This is the dream as it is whispered to me in the shadows of the moon:
The forces of good and order bend the powers of chaos and destruction to their will. Tempered steel will rend and tear until all the drywall in the bathroom is hauled away to the local landfill.
New wallboard will replace the old scarred inner tissues of the abused bathroom, except in those damp, steaming areas around the tub. Here the walls are to be sheathed in a grey armor of concrete backer board and a supple film of 6-mil plastic to repel the insidious creeping moisture. Even the screws clamping the backer board to the ancient studs will laugh, bearing their stainless steel fangs in scorn at the pitiful harassment of time and corrosion.
The tub itself will be cut into easily digestible sections of fiberglass. In its place, a new acrylic tub will shine. For the first time, the bathroom will know the splashing joy of a shower. Each drop of water will author a deadly curse as it courses along our slippery skin, a curse on the mouth breathing reprobates who refused to install a shower over the tub so many years ago. I relish the image of the cursed watching their pubes slither into maggot form and devour their sex.
But before we can dance our weird ritual in the shower, blue fingers of flame need to caress copper pipes and convince solder to flow. Vinyl must be lifted and subfloor exposed to the light, its flaws hacked out and new plywood laid down.
Tile will cover the walls of the shower enclosure, geometrically squamous in their glistening.
The old, creaking, cracking vanity will crush and burn, its skin of paint blistering in the heat of our fireplace. Slabs of cancerous faux marble will join the shattered wallboard in landfill. After years of forcing us to bow down, pressing our foaming hands against the back of the sink searching for its paltry stream of water, the stunted faucet will be melted into its component parts, recycled like roadkill, rendered down to sludge and made useful. Only a pack of demented sadists would design, build, and install such a horrendously ineffective fixture.
Simple, white porcelain will take the place of the grotesque and depraved faux marble. The faucet will be graceful and functional. A dark cherry-stained vanity will support the porcelain. A matching medicine cabinet will hang peacefully from the wall above the sink, secure and happy, reflecting our images brightly because it will never know the horror that clung to the wall in earlier years.
Vinyl most likely will spread out and embrace the floor, its warm resilience lending a touch of comfort to bare feet. White baseboard molding will hide the small gap needed by the vinyl in its daily exercise of expansion and contraction. Above the molding for the next three feet or so, dark burgundy paint will calmly sublimate its color into the small room. As a mark of boundary and transition, white chair-rail molding will cap and contain the almost sullen weight of the burgundy walls. Then, from the chair-rail molding up, a bone or ivory paint will rise to encompass the ceiling, shedding light and expanding the small space.
The old gods of mildew, apathy, decay, stupidity, and indifference, as evidenced by every corner of the room's former being, will be banished by our hard work and our self-satisfied giggles.
Pakeha