This is Two in the upstairs bathroom, early in its journey. And the seat is up! But, embracing imperfection, I’m keeping this feature photo. The internet needs a little Real Life Living once in a while.

One of the first rooms I wanted to tackle when we moved into our house was the upstairs bathroom. It’s tucked in at the end of a hallway away at the opposite end of the upstairs bedrooms, and we primarily use it only at night. It wasn’t super important that it be functional at the beginning because there were only four of us.

Here’s what it looked like when we did our first walk-through:

The only photo I have of the bathroom showing the other wall is more blurry than this one, but there was a framed print of a white tiger on the wall to complete the jungle theme. We won’t talk about the fuzzy green toilet accessories.

The first thing I did was to repaint, top to bottom.

If you remember from the kitchen posts, I’m actually a big fan of yellow paint, just not in the bathroom. Instead, I went with a light blue.

We’ve delegated certain maintenance tasks within our marriage. I do electrical and painting, and the Chaplain takes care of plumbing. So he’s the one who replaced the leaky faucet. (I think I finally just got rid of that t shirt because it had faded beyond recognition…but it certainly looks fresh here.)For now, we kept the oversized mirror and fluorescent light, which for all their ugliness, were perfect for inspecting blemishes. The yellowed vinyl tiles would also have to wait. To me, this was already a huge improvement, but as usual, I had trouble leaving well enough alone. The tiles and the old flooring were the next thing to go. While we were at it, we took down the wall at the end of the tub, and pulled out the john. I wasn’t sorry to see the toilet go. It was impossible to lower the seat quietly and the noise it made when it came down was so loud that I understand why the seat’s up in this post’s feature photo. When we took the toilet out, we discovered the sub-floor was rotted out, and the Chaplain earned some home improvement chops by replacing the plywood and installing the setting for the new toilet. Since he’s the plumbing guy, as noted above, I’m not exactly sure what he did, but I remember the old part was a rusted-out horror that took a great deal of effort to remove, and the new part was red and shiny.

The porcelain throne would eventually be replaced with an anemic, early-generation energy-efficient toilet. While I may not be impressed by its flushing capability, I made sure it had a whisper-close seat, and have never looked back.

We didn’t realize this at the time, but our bathroom would remain in demo phase for the next two years. After two years with our bathroom in shreds at the end of the hall, we had three young kids and another on the way. My parents asked what we needed to do to get our bathroom back in working condition. They offered to help us get it done, and got things rolling with a generous gift. We got a quote from a carpenter to come in and take care of business, and work resumed.

When we finally finished pulling everything down, we realized there was no insulation in the walls. We knew our bathroom got cold in the winter and boiling in the summer, but no insulation at all? Before putting up cement board in the wet area and drywall in the dry, we rectified the situation, and it hugely improved the usability of the room.

Before we took down the tile, I went back and forth about it. I knew I didn’t like the existing tile, but I didn’t want to take it down if it was original, even though I was pretty sure it wasn’t. It turned out I was right. We found a piece of the original beadboard when we pulled the tile down.This was right up my alley. I wanted so badly to sand and paint that bad boy and continue the beadboard around the rest of the room. Unfortunately, we had to cover it up because of the way the new beadboard had to be installed, but it’s still under there, a little piece of green history.

See how the radiator winds around that wall at the bottom of the photo above? Our handy carpenters suggested putting the radiator piping through that section of the wall instead of around it, and made the switch. Less contours to maneuver round when cleaning the floor next to the toilet? Yes, please.

At some point during the demo era, the Chaplain had laid the tile floor I’d picked out, and started to put up PVC vinyl beadboard and trim all the way around. But because we live in an old house and the floors were slanted, he couldn’t figure out how to get the beadboard on the wall to line up vertically. He pulled it down and tried again, and eventually we let the carpenters do the job. As it turns out, the section the Chaplain was struggling with ended up still being crooked when the carpenters did the work.

We had a contractor come in and put in the marble tub tile. I picked out charcoal grey grout after spending the first couple of years in our house trying (and failing) to keep the white grout in this bathroom clean. I knew I never wanted to do that again.

