Soon after arriving back from our holiday season travels to Chicago and Canada I uttered the following phrase to H.
“You know, when we have a house I would like to …”, at which point she laughed and asked what house I was talking about.
I explained I didn’t mean the condo unit we are currently renting or the place we still own back in Chicago. What I really meant was a house.
Even further explanation was required on my part but the gist of it was that I eventually hope the two of us find a city and neighborhood we are both comfortable with and purchase a home there. Given the fact we can’t sell our condo in Chicago or that I am still looking for work who the hell knows when we are going to find ourselves in this situation. However I don’t think it should diminish the idea of having a home of our own and changing, designing and making it ours.
Call me crazy but I like the idea of purchasing something that needs some work and having professionals help design and repair whatever is necessary. Over the last couple months the two of us have said on numerous occasions something to the effect of “… and in our house I would like …” or “… wouldn’t it be nice to have …”.
All of this talk finally made me realize I should be writing some of this stuff down and what better place to do it than our blog. Sure I could use the old fashion and archaic pen and paper but what fun would that be.
So here is the first in what is sure to become and ongoing list of things about our new ‘fantasy’ house.
Fantasy House Rule #1 – No sliding glass shower doors.
Until we moved to our current unit I have always showered behind the security and comfort of a shower curtain. It should be noted that my home back in Canada didn’t get a shower in it until a little more than 15 years ago but that is another story. Our place here in LA has glass doors that slide back and forth to open.
I like the idea of glass doors but in our fantasy house the enclosure must be such that there is a single swinging door and not sliding ones.
The reason? It’s impossible to clean the 2 inch space where the doors overlap and it drives me crazy.
It took us a while to realize just how hard the water is here and what is does to every surface in the house – it leaves a stain. After our first week the shower doors had this terrible, grimy film on them and it was really tough to clean. After doing some research I read a solution involving white vinegar to remove the film. It took five ‘coats’ of vinegar and then entire house smelled like fish and chips for a week afterwards but the doors became cleaner but not totally clean.
One day H was downstairs at Ralph’s and purchased a Simple Clean product designed to take away the water stains. Useless. I love the environment and we do all we can in an effort to be green but it became obvious this job required some good old fashioned chemicals.
Victory was achieved with CLR. I knew it was going to work when I read the directions and it said gloves must be worn and how dangerous it was for the liquid to have contact with my skin. The first go around took two coats but subsequent cleaning has required just a few sprays and a wipe down to get our doors looking clear and clean again. Brilliant!
Except for the two inch space in-between the doors. I’ve tried stick a sponge in there to clean, used screwdriver with a cleaning rag wrapped around it to move up and down but nothing works. Short of taking the doors off I have no idea how to clean this area.
Of course we flipped for a squeegee and wipe down the doors after each shower but they still need a cleaning every so often.
Which brings us back to the first thing our fantasy house must have – a swing out glass shower door.
The first thing I did after purchasing our current house was to remove the sliding doors in the two bathrooms. I can’t stand those things. And it was a bitch to wash my kids in such small space with the door slide to one side. I put up shower curtains instead.