There’s just something about those home makeover shows that pulls at our curiosity core. You don’t have a Vermont cabin and you have no interest in the Paramus housing market, but you just have to see the big reveal! My wife and I just finished a complete bathroom renovation that revealed some shoddy construction by the previous owners and some serious issues in our marriage.
I should probably start by clarifying that when I say, we just finished a renovation, I really mean she just finished it. Literally, my wife single-handedly just did a complete gut-job on the master bathroom in the house we purchased in September. She did everything from knock down walls to electric work to tiling a completely new roll-in shower.
If you’re unfamiliar with the term roll-in shower, it probably means that you actually use your legs to walk. Not me though, my legs are strictly decorative and have been for approximately six years. I say, approximately because I don’t actually remember my last step. Strange, right?
It’s actually not so strange because I didn’t lose the ability to walk on one singular day. There was not a terrible car accident. I didn’t dive into the shallow end of a pool either. I was diagnosed with ALS in 2012. It’s a neurological degenerative disease that slowly takes away the patient’s ability to walk, talk, and ultimately breathe.
If I’m being totally transparent, even if I was able-bodied, I would have zero understanding or desire to undertake such a massive home improvement project. That is just one of the reasons why the big reveal was anything but enjoyable for us.
The first glaring issue with the project was communication. If you are married, you’re familiar with the big C. Communication or the lack thereof can take the best day ever, to an absolute nightmare in a matter of minutes. We failed to effectively communicate about the entire project from the beginning. Looking back now, it’s no wonder that the job site was just a little tense.
When we bought the house, we knew that the master bathroom would need to be the first job. It had this joke of a shower that looked like it belonged in a RV and not a three-bedroom house. The walls were a pale Canary yellow that made the cheap light fixture really tie the room together. It was ugly as sin and annoyingly ineffective.
My wife could not wait to get to work. She was knocking down walls before the ink was dry on the closing documents. Needing a place to shower, I was behind the aggressive start. In the meantime, I’d have to go to my parents’ house, about an hour away. For as aggravating as it sounds, two important pieces of intel to know:
- When you’re on a ventilator, showering takes slightly less coordination than a SpaceX launch. After all, that hose from the ventilator goes directly into a hole in my neck.
- Showering, even with my beautiful wife, can be really taxing. I’m not sure if it is the hot water or maybe the multiple transfers to and from my wheelchair? Either way, it means that I definitely don’t shower every day.
Back to our regularly scheduled renovation program. The door frame and the adjoining wall were the first big things to happen. That is, after my wife, Shay painted the entire interior of the house. But I remember thinking, “Wow, she means business.” There was now an eight-foot open space into the construction zone.
The communication problems started early and often. We had a Pinterest board that we both added pictures of elements we liked. As collaborative and technology-friendly as it sounds, it was not exactly a smooth or clear process. We would add pictures but not explain what specifically it was about the image we liked.
For example, I added the image below to show her the continuation of the bathroom floor into the shower. But what she saw was the sink!
I like to call this the Missed ESP message. It’s similar to the Mental Text.
“Sink?!?! I didn’t even notice the sink. I obviously wanted you to see the flooring.”
Or
“Where are you!?!? I sent you a text that said I had to pick up our daughter earlier.” Quickly checks phone. “Shit! I swear I responded.”
For some reason, we thought that we were sharing ideas, tastes, and specific elements that were anything but obvious to each other. This type of communication fail is most common with couples that typically communicate well. We tend to think, “She knows me better than anyone on the planet. She’ll know what I mean.” Wrong!
You know what they say about assuming. “It makes an asshole of you for thinking I am in your head, so don’t be an asshole.”
Although the big C was a huge factor in our big reveal disappearing faster than a fart in wind, it was not alone. The other issue was less obvious and oftentimes goes on without notice. I like to call this PLE syndrome. PLE is not a scientific term, at least not one I’ve ever heard of before. In fact, there’s a good chance that I just made it up right now.
Previous Life Experience or more commonly known as PLE is all the baggage we bring to a relationship. It’s not the stuff we talk about on the first date or tend to share on social media. This gunk is the stuff that makes us feel a certain way, without ever really knowing why.
The fastest and most obvious PLE is how someone likes his/her steak cooked. You show me someone that prefers a filet mignon cooked medium-well or well and I’ll show you someone that didn’t grow up with money.
The specific PLE issues that put a wrench in our remodel project should have been a focal point from the start, considering we are basically polar opposites. I have never remodeled anything. Hell, before this house, I never had anything to remodel. Shay’s been around this stuff her entire life. She is a country mouse and I am very much a city mouse.
My ideal renovation process would involve a digital lookbook, 3-D modeling, a fixed price and deadline. I didn’t actually expect the lookbook or 3-D modeling, but I thought the last two would be part of our own personal episode of Extreme Home Maker. But because of our extremely different PLE, that didn’t happen.
My expectations were so completely different from my wife’s, that it was almost comical once we finally talked about it. I thought she had done this so many times before, that she had all the answers. I figured, “If you’ve done one bathroom, you’ve done them all.” It turns out that I was once assuming, therefore, being an asshole.
I thought I would have a new shower in three weeks, tops. It actually took four. It took four months. It was not an enjoyable experience for either of us. We fought through it. We now have an absolutely beautiful and custom master bathroom that I could not be more proud to announce that my wife, my handymaam worked her ass off to compete!
Enjoy the before and after pictures below.
