I like wood with soft gray. Like I said… homework.