The Pink Monstrosity: The Window

We bought our first house within two years of marriage, believing that it would benefit us to start making house payments as opposed to paying rent where we were living in Northwest Indiana. In retrospect, it was probably not one of our smarter financial moves, just breaking even when we decided to move to Indianpolis two years later, but we did love that house. Just like the one we live in now, it was quirky, and there were several elements of the house that I enjoyed. The bathroom was not one of them. There were several small things I didn't like about the bathroom, but the biggest problem I had with it was the window in the shower. The house had only one bathroom, so there was nowhere else to take a shower, and the situation was only made worse by the fact that the window was on the front of the house, facing the street. I never spoke about it, but I hated it. I hated the fact that the wood trim continued to warp and peel every time I took a shower. I hated the curtain that prevented people on the street from seeing me taking a shower. And I hated the fact that I never knew what to do with it. Perhaps that is why I reacted so strongly to the presence of the window in the shower of our main bathroom.

With plans to tile the whole bathtub and shower area, something had to be done with the window. We could have left it the way it was and tiled around it, but I had concerns about our eventual teen daughter and guests showering with a window to the outdoors, even if that window only looked onto our backyard. We could have walled it up, but that would have meant spending time and money fixing the siding on the outside of the house. Finally we decided on glass blocks. Or maybe it was I who decided on glass blocks and Jeff just smiled and nodded. Several trips to Menards later, and Jeff finally figured out the best arrangement for our new glass block window. I don't know how many ways you can arrange glass blocks on a store floor, but we tried a lot of options. I felt useless when it came to actual installation, and again, I was very pregnant, so Jeff called up his parents in early May 2011 for another weekend project. By the end of that Saturday we had new and better insulation in our walls and a solid glass block window. Unfortunately, we were still far from having a completed bathroom.