Tonight I'm looking forward to sleeping in my own bed for the first time in nearly two months. If Providence is kind, my wife and I never again will have to sleep on a futon as we have had to do since the week before last Christmas. That was when the sledgehammers began flying in the master bath and our remodeling saga began.
The master bath was one of those weak points Julie resolved to look past when she agreed to marry me, along with my snoring, my aversion to yard work, and my taste for Miracle Whip sandwiches. The room was smallish, carpeted rather than tiled, had only a single vanity sink, and no tub. No tub at all, just an oversized shower. I fully admit the room was inadequate by even the most modest of master bath standards but, like my snoring, not likely to be improved without an invasive and potentially expensive procedure.
For the first several years the question of the master bath was easily settled. The master bath was what it was. There were minor improvements we could make: new paint and wallpaper, change the fixtures, buy new bath rugs. But none of those things could change what was fundamentally inadequate; particularly the "no tub" part.
Why didn't we remodel sooner? Oh, believe me, I had a long list of reasons.
- It wasn't really a priority for me, personally. I take showers, and the shower was plenty big.
- I don't really have the skills or expertise to make any major changes myself. I can fix a leak, change out the faucet, but serious plumbing and electrical work are best left to people whose efforts won't permanently reduce the resale value of my home.
- A major project -- and we're talking major, as in knocking out a wall to make room for a bathtub -- simply wasn't in the household budget.
- Hey, the facility was good enough. Well, for me, anyway. It was functional. It looked ok.
So why did we finally sic the contractors on the ol' girl last December? It all started with the leak. Water was seeping up through the carpet around the base of the shower; the plumber said the ceramic tile around the interior of the shower enclosure had cracked and we likely had major damage to the flooring under the tile. We were looking at least at removing the tiled shower enclosure, repairing the floor, and replacing all the tile. At such a point one has to consider, "If we're going to have to do that much, maybe we should just as well ..." My wife flatly denies she and the plumber were in collusion, but I'm not entirely convinced.
We were going to have to do something; the question was whether we were going to do something big, or something bigger. We were at a point where we could build a project into our long-term budget (who knew home equity loan interest rates would go down even further?!). It was a point at which some kind of change would have to happen. What specific changes, and what opportunities we would see in the need for change, were what we needed to decide.
In the end we decided not to go halfway. You need to knock out part of a wall to remove the shower? Knock out enough wall to make room for a tub. You're going to put in a tub? Get a tub for the ages -- big, jacuzzi, heated recycling pump so the water never gets cold during your soak. The flooring has to come up? Replace it with the ceramic tile you've always wanted. No room for the big shower you used to have? Replace it with a tiny one to make room for the big tub and double vanity ... Ok, so there were some compromises.
I have to say there has been a real upside to our decision to gut the place and start over.
- Tearing everything out was incredibly liberating. Suddenly so many options were open to us that previously just were impossible. The sink didn't have to be over there. The wall didn't have to go only so far. Certainly there still were limits to what we could do, but the way it used to be was not in itself a limitation.
- Because we had so many options, we had the opportunity to change a whole variety of things in a comprehensive approach. Before it had been, "Well, we could put in a second sink, but that would mean less room for the commode," or "Sure, we could put in a tub, but you'd have to climb over it to get out the door." Once the room was completely empty, we could move everything around at once, trying different combinations until we came up with the best one.
- The threat of our 400-pound shower falling through the ceiling into our front foyer was a great incentive for change. Knowing we had to make a change both forced and allowed us to set priorities. Necessary repairs force themselves into one's household budget planning, for example. But we also had the chance to ask ourselves whether enlarging the bathroom would be worth taking four feet out of our master bedroom. Where did we need the space more? Until we decided that knocking out walls was a possibility, this was an irrelevant question.
(Ok, here's the point where I take a seemingly innocuous personal anecdote and make it an object lesson for something of broader concern and importance.)
When I came here in 1991 as an assistant professor I heard from many people that the university was going through a time of great change. Enrollments were up to 20,000; classrooms were overflowing with students; there was a new emphasis on graduate education and research. Then Dr. Keiser became the new president, and there were more changes. We earned a statewide mission; we had to figure out what "public affairs" meant; we were told online education was the wave of the future; and international collaborations were formed in India, China, and elsewhere. Now we have a new president and a new provost and, guess what? Change. My point is that, although perhaps the pace has stepped up a bit since Dr. Nietzel's arrival, I don't remember a time in the past 17 years that would not have been characterized as full of change.
Change can be demanding and exhausting in addition to unsettling. I was not looking to overhaul my master suite when the shower started leaking and, much to my wife's dismay, I probably could have lived happily with my bathroom for another decade. In addition to the cost of a contractor, we also have put in a fair amount of "sweat equity" by doing some work ourselves. But both the outcome and the process of the change have been good.
We may not know for some time how good the changes now being made here will prove to be. I do know that sometimes being jolted into change is precisely what a person or an organization needs, if simply to be reminded that change is possible. And the changes are not wholesale. My wife and I didn't turn the master suite into a home theatre (I'm planning that for one of the kids' bedrooms), but we did rethink how we were approaching the whole bedroom-and-bathroom thing. Neither are the changes we're being asked to embrace at the university designed to fundamentally alter who we are and what we do. We are, however, being asked to critically examine how we are doing what we do.
Stability is comfortable, but it isn't necessarily easier than changing. I traded a fair amount of convenience and function for the luxury of not having to invest any energy in my bathroom. Until we had the freedom to make changes I didn't realize just how much better the situation could have been. What have you traded for the comfort of stability in your department and in your work? Can you see the possibility for liberation in the realization that change is going to happen, and that you have choices about what shape that change will take?
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