Our Indoor Outhouse [UPDATED AGAIN. WITH PHOTOS. AND MORE MASTERMINDING.][UPDATED]

[UPDATED again. With photos. And more masterminding.]
[UPDATED with info about the mind boggling drawer with the outlet in it]

Before we even get started with this post in which I unveil the new bathroom OH HALLELUJAH PRAISE POPCORN WE ARE SAVED let us first turn back the hands of time (farther back than I should have to but whatever) to a time before the remodel so that we can adequately appreciate WHY we decided to undertake the horrible project that is remodeling the only bathroom in a house.

Yes.

One bathroom in house. Under construction. As in, nobody can use it for the duration of the remodeling.

Wretched cheap tile. Crap vinyl flooring. Rickety ass windows that rattle when the wind blows. HATE YOU ALL OF YOU.

Oh time capsule shower HOW I STILL HATE THEE with a teeth chattering rage.

There are so many things I could say here to try to convey to you how much we hated every little thing about this bathroom. Bubba and I hated different things with different intensities and for different reasons but the sum total of our emotions regarding this bathroom was LOATHE.

So, when we finally sacked up and decided we were going to quit pushing the bathroom remodel down our list of Shit This House Needs In Order To Be Livable and pull the trigger once and for all, we did.

We pulled the trigger all over this fucker.

Bye bye stupid wainscoting for which Bubba had a secret passionate hatred.

PEACE OUT every single other thing.

And hello Mystery Hole that shows up in every one of our projects. *Sigh*

Yeah, I don't know why we can't get through a single project in this house without uncovering a gaping hole disguised by no more than a thin layer of plaster (Hi, columns in our front porch!), a few layers of ancient linoleum (Hi, breakfast nook remodel!) or a single layer of vinyl (You know who you are, bathroom), but there you have it - our house has a lot of holes and not in a sexy way.

Thankfully, now, after three months (MONTHS. YES. Not three weeks like our contractor had predicted. Shocker.), all of the gaping holes are fixed, sealed, covered, painted, grouted, fixed some more and photographed for your viewing and my not showering at my neighbors' anymore enjoyment.

Which isn't to say that we didn't have a lovely time traipsing across the street with our towels tossed jauntily over our shoulders and our showerables tucked neatly into our shower caddies a la camp and college during sudden cloud bursts, etc. We did. Insomuch as two people can enjoy something like that. Thankfully we have The. Best. Neighbors. In. The. Fucking. World.

Period.

Best ever.

These people, these FINE fine people, cleared out their front bathroom and gave it to us for the duration. As in, come and go as you please (we already have keys to their house) to shower, use the loo, etc - for as long as you like.

Poor things didn't realize "as long as you like" was going to mean three months of crabby bitching about how come the shower valve needs ANOTHER part before it will work and why does the tile look like this at the corners and blahblahfrickenblah but that's what bringing over bottles of liquor for post-shower happy hour is for.

It's for bitching. Which we did. A lot. And now we are indebted to them forever amen.

But about that new bathroom...

It earned itself a new name.

Welcome to our Indoor Outhouse.

What with all the loo-going inside what appeared to be the confines of an outhouse, we couldn't resist knocking out the shit window that was in the door and replacing it with one that will ever-harken us back to the pre-remodel time.

We also considered getting "Shitter" etched onto the pane in old timey letters but thought that might affect resale values because people don't have a sense of humor anymore.

Or as Bubba calls it, "The Pissoir".

The floors are cork and I love them and the fact that they're never cold, clean easily, are green as hell and ARE NOT vinyl ever so much.

The towel bars are whatever but the fact that Bubba gets his very own for his gigantic man towel is very great. My dainty lady towel shares a bar with the hand towel which is whatever.

Our robe hooks share our attitude problem.

We got two different colored light fixtures because why the hell not.

And on the 107th day, the carpenter created The Vanity.  

Which has an outlet INSIDE the drawer so that everything goes away when you close it. Which I love. LOTS.

[UPDATE]

OK, so you guys were all, "What's up with the friggen drawer? How does the outlet work with the drawer pulling in and out? My mind is boggling!" and whatever. 

Well, here's the genius thing - our contractor worked with the carpenter who built the vanity to have an outlet box put on the back of that drawer and then they designed the vanity so that it'd have enough space behind the drawer for the box to nest. Then the contractor ran the electrical behind the vanity before it was installed and connected it to the box with flexible wiring and cover so that it would extend and contract as the drawer opened and closed.

Now I just have to get my act together and go find my blow dryer with the retractable cord so that I don't have a spaghetti mess in the damn drawer like you see above. 

Then it will be perfect.

Probably.

[UPDATED AGAIN. WITH PHOTOS. AND MORE MASTERMINDING.]

I get it. You want photos. I'm the same way. I need to see it to believe it. Perhaps I'm secretly from Missouri?

No. That doesn't seem right. 

Anyway, I took more photos for you, meanwhile finding a little something that my contractor needs to finish AND actually hunting down the final piece of the masterminding puzzle - the blow dryer with the retractable cord.

Witness ye, the masterminding:

Open neatly organized drawer.

Grab blow dryer and pull. Cord unravels. 

When finished the loathsome blow drying task, "*PRESS HERE TO RETRACT" and...

Ziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip. Drawer returns to organized. No spaghetti mess of cords. Hooray.

Then, witness ye the (somewhat less) masterminding of the contractor:

It's waaaaaaaaaaaaay back there, so you can't see it behind the tower of towels, but...

That is the flexi-cable line wired into an electrical box on the back of the cabinet which is wired into the wall behind with enough slack so that the drawer can be opened to full capacity and the cable will stretch to allow it.

Now, yes, it would have been IDEAL to have that box behind the drawer itself, which was how it was designed, but there was a disconnect between the contractor and the carpenter as to where that hole needed to be drilled and so, it's not *right* behind the drawer so as to be invisible to those who go hunting needlessly behind stacks of rolled towels like so much bad houseguest.

So, I was willing to see past it.

However, I did NOT notice until I went to take these photos for you that the electrical box was not covered. Thank you, people and what would I do without you?

Anyway, this is a no-no in my book. So I will be asking the contractor to come back out with a cover for that box and I will refrain from asking him WHY IT IS THAT I HAVE TO BE SO SPECIFIC ABOUT SHIT THAT SHOULD BE A GIVEN even though that's been my thought a lot lately.

So, does the magic drawer make sense now? I love it so much.

And a sink bigger than our front yard.

Yet smaller than our MONSTER MEDICINE CABINET.

RAWR! Look at my mirrors even on the inside! RAWR!

And for fuck's sake - the shower, already.

We decided to use color, for once. In the form of the most beautiful recycled glass tile. Well, we like it anyway. Thanks FireClay!

Everywhere.

And obviously we need a bench from which to admire all of the color. Also, I got a squeegee for the glass because FUN.

And would you look at that - a window that DOES NOT RATTLE IN A LIGHT BREEZE. Amazing.

So, what do you think? Less shitty than before? Maybe even kinda nice?

I'll tell you what - I could give a crap at this point. I'm not showering at my neighbors' and the contractors are the hell out of my house, so I'm happy as long as we never do this again.

The never-er the better.

Meanwhile, Bubba - for whom the bathroom tolled - has a strange favorite feature of our new bathroom.

This man who hated that time capsule shower with the burning fury of a thousand whores' crotches does not love our new shower more than anything else.

He loves the loo.

Specifically, the loo seat which I purchased for $40 and installed in five minutes. Which is bringing him unexpected joy that, had I realized was going to produce so much happiness, I would have gotten a long time ago.

It's a whisper-close seat that, no matter how you try to slam it or, in our case, accidentally slam it in the middle of the night thus waking up the whole neighborhood and taking years off of your own life with the sudden ear-melting noise, will not slam.

It closes slowly. It closes quietly. It means that Bubba puts the seat down now because he likes to watch it not slam.

I think it's my favorite new thing in the new bathroom, too.