Renovation Road was supposed to stay confined to our house’s first floor.

But then, you know, there were those niggling things that drove us nuts about parts of our home’s upstairs.

Some we had already fixed in earlier rounds with our handyman, now contractor, Jerry Walsh. We harmonized overhead lights, bedroom door handles, even bedroom door hinges: each door to the three bedrooms had different-coloured hinges, one black, one copper-y and one brass. We replaced the washing machine in the upstairs laundry room before the first tenants arrived when a repairman couldn’t fix a persistent, slow leak. We repainted the laundry room and bathroom, and replaced loose sink taps. We had been used to having two sinks at our Toronto apartment bathroom and initial visits to our Stratford house found us jostling each other when we were getting ready in the morning. We realized what we were really missing was a larger mirror, so we added that and moved the existing small one to another spot in the bathroom.

We’d also done other maintenance and energy-saving work at the house during the three years when we provided it to the Stratford Festival for artist rental: installed an air-conditioning system; added a front storm door; and replaced two single-paned half-moon windows in the house’s largest room with double-paned ones, something that required a custom build. The front porch got fresh paint. And the biggest project was outdoors: adding manufactured flagstone to the house’s side courtyard — our functional backyard — to replace a fine pea gravel that tracked into the house and made it impossible to pop outside barefoot.

Heading into this major renovation in 2023, certain upstairs bits still cried out for attention. There was an old wood cupboard above the laundry sink in the second-floor laundry room with fixed shelves. Many laundry products couldn’t fit as no shelf was tall enough. Out with the old cupboard and in with a new, white flat-pack with adjustable shelves.

And then, there was the shower.

The bathroom in this old house is part of the latest addition and it is airy and spacious: Friends came to have a porch visit in fall of 2020 when we were following COVID-avoidance practices and we did a quick house tour, masked. “You can do social distancing in your bathroom!” Jeff remarked.

But oh, the shower. Nestled into the corner, the doors open on a rounded track. Once my partner stepped into the shower, he had to remember to duck coming out or he’d whack himself in the forehead. Some mornings, he didn’t remember.

And then there was the time when he turned on the water in the shower, and the valve handle came off in his hands. He’s a fit guy who exercises a lot and I call these his Bamm-Bamm moments: like the fictional little boy in the Flintstones, sometimes the objects of ordinary life fall prey to his misapplied strength.

That broken shower valve caused no end of headaches: while we could still turn the water on and off using locking pliers, it took a long time and trips to a several stores beyond Stratford to find a replacement part as it wasn’t a standard brand. (We finally tracked one down at a trades-only plumbing supply shop in Kitchener, about a 40-minute drive away.)

Between the wonky valve, and the head clonks, we put shower replacement on our list, folding it into the downstairs renovation given the house would be torn apart already and the old shower could join other discards in the rented disposal bin.

We can fit a 36″x48″ shower and, to provide proper anchoring for a glass shower door, our contractor recommended building a floor-to-ceiling wall where the plumbing fixtures will go, between the current shower and the toilet. That wall does make the room feel smaller but I’m hoping to regain that spacious feel through some decorating tricks. However, it will all be worth it that first morning when we’re back in the house, doing our morning ablutions, and I don’t need to brace myself for a Bamm-Bamm yowl at the end of shower time.