Last week, I put on my general contractor hat and oversaw the tile and plumbing jobs. This is what the floor looks like:
We went with white subway tile on the shower walls.
All in all, we were without a toilet for the better part of three days.
I know there’s technically no difference between a motel and a hotel, but for whatever reason I’ve developed my own definition. If the door to my room opens to a hallway, it’s a hotel. If it opens to a breezeway, it’s a motel. Motels are a little sketchier in my opinion, but hey; if it saves a few bucks, I was willing to give it a try. After all, we were merely sleeping there. So on Tuesday night, we checked into the Savannah Suites motel. The rooms were only $35 per night.
While we waited for the manager to unlock the office, a girl asked us, “do you live around here?” I thought that was a little odd. Who (besides us) stays in a hotel/motel in their own town? The wife answered, “yes,’ and the girl told us about how her and her husband and their dog had been sharing a room there since February. She was waiting because she had left her bible in the office. Who takes a bible into a motel office? When we were finally allowed entry into the dank motel office, I overheard the guy in front of us boasting that he’d been there for four months and knew everybody. Apparently, we had wandered into a pit stop for tramps and transients. It was like a hostel, but without the charm of adventurous youth. Our room reeked of equal parts depression, desperation and depravity. The broken table leg seemed to epitomize how everything there was just a little off.
Since we were officially slumming it, I thought we’d fit in better with the locals by drinking wine out of the always-elegant, and sometimes romantic, plastic wine goblets. If only we’d had some Boone’s Farm or Thunderbird, we’d have fit right in.
There was a funky smell in the room that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. The wife walked around all bundled up in layers because she had convinced herself there were hidden cameras in one or more of the vents. I didn’t notice because I was busy waging a TV volume war with the guy on the other side of the wall. We eventually fell asleep to the reassuring flicker of the cheap bathroom light. At one point during the night, I woke up and figured out what the puzzling smell was. It was the acrid odor of old vomit. Needless to say, we didn’t spend another night in the Savannah Suites motel.
We stayed at a nearby Days Inn the next two nights. To my satisfaction, our door opened to a hallway. The wife got to hang out by the pool while I was busy hanging the sheetrock over the cement board in the shower back at the house. It was pretty nice at $45 per night. But then again, I’m easily seduced by free breakfast. The only drawback was that, even though the room was clean, the maid had not noticed a large pair of white underwear hanging on the towel hook behind the bathroom door. If I hadn’t been alert, I might have had a moment like the bathroom scene from Planes, Trains and Automobiles. After being reassured by the wife that she wasn’t cheating on me with an overweight gym teacher, I carefully removed them from the door and tossed them in the trash.
On Friday after work, we finally installed our new toilet. It felt good to finally have a functioning bathroom again. We bought the Glacier Bay HET ($100) to save a little money, but I didn’t care as long as it worked.
I have a personal motto that I’ve been living by for many years now: “You can do it right, or you can do it twice.” After the wife and I realized that it took three to five turns of the knob to properly flush our high-efficiency toilet, we called Home Depot to see if it’s possible to return a commode that’s been used. To our surprise, the customer service guy replied, “just clean it and box it up as best you can.” So we stashed away our toilet and our shame and went back to the store.
After installing the Consumer Reports-recommended American Standard Champion 4 ($230), we once again had a functioning bathroom.
To recap, here’s where we are in regards to the plan:
Remove everything that’s not necessary or nailed downScrape the walls and ceilingSkim coat the wallsPatch the ceilingRemove the old tile (down to the studs)Remove the sink and vanityPrime andinstall the new beadboardRemove the toiletTile work doneInstall a new toilet(x2)- Prime the walls
and ceiling - Paint the walls and ceiling
Buy andinstall a new sink- Return everything to the room
- Bathtub refinished
After two hotels and two toilet installations, my motto is truer than ever.
UPDATE: Bathroom Remodel 6: Almost Finished
Funny article and it looks like you’re doing a good job with the bathroom. Sorry to hear about the underwear in the hotel room. Looking forward to pics of the finished project. Good luck!
I used to work for Savannah Suites (was an assistant GM just to get this title on my resume) and booooy was that a bad idea. You were absolutely correct with your description of the place and the clientele. As a 21 year old girl I was scared to be at work alone. My boss was a sleezeball and everyone there LIVED there and did all kinds of drugs. The short time I worked there had to be the most dangerous part of my life. Poooor decision! So anyway, glad you left and went somewhere else.