We’ve got a blue bathtub, 1950’s throw-back toilet and sink, a remodel in our 1922 home, one in which we’ve not updated. I see these same sets, though perfectly gleaming, torn from other homes, tagged for thousands, at the local vintage hardware shop. So, I am happy to have them in the world of hipster-cool-appeal Astoria now shines in.
Yes, there’s a shower, but no curtain because I’ve told my kids it’s non-operational to avoid water on the old floor after my friend came to visit with three daughter’s and friends who must have splashed gallons of water in an underage, after boogie-boarding party, which resulted in a drip, drip, dripping through the living-room ceiling—a bash requiring a twenty-five towel mop up and ceiling-white paint job. Funny after all of these years no one has attempted turning the spout to rain!
A year ago, I did pay to have the old tile ripped up and found the supporting tub-wood spongy. My contractor, a musician friend, let me know I was lucky not to have fallen through the family room floor naked in a topped tub of suds! I imagined myself dropping through the first, waving as I passed the blonde bricks of the main-floor fireplace, and wound up twisted in the basement.
Luckily, that never was the case, and he was able to saw and carve out the former, lay the new slate tiles, natural gray-black squares much more striking against the baby-blue cast iron of yesteryear then simply white.
If you come to visit and don’t like a long, hot soak, you’re required to venture down cellar and shower in the stall next to our Finnish, cedar-lined sauna—and that way the threat of watery mess is contained, buoyed by the shipping pier and cinder foundation.
