Meet my ugly bathroom? Everyone knows you save the best for last. So, all this while, I’ve been holding out – waiting to get caught. I planned to confess instantly – but 4 months later I’m still holding tight my ugliest secret of all. You guys are observant as anything, so I can’t quite figure it. Maybe you’re too polite to ask?
“Hey! This is a dirty scam! Where’s the bathroom?”
Ah-ha. It’s been my dank, dark, scary, shiny, ugly secret. When American Standard ran their ugliest bathroom competition last summer, I was mad. We were excluded. My ugly bathroom is Canadian – ineligible for trophies elsewhere – so I’m crowning it myself:
Canada’s ugliest bathroom
In a weird, spotty ginger step-child way, it’s almost so ugly it’s endearing. Friends and family kind of love it. (Because, like the spotty ginger step-child, they don’t have to live with it). So today, Day 132, I cordially invite you to meet my ugly bathroom.
You don’t believe it, do you? Too ugly to be true? Take all the time you need. Ooh, yep… that’s definitely a wooded wonderland. Remember when we found this place, I said the bathroom made me burst out laughing? What’s your reaction? We can dissect it slowly if you need…
Our ugly bathroom’s top 6 features?
#1. Ugly bathtub and turquoise tile: Some people quite like the tile – I like how hard they tried to match it to the bath tub. (Update: see before/after photos of the refinished tub and tiles).
#2. Ugly bathroom vinyl floor: Ugly? Make that downright terrifying. I don’t think even Shaggy would touch our bathroom floor. It’s tacky to the touch, and textured. The black rubber baseboard is a nice extra, as is the chipped toilet. You’re getting jealous… I can sense it….
#3. Ugly bathroom wallpaper? This verges on so-bad-it’s-good territory. So Seventies it’s actually awesome. Too bad zen-like-spa-essence-white-orchid-experiential is today’s trend. Maybe it’s time to bring back ’70s shocking? Yes it really is that shiny. A portion of the wallpaper will be donated to Archive Canada. The rest? Auctioned to patrons of the arts, servants of shiny, trustees of turquoise. (Check out the floral stuff in our ugly bedroom!)
#4. Ugly bathroom… bowling ball? Why have a granite or marble vanity… when you can have this? Yes that’s all one piece and nope those stains aren’t going a-n-y-w-h-e-r-e.
#5. Ugly bathroom night-light show: People pay good money to decorate a room this memorably. All that shininess! All those mirrored angles! That chic bare bulb! The mirror is, of course, a rusted tri-fold medicine cabinet. Funny that your own medicine cabinet could give you tetanus.
#6. Ugly bathroom vanity: This photo is a lie. Those cabinets look nice. They look clean. They look… like you’d touch them with bare skin. None of the above is true!!!!
Fave feature? A bathroom this ugly – how could you choose? Which is your favourite? In case you need another look…
Now – wasn’t that worth the wait? (Don’t forget to subscribe to the ugliness to follow its coming transformation…).
Update: It’s done. Ugly bathroom no more. We’ve been busy renovating our apartment bathroom. Investigate the “after” – I don’t recognize it, will you?
Shut up. No way does a room this gloriously ugly actually exist. Dibs on a scrap of that wallpaper, I think it will become a collectors item.
{Cackles maniacally}. Look out, Etsy…retro wrapping paper is coming….
That wallpaper is so groovy! Makes you wonder why those shiny, foil papers aren’t as popular anymore… (*cough*)
Crossing my fingers that they’ll start a Canadian Standard Ugliest Bathroom Contest you can enter soon!
As soon as chalkboard paint dies out, I’m sure it’ll make a roaring comeback. Are you excited? I’m excited. That marbled plastic countertop will ruin the competition….
Just wanted to let you know I’m mentioning this on my blog today. We’ll see what they think about plastic countertops!
They’ll be bowled over. Heh. Thanks Julia!
I have never seen a sink like that! YIKES!! And is it bad that I’m kind of intrigued by the wallpaper??
Nor had I — and the morbid fascination continues, all this time later. We’ve been through 40 gallons of bleach together and – nope – it really does want to keep its basin brown. Its replacement is ready for action! The wallpaper is all yours Shannon, all yours…. (sparing a scrap for Stephanie).
Wow. I had no idea my favourite colour scheme of silver and aqua could go so horribly wrong in a single room. I’m even more flabbergasted that it exists in (of all places) my hometown of Vancouver.
Good luck to you, Lauren!
I found your blog through Kate’s (Centsational Girl’s) linky party, and I’m so glad I did! I’ll be joining you in a similar quest when I buy my first place in Vancouver sometime this summer!
Hi Cheryl! Yes – horribly wrong in a single square foot! From what I understand, ours isn’t the only shiny superstar still in tact… maybe you can find its brethren on your upcoming house hunt?? Really glad you found the site & introduced yourself! There are a chatty bunch of very funny ugly-lovers around here.
Okay, well first thought was: Oh, it’s not too bad, she even put up a pretty shower curtain…and then I realized that ‘shower curtain’ went around the whole wall! Aha, and looking at that first picture again, I don’t know how I came up with that as a shower curtain since the toilet is right there…What can I say, I have had zero coffee this morning!