When I told our contractor what color grout I wanted, he was surprised. Truthfully, when I came into the room to see it for the first time, I was a little shocked, too. It felt really dark and a little daring. But now I love it. And I never worry about getting it clean. Because, who cares? (An adage from my mother: Always know the difference between clean dirt and dirty dirt.)The next thing to go was the mirror and the fluorescent light. I was a little sad to see it go, not for aesthetics, but because I can be a picker. But I know that’s not a good habit, and the room would be improved with a mirror better scaled to its proportions. The old mirror had done a great job of protecting the wall behind it. A little patching, and the wall was ready to repaint.

Because of the way the fluorescent light was installed and my limited electrical skills, I left the wiring where it was and installed the light off center. We hung a new mirror (which incidentally, I ordered before we were leaving for a trip to Tobago, thinking it would arrive before we left. It didn’t, and in desperation, I called from the Caribbean and asked our elderly neighbor to collect it for me when I was unable to hold the shipment. When I got home and collected the package, I realized it was ridiculously heavy it was and felt terrible about asking for her help).Since we’d done away with the wall at the end of the tub, it no longer worked to use a tension rod for the shower curtain. The slanting ceiling made it even more challenging. After extensive online research, and buying a curtain rod that ended up not being compatible with our set-up, we ended up using a wire tension rod we found at Ikea. We finished the bathroom just before Four was born. We joked that since it was the cleanest room in the house and I was hardcore nesting, I would probably have the baby in the bathroom.

As it turned out, when labor started, it was 10:00 a.m. My water had broken the night before, but labor really got going the next morning. As things ramped up, I found myself pacing in the upstairs hallway, going back and forth to the bathroom to empty my bladder. One time, I went to the bathroom, and things got so intense that I ended up on all fours on the floor.

I never left, and Four was born right where the rug is in the photo above at 12:30 p.m. that October afternoon, after a crazily intense and painful labor. He was born with both fists balled up under his chin, making his exit especially difficult.

In a brief moment of calm before Four was born, I was inspired to sing “Day by Day,” a hymn with generational significance to our family. Moments later, my midwife, with her hand on the top of my belly, told me she felt him kick off as he swam downwards to enter the world.

It is the tradition in our house that Grandma gives each new baby its first bath, and appropriately, Four received his first one in the room where he was born.Since then, our upstairs bath has remained largely unchanged. Before we did the reno, we didn’t get hot water upstairs in the winter because the lack of insulation meant that the pipes were too cold. In our inexperience, we let our contractor’s “guy” install our new shower fixture when they did the tile around our tub. It was offered as a favor rather than for us to pay to get a plumber, and now the hot water still sometimes doesn’t work in the winter. I think it’s because of the angle at which the shower knob is installed in the wall. It doesn’t allow the hot water to go all the way on, and we need it to if we want hot water when it’s really cold outside. The lesson? Hire the plumber.

I tell myself that living in an old house, it’s just a quirky feature typical of such dwellings. I asked a roto-rooter guy about it a couple of years after the reno. He was very nice and had seen the problem before, and he suggested installing a heating vent in the wall with the plumbing hardware to allow warm air from the bathroom to get into the space. I dutifully cut a hole in our PVC beadboard and installed the vent. It hasn’t noticeably improved the problem.

We still mostly only use this bathroom at night, but One has adopted it as his bathroom of choice for bathing and grooming, even though his bedroom has moved downstairs.

Last summer, when I was pregnant with Seven and went into labor, I found myself back in this bathroom. I labored in the tub and hopped out right before he was born, giving birth about a foot away from where his brother was born.

Remember this pic?This bathroom may not get a lot of traditional use, but it sure has seen a lot of action. It’s the only room in our house where more than one baby has been born. At least, that we know of.

So that’s it for now. Sometimes I think I want to repaint – I’m thinking a bold, rich, milky jade. But I haven’t been able to find the time. Besides, so many special things have happened here just the way that it is, and maybe part of me wants to preserve it in its current form.