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It started out as a project to replace a toilet
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I now live in a two bedroom, no bathroom home - at least until Saturday.

It’s part of the joy of remodeling your home when you have only one commode.

It’s not that I’m complaining mind you. I’ve never been happy with the bathroom since the day I fell head of heels for the house and signed over the next 30 years of my life to a mortgage company.

The handymen the bank that foreclosed on the home hired to “modernize it” were a bit challenged. Not only did the toilet they install not flush but the bath tub would drain at a rate slower than molasses. Those are important details especially in a one-bathroom house.

The home was “as is” with the exception of the work the bank had done. And apparently before the two clowns they hired got a hold of it, there was nothing functionally wrong with either the bathroom or the kitchen.

My real estate agent Carol Bragan took the lead. They twice replaced the toilet - they’d actually put in a used one at one point that didn’t meet current standards - and had three goes at the bath tub/shower enclosure actually taking it out two times. They said my problem was the big bathroom window that they worked around and I had to live with it. No dice. This was three years ago when homes weren’t selling. The bank’s real estate agent told them to fix it.

Fix it they did. They caulked the seams as if they were squeezing gold out of the tube. And if it wasn’t for Carol inspecting everything they did I would have closed escrow with half the subfloor they left out when they put tile in place.

As their parting gift they mounted the toilet crooked and left the bolts uncut and uncapped. Even though the tub was draining I didn’t find the real problem until a month later when I hired a plumber who went under the house and took the drain pipe apart. The problem was paint that they apparently had poured down the drain line.

I’m sure they did that because Carol made them toe the line on the painting. When all was said and done, they painted the interior of the house four times. Along the way they managed to spill a gallon or so of paint on the hardwood floor that they then covered up with carpet.

Needless to say, the bathroom has been bugging me for a long time.

So I decided I needed a new toilet. Then I figured I should also see if I could correct some of the other issues in the bathroom which was functional but that was about it.

One thing led to another and soon I was giving serious consideration to remodeling the bathroom. Then I added the kitchen. Next the laundry room was on my list as well as replacing a window and three exterior doors that didn’t match plus two garage windows. While I was at it I figured I’d better update the electrical panel that was 60 years old and no longer had available parts. For good measure I added two ceiling fans. Since everything else was going to be new - I had laminate floors installed throughout the house except for the kitchen and bathroom last year - I decided I might as well switch out all of the existing fans.

Needless to say I have taken a simple $100 toilet replacement and morphed it into a project costing the gross national product of an emerging Third World country.

If I was going to spend money it had to be just right.

The glass doors on the laundry room, kitchen and entry are a bit different as are the black cabinets - minus doors on the cupboards above the kitchen counter top. And since my perfectly good three-year-old refrigerator no longer matched I bought a new one that is black and stainless steel.

But the piece de resistance is the bathroom. For some unknown reason I had to have the bathroom make a statement as in the house obviously belongs to a guy who obviously has lost his mind.

It is reflected in the vanity - stained black of course - that has a vessel sink at chest height and a black toilet where the toilet seat alone is costing $80. The reed glass door adds to it.

And at the end of the day the shower is definitely going to be the center of attention. But right now the five foot wide by eight foot deep bathroom is bare to the floor and walls with a big hole in the floor.

The remodeling may sound a bit excessive but what did you expect from a guy who dug out every blade of grass in the front and back yards, ripped out eight trees and then replaced them with 18 new ones and then put up a 7-foot high fence that a neighbor said reminds him of the Branch Davidians’ compound?