I’m kinda digging that wallpaper
Although that sink is just ew.
Okay, no, sorry, changed my mind. Demo it all!
We could just tinfoil every inch of surface. Add shiny on top of shiny. Or – as you say – make friends with the sledgehammer.
My jaw is literally dropped.
And my eyes are burning.
Wow.
Do you need some smelling salts??? A stiff drink??
Call me crazy, but that wallpaper is kind of growing on me – but I can’t tell if it’s in a good way, or in a fungus-y kind of way. The rest of the bathroom is rank, though. Well done.
FUNGUS, definitely fungus!!! When we toured the open house, it was the bathroom that actually made me laugh out loud and think, “yup, this is the one!”
1) The saddest thing about the wallpaper is that it’s actually a nice design. If it were just a TINY bit more subtle. Or if it had ever co-existed in the same universe as the concept of subtlety, maybe.
2) The counter looks like a bowling ball.
That is all.
If it was wrapping paper – maybe? Just maybe? If it wrapped a very un-subtle gift?
Definitely agree with the bowling bawl similarity – and the sink is even grosser than the finger holes. Blehh.
That is definitely one of the ugliest bathrooms I have ever seen! My grandparents’ cabin used to have a bathroom with an orange (ORANGE!) countertop, bad-70′s-orange-and-brown-fake-tile linoleum, and two different wallpapers: one that was a coral and aqua stripe pattern and one that was brown and blue and orange flowers. It also had a tin shower with a peach shower curtain (which scared the crap out of me because it rattled like crazy whenever you bumped it) and a once-brass mirror/medicine cabinet that I refused to touch. So I feel like I have some experience with really ugly bathrooms and didn’t think yours could be THAT bad. But it really is, and it’s so ugly that I’m actually impressed. I can’t WAIT to see it once it’s been transformed!
This description is out of a Roald Dahl book – more, more, more! You don’t have pictures of this orangey/brown/coral/aqua/blue/peach gem, do you? Because that’s a lot of colours to list and I can’t bring all 4 walls AND the tin shower together in my imagination at once.
My ugly bathroom is honoured to be amongst such notable company.
what’s up with the orange bashing? Loves me some orange!
To eat maybe?
How can I put this delicately? It looks like the girl from the Exorcist melted in your sink.
Haven’t seen it – but what would make her meltedness give up and go away if not bleach?
God help me, because I am probably destined for some special interior-design-level of hell for being of such an opinion, but I just love that shiny wallpaper! It’s so cool, it grabs you and shakes you violently and says “LOOK AT ME! I AM SHINY! I AM RETRO! I AM ANYTHING BUT BORING!” I even loved the shiny gold stuff that you had in your bedroom. I live in a pleasantly bland, unoffensive, all white American apartment, so I guess I have weird ugly-envy.
Ahahahahaha. Just know that between it grabbing you and then shaking you violently – it laces your drink with crazy potions popular in the ’70s. LSD or some such? And lava lamps to ooze all over and irreparably stain the pleasant blandness.
Re. the interior-design-level-of-hell, when I stop laughing, I’m going to write a real response. I might need until Sunday – no, Monday.
I won’t deny yours is uglier than mine. But mine is a veeeeerrry close 2nd. For one thing, mine is smaller so the ugly is more concentrated. The countertop is the negative image of yours – white with aqua marbled through it. The drain isn’t seated right, so there’s always a fraction of an inch of water that won’t go down. And instead of shiny wallpaper, it has an actual MIRRORED WALL – just what every middle-aged fat lady wants to see when she steps dripping from the shower. (Thankfully, I’m blind as a bat without my glasses, so all I see is a large blob until I put them on, right AFTER my robe!) Oh, and just for fun, some idiot decided to put a window with wood casing IN THE SHOWER. Aaaand, there’s no money to renovate it for at least a year or so, depending on when I find a job and how much it pays when I do. I’m away from home right now, I promise to post pictures of it when I get back next week!
I can’t wait for those photos. Concentrated ugly… I have to sit down and breathe into a paper bag. The thought had never occurred.
So I’ve heard that bathroom demolition sucks – chipping at tiles that don’t want to expire, etc. – maybe when we take to it with the loathing of decades, it won’t seem as difficult? You’re way ahead – mirrors and windows, easily smashed.
Repeated reminder: photos, please!
You know, separately there are a few elements here that aren’t terrible. I don’t hate the wallpaper. The decorative tiles in the shower aren’t awful. But when you put it all together, and especially with the blue marble sink, it’s just…yucky.
You bathroom is hands down uglier than mine. We have a weird tile color scheme on the tub surround (aqua/seafoam bordered with yellow, which isn’t bad, but then there’s a row of darker green tile across the bottom and a flesh-colored soap dish bordered in a cross pattern by flesh-colored tile) but other than that, the bathroom is pretty bland. I’d love to do a big remodel but I don’t know if that’s in the cards, as it would involve moving plumbing. I have a sneaking suspicion the