When I was pregnant with my first son and nearing the month of his birth in 2005, my nesting instinct took the form of a remodeling tornado.  I painted all three of our bedrooms and our hallway, had new carpet installed, had the heating/cooling system replaced, had copper repiping of our plumbing system done, and ordered my husband to paint every interior door.  A few years later as we expected the birth of our second son, my husband remodeled the guest bathroom to suit two little boys.  We had redone the kitchen and the two main family rooms years earlier.  We were done.

Except for the master bathroom, that is.

Now that we are considering selling our home, the master bathroom has become a glaring inconsistency with the rest of the house.  More than just ugly, it had been in bad shape, with an internal leak having rotted out the wood under the tile in the (large) shower stall before we had the plumbing re-done.  As a result, the tiles were cracked and needed replacing.

Myrna the Realtor walked through our home on the day that she came to size it up, pointing here and there with suggestions of surface changes we could make to transform our home into a buyer’s dream.  The master bathroom, she said, would benefit from a remodel, but such an effort wasn’t necessary.  In fact, more than one real estate professional has waved her hand and dismissed the idea.  We don’t need to remodel the bathroom, they say, because it won’t necessarily add more money to our selling price.

Stewart and I stopped listening after “benefit from a remodel,” however.  We’ve both hated that bathroom for years, and this was the perfect excuse to do something about it.  “We have to remodel it,” we said to each other.  “We’re trying to sell the house.”  Besides, if we don’t succeed in selling the house (God forbid) at least we’ll have a nicer bathroom.

And so I set about designing my dream bathroom.  And so Stewart set about tearing down the current one.  He worked on it pretty steadily until he hurt his back a few weeks ago, and now we’re stuck with this:

"Artist's interpretation of a bathroom"

Makes me want to move sooner than later.