cleanliness and all that...

So I've finally bit the bullet and ordered a shower door for the master bath. Yeah, I know, except for the shower door, I finished remodeling that bathroom months ago, and have since moved on to remodeling the guest bath, which project I'm currently into up to my ears...literally up to my ears, as I'm tiling the walls (another d-i-y project) to a height of 5' and I'm 5'3". But that is neither here nor there. The reason I haven't replaced the shower door in the master bath before now is that I didn't want the original Motel 6 shower door replaced with yet another Motel 6 shower door, and it's taken me a while to find a place that would provide a decent, stylish door (i.e., frameless) at a reasonable price. But I've found such a place, and the door is ordered, and I'll post pics when it's delivered and installed.

In the meantime, I've been thinking about bathrooms. When I was a kid, we didn’t have indoor plumbing until we moved to town, when I was 8. Up until that time my younger brother Dave and I were bathed once a week, in a square, galvanized tin tub that was dragged into the kitchen and placed without ceremony on the linoleum in front of the cook stove. Mom poured a couple of inches of cold water into the tub, and then heated pots of water on the stove and added that to the cold water in the tub until the water got warm. I was always torn between wanting to have the first bath, in the clean water, or waiting for the second bath, which had more water, as Mom always heated a couple additional pots of water to add to the second bath.

When we moved to town we rented a house with a bathroom and a tub, and hot water came right from the tap, simply by turning a spigot. That seemed pretty amazing and incredibly luxurious, and got me through several years until eventually I discovered showers. Originally, I wasn’t much impressed with showers, but that’s probably because they were group showers with other girls after 7th grade PE. I have no fond memories of that experience.

But the day came when I left the web, left the loom, and got my first apartment and with it, my very own shower. Ah, heaven! I am so much more a shower person than a bath person. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t times that I enjoy soaking in a hot bath, especially on a cold night. But most of the time I love showers. There is something incredibly restorative about standing in a shower, and having endless clean water running over you.

Lacking a shower door in the master bath, for the past several months I’ve been showering in the guest bath. Unlike the master bath, the guest bath is utilitarian, not luxurious. And yet I love that shower. The stall itself is small and plain, but there’s a good showerhead and the hot water heater is in a closet on the other side of the wall, so there’s instant hot water and lots of it. The floor in the bathroom is unfinished Saltillo tile, which is totally forgiving of wet feet. Because the room is small and not particularly well ventilated unless you open the window, it always smells pleasantly of soap for a while after anyone has showered in there. It reminds me of the shower in the barn that my father-in-law had in his house in Aspen. It shares a number of features with that shower, including poor ventilation except for a window, an endless supply of hot water, and Saltillo tile floors. Maybe that’s why I’m so fond of it.

There are a couple of big differences, though. When you opened the window in the shower in Aspen, you looked out on towering pines, an alpine lake, and Red Mountain, whereas my guest bath shower looks out onto the deck outside my front door. And after you'd showered in the barn in Aspen, you'd get dressed and step outside and be in...Aspen. Whereas here, you're still in...Dallas...albeit, clean in Dallas...ah, well...