Compost Studios

The year before we moved to Belgium, we completely renovated the master bath in our home. The trigger for the remodeling project had been our loathing of tile.

Yes, while the use of ceramic tile is considered a bathroom upgrade in America and is standard here in Belgium, I hated it. I didn’t like to keep the grout clean, and my husband was tired of repairing it, sealing it, and messing with the troublesome seam between the bottom of the shower and its walls.

So we decided to rip out the tile in the shower and replace it with a one-piece, seam-free fiberglass unit that would be easy to clean and maintain. No big deal, right? Well, not until we discovered the only way to deliver a unit like that into our bathroom was to open up a wall. That’s when the whole project got kicked up a few notches.

Once you decide to put a big hole in the wall, you may as well take a good long look at the rest of your bathroom fixtures and see what else needs replacing. In our case, we decided to tear out everything—why go halfway?

After years of grappling with chronic back pain, I was ready for a tub with jets. I hit the home improvement stores in search of the right one. Once in the store, I actually climbed into the display models to see how they fit my body. I didn’t care if I looked absurd sitting in a tub in a store, I’d waited all my life for a good tub and by God, I wasn’t going to let a false sense of propriety stand in the way of finding it!

The Jacuzzi I selected had 10 separate jets, four of them aimed at my back. It was a source of pure joy for me. Every night I found my bliss in a tubful of bubbling warm water in a steamy bathroom.

In a house overtaken by kids and pets and their accompanying messes, the remodeled bathroom was a little corner of pristine beauty and the center of my world. The rest of the house might look like a disaster area, but our bathroom was always spotless. And then I had to leave it all behind.

When we moved to Belgium, we initially lived in a small apartment, and every night I pined for my Jacuzzi like a teenager separated from her first love. Not only did I no longer have a luxury tub, but I had to share the bare bones apartment bathroom with my children who polluted it with wet washrags, damp towels, toothpaste globs, and dirty underwear and socks.

When we started searching for a house to rent, I knew it was unlikely I’d ever find one with a Jacuzzi, but I told my husband I absolutely had to have a decent tub and bath—preferably in a room all to myself.

Imagine my delight when we found a house with ample bathrooms, including one in the attic that I immediately fell in love with. Tucked under the eaves with knotty-pine paneling, it was cozy and had a decent-sized tub, a sink set into a corner, and just enough room for my beloved bath cabinet. As soon as we moved in, I lugged my favorite things up the stairs and carefully arranged all my scented lotions, bath products, and makeup for easy access. I nicknamed this small bathroom retreat “Grrrl World” and told my children they were forbidden to set foot in it.

That night, ready at long last for a hot bath, I attempted to run hot water into the tub. It ran and ran and ran and the water went from orange to murky, cold to lukewarm. It never got hot, was often just tepid, and frequently discolored. I was crushed. I HAD to have a bath. I even tried heating water on the stove to fill the tub but this was a futile effort.

So the landlady was informed of the issue and a plumber called but diagnosing the exact nature of the problem proved elusive. We didn’t have any truly hot water on the third floor and limited hot water on the second. The plumber, as all plumbers are, was overworked and in demand. He did good work, but it took weeks, sometimes months to make an appointment with him. When he did manage to fit us into his schedule, adjustments were made, valves checked out, settings changed, but the problem persisted. There was a second tub in the house, but no hot water to fill it with.

I resigned myself to sharing a single TILE shower stall with my entire family. I was embarrassed at how much this bothered me. Upstairs in the attic, the only time I entered Grrrl World was to put on my makeup. The sink and tub grew dusty. I turned off the radiator in there. I’d given up hope.

And then last week, the plumber returned yet again to replace corroded pipes and further investigate the hot water situation. He stumbled on the cause of the problem by accident and finally, after ten months of waiting, I had hot water in Grrrl World!

The tub was scrubbed, the bath products unearthed. There were several false starts as the pipes hiccupped calc and sediment into the tub and turned the water orange or a nasty yellow. I had to drain the tub twice and clean it yet again.

Finally at 10 o’clock that night, I got the bath I’ve been dying for since last spring. When the church bells rang on the hour, I was sure they were chiming for me.