Pink-Bathroom Syndrome
Great moments in building history: Sometimes all it takes is a closer look
When my real-estate agent described a prospective home to me, he spoke glowingly of its many nice features but hinted that the house had one problem. He assured me that the matter would not be difficult for my renovation skills, but he refused to offer details until I could tour the house.
As we drove up, he explained that several potential buyers had fallen in love with the house, but then refused to make an offer when they discovered the flaw. Walking in the door, I found that much of the house suffered from the color intensity of the 1950s and ’60s. In the kitchen, a sunflower-yellow refrigerator fought for attention with an avocado-green dishwasher. The Brady Bunch would be right at home, but it was nice and livable otherwise.
It was in the main bathroom that the color war had been lost. Pink! Everything was pink! The walls, the ceiling, the metal tile around the tub, the carpet, the toilet seat were all blazing pink! Even the toilet, sink and bathtub were pink. The room was beautifully preserved and fully functional, but everything was aflame with pink, certainly a fatal flaw. The color had been out of style for eons. My real-estate agent explained that this home’s situation had become known around the office as pink-bathroom syndrome because it was the sole cause of many lost sales.
But the price was right, and everything else about the house was perfect. So I bought it and moved right in. I promised myself that someday I would redo that bathroom.
Always finding it easier to work on someone else’s project, I lived with the pink bathroom for many years. I often thought about remodeling the bathroom, but mostly, the door was kept closed. People would come over to admire the room, a remarkable time warp. I think they were revisiting their childhoods. Daunted by the effort and expense of replacing everything in the room, I delayed the inevitable.
Finally, one fateful Sunday night, I arrived home from a fancy party, and feeling no pain, I decided that it was time to remodel the bath. Still in my suit, I went to the garage, got a 10-lb. sledgehammer and returned to the house. In the bathroom, I gave the sledge a full roundhouse swing. In an exciting shower of splinters and dust, I took out the sink, the medicine cabinet and the majority of several walls. In a reverse swing, I knocked holes in the remaining walls, broke the light fixture, shattered the toilet, cracked the tile around the tub walls and put a big dent in the ceiling. One more big swing in the near-dark, and the cast-iron tub was soundly damaged.
Sobered by the dust and damage created in such a short time, I was unable to reconsider my actions. I changed into work clothes and toiled through the night. I pried up pink materials until I reached bare studs and subfloor. In dust and dark, I hauled load after load of porcelain, drywall and tile fragments out for Monday morning’s trash pickup. Most of the chunks of debris were large, so I piled them up at the end of the driveway.
It was late by the time everything was out, but I had accomplished my mission. Wasted from the effort, I dropped face first into bed, fully dressed. I quickly fell asleep, satisfied that I had finally conquered pink-bathroom syndrome. My dreams were filled with thoughts of starting over.
In the morning, I jumped out of bed, showered off the remaining drywall dust and dressed for work. I jumped in the car and took off past the pile of debris. I was a half-block down the street when I realized that something wasn’t right. I reversed to my driveway to examine the debris pile in the daylight.
The chunks of walls, tile and accessories were indeed bright pink. But the sink, toilet and tub parts were not pink at all, but a lovely soft beige. It slowly dawned on me that the light from pink light fixtures had ricocheted across pink tile, pink paint and pink rug to overwhelm and make everything seem pink. I had lived in the house for years and not realized it. Worse, I had needlessly demolished the entire room and the nicest, most expensive fixtures in the house. I could have painted the room in a night and been done with it.
I resigned myself to a long, costly process of reconstruction. About $5,000 and two months later, I had new beige fixtures, and the bathroom was complete—with more subtle tile and accessories.
The final insult came a week after completion, when I saw an article about popular new decorating colors. The headline suggested that the next big color was due to be “dusty rose.” Glancing at the picture, I tossed the magazine before even starting the article.
—Jim Parker, Littleton, CO
Drawing by: Jim Meehan
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