shower demo
there are a few home projects you can feel in your bones coming long before you’re ready to deal with them. ours was the shower.
the slow build-up
for a while, we tried to bandaid it. we'd crack the window all year to dry things out. we'd ignore the way the cream tile was slowly turning rusty orange from hard water stains...this house is too small for a water softener. we'd say ‘it’s fine’ when we’d notice the floor had a spongy feeling. and we'd pretend it was normal for a bathroom to always feel a little tired and kind of like a chore to be in.
the longer we lived with it, the louder it got. until it stopped feeling like 'one day' and started feeling like 'now'. we had no idea how big this task was going to be. we knew something was off, and we had to face it.
the shower demo + the gross surprise
once we finally committed, the demo was surprisingly fast and fun. there’s something satisfying about ripping out the thing that’s been annoying you for months (or years) and watching the space open up.
and then, as soon as we started peeling things back, we found what we were afraid of. we expected rot, but we weren’t prepared for the shower floor to crumble like soggy cardboard the second we touched it. not a patch job. a full rip-out of the subfloor. great.
how far do we take this?
but the part that slowed us down wasn’t the demo or the soggy bottom. it was the decision point that always seems to show up mid-project, we were staring at studs and dust and half a plan in this shower demo.
how far do we go? where do we stop?
we went back and forth on how far to take the expansion. a bigger shower sounded great, but we didn’t want to bite off more than we could chew. we also didn’t want to rebuild a new version of the same compromise and call it “done.”
eventually, the answer landed with the kind of clarity that only comes when we’re standing in the middle of a mess: we ended up removing the entire wall between the bathroom and the closet room.
it’s a bigger move, more demo, more rebuild, but that was a hurdle for another day. we knew it would give us one continuous, smooth wall in the closet room. fewer weird transitions. fewer tight corners. making this 9x9 space [and shrinking] feel as spacious as possible.
my inevitable panic regret
but even while I’m looking at the mess, I'm relieved. we listened to that feeling we couldn’t shake, and we finally started. and if there’s one thing I keep learning with house projects, it’s this: resisting doesn’t stop the work—it only stretches the discomfort out longer.
next up is decisions stacked on decisions, materials to choose, and the inevitable moment where I ‘panic regret’ every decision I made right in the middle of the project.
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