Taj MaJohn: The Little Things I Love

Full disclosure: We don't always have fresh flowers in the newbathroom, but when we do, they're red carnations. 

First of all, I owe a big apology to C., who asked a week ago when I was going to have another post about the new bathroom. "Tomorrow," I told her. "I promise--tomorrow!"

And then a week went by and that week was filled with love and laughter and the hosting of TWO meetings and the touring of the bathroom by 27 women (no, I'm not exaggerating for comic effect) and the promise became a good object lesson on why I shouldn't make promises. But just for you, C., here is more!

I've written a couple of posts about the big things I love about the Taj MaJohn--the vanity! The tile! The white fixtures! This post is about the unsung heroes of the remodel, the small touches that I love to distraction but which wouldn't mean much to anyone who isn't me, which means, well, everyone minus one.

So, first up: The outlets that are hiding behind the carnations in the anchor photo. A total demolition of walls is a good time to bring in an electrician and start flinging pointer fingers in every direction. "I want an outlet THERE! And another one THERE! And one down THERE! And another one just for luck THERE!" I can now plug in the hairdryer at the same time as the WaterPik, and the Google Mini and the nightlight never have to be unplugged so that Husband can charge his razor. Ahhhhh!

Many things in this bathroom have back stories which, again, might not be significant to the non-me contingent of the world but which make me smile every single time I see them. The wire baskets now holding extra towels and toilet paper in the open-shelved vanity, for example. I had known I wanted wire baskets for this purpose, but was having no luck finding the size/price/vintage provenance I wanted until last summer when some high school buddies and I visited the old Rexall drugstore my friend D.'s brother and wife had bought and were remodeling just 20 miles from where I grew up. The basement was a treasure cave of old greeting cards, Christmas decorations, shelving--and a stack of wire shopping baskets. They are perfect.

One of the most memorable trips I made with the Boys during their college years was in 2011 to install Boy#2 in the city where he would live and study for the next six years. That city was as far as it could be from Small Town without falling off into the Atlantic, so I drove out with him and a carload of electronics and clothes, then we made the rounds of Goodwills and thrift shops to furnish his new apartment. In one of those Goodwills was a print I loved, but the print cost $25 and that was significant percentage of our budget for that day. I couldn't get it out of my mind, though, and years later I found it was well-enough known that Googling "couple dancing beach rain red dress" came up with the name of the print: The Singing Butler, by Jack Vettriano. An eBay purchase of this work became the color palette for the new bathroom, with its grey, red, and black touches.  "You only want that because you think that's you and Dad dancing on the beach," one of the Boys teased me. Wrong, Son. We're the maid and the butler. (Except for the metaphorical times when we're dancing.)

Apart from the Singing Butler most of the Taj MaJohn's decor came from scavenged pieces we've picked up at antique shops over the years. The most serendipitous find among those pieces may be the porcelain lever now providing entrance between the sink room and the shower room. We replaced a narrow (24-inch) antique door with a wider (32-inch) door for better accessibility as we age, but learned that the hole bored for the door handle also was larger than those bored on antique doors, and the original doorknobs no longer fit. We had bought this rose-embellished brass version years ago just because we thought it was pretty, but it fit the new door perfectly. And we were able to find it in the basement, which was even more amazing.

Finally, this is one of my favorite design elements. Not the chamber pot that holds bathroom reading material, or the reading material itself, which, many thanks to Time and Reader's Digest for making red the principal color in their designs. No, what I love here is what you don't see.

Before. So pretty!

If you are not too distracted by the wallpaper or the harvest gold toilet or the nasty-looking vanity, you'll see a hatch on the far wall that gave access to the shower plumbing. I HAAAAATED that hatch. I know it was not the worst-looking thing in the room, but it was just such a clunky-looking announcement of Mechanical Workings Ahoy! If you look very, very carefully at the "after" pictures, you'll see...well, you won't see anything, because our genius carpenter very carefully sliced down the joints of the beadboard, shortened that beadboard so it sits just behind the baseboard, screwed the beadboard in with four tiny screws, then painted over the screws so that they're essentially invisible until (God forbid) we need access to the plumbing, at which time we can get to it.

I could go on and on about the things I love in this room (I didn't even get to the hard-wired magnifying make-up mirror, or the hotel spittoon that holds the soft soap and hand lotion for my flu season compulsions) but that's enough for today.

Will it be the last bathroom post? Hmmm.  I'm not making any promises.