Blue tub days

The much discussed topic of not having a proper bathroom in our house is well covered territory on my house blog. When the discussion about 'mad people who renovate' is broached, I'm sure our bathroom-less house story is perched on the lips of many of our friends and family. We've heard the backwash of this one too many times:

friend of family: "We heard you're renovating an old Summer house"

us: "yes"

friend of family: "...and that you have no bathroom!! Wow!"

us: "yes" (glaring at mother in law)

So yes, no bathroom. A small corner WC with a very small sink and mirror, and a shower which is actually in an unheated niche outside on the porch, private but exposed to God's freezing French Alpine earth, and that's basically it. All of our bathroom junk is crammed into a dilapidated armoire in the living room which the baby often unloads scattering treasures everywhere. A nightmare on Elm Street? Malheureusement, oui, mother-in-law is not too far off on this one.

Oh the horror! We hate the situation, it's awful, but the bathroom is the largest project we have looming, and then my god there's the roof to finish before the bathroom can even be thought of, a huge project. And then of course there's the state of the future bathroom's walls and floors, layers of chalky, chipping plaster from the 1930's. And then there's yes, the fact that we're very, very tired and three years dragging around sledge hammers and drills is a long time.

But then there is Baby S, our not so wee tyke. The tyke indeed whose overweighted baby tub has outgrown its stand and now rests safely on the kitchen floor, carefully filled to the brim. And yet, wait one cotton-picking minute! He never has complained! But a baby could care less about such things. Proper tubs and toilets and copper plumbing pipes, showers with multiple body jets and retro claw foot tubs don't strike chords in teeny baby hearts like it does ours. No, our baby is very pleased with atmosphere. He sits contentedly, his little blue tub near my feet each morning, splashing around as I sit tapping away at the computer. He enjoys the hairdos and the familiar boom of rap tunes from the CD player and the sound of my voice as I talk to him and ask him what he's doing and why. He likes the routine of 30 minutes of play time. He simply loves being near me.

On Friday we're doing something crazy. We're going to the bank to see about borrowing the funds to finish this bathroom project, actually the whole house project. We want to be bold and jump in feet first. We want to actually pay people to work in our house. You see we want our bathroom without having to do all the work ourselves; not lazy just plain taard

I hope the BNP says yes. They should say yes according to our notes and figures. It's a scary thought to borrow such a large chunk of change. There is a moment of hesitation and we're a little nervous about it. But yet, here we stand on the verge of emerging from crazed peasantry, scrubbing up in minus one temperatures, to being the proud proprietors of the dream home, carefully pieced together from the pages of countless issues of Maison & Travaux. It will probably still take a year or two to finish but still if we can do it won't it be amazing? And won't Baby S be even a teeny bit impressed with this?

Nah, I'm thinking he'll probably be missing those days of the little blue tub on the kitchen floor in front of the oven.