Home Renovation Nightmare

With the home renovation-makeover market firmly establishing itself as more than just a fad, I knew that it was only a matter of time before I would be affected. It's all over TV, it's featured in magazines, it keeps companies like Home Depot profitable and it finally got to me. Well, indirectly.

My parents recently decided to renovate their house, including adding a new bathroom, which sounds like a fairly simple endeavor to an inexperienced observer. Logically there couldn't be that many options for a 10' x 8' bathroom, right? Wrong. Dead wrong. Excruciatingly wrong.

When it came time to plan out the actual bathroom layout, fixtures and "appliances," my dad called on me to help with the selection. So this past Saturday, I found myself awake at the unhealthy hour of 9 a.m. and on my way to check out a couple of places that specialize in bathrooms and bathroom accessories.

Each business we entered laid claim to having the largest showroom in town. If by "largest showroom" they had meant "most ridiculously unnecessary collection of bathroom items," I would have to declare a three-way tie. I quickly found out that the number of options when designing a lavatory is staggering. Toilets, mirrors, sinks, tubs, tiles, cabinets, handles, lights, etc. - it was a never-ending menu of things I had little or no interest in. As we looked over a pallet of over 100 types of cabinet door handles, I told my brother, "I would rather endure an afternoon of Rambo-style physical torture than do this anymore."

But do this I must. First up, the toilet. In my mind, this is the most important bathroom fixture, with the key lying not in design or color but in flush power. After a particularly harrowing and life-altering experience at my cousin's house where I found myself madly looking around their restroom for something that could double as a bailing bucket, I refuse to condone the purchase of anything that bears the words "low flow" in its title. Call me a traditionalist, but I also don't need a toilet that looks like it was designed in an aerodynamic wind tunnel.

Then come the sinks. I thought the bathroom sink would probably be the easiest item to select. Not so. Apparently these days the trend is to make "artisan" sinks. Basically this means that the sink is designed to either look like a decorative fruit bowl or like some type of miniature fountain. Either or, after checking out these creations, I found myself looking for the nonexistent American Standard section of the store.

The bathtub itself is another interesting item. Without getting into the details, these days you can buy tubs that have more features than a well-equipped Mercedes Benz. Upon looking at the price of a particular floor model, I first swallowed back my breakfast and then remarked about the cost being so high, one would expect the tub to come equipped with a mechanical "happy ending" hand.

Article Author: Hardy

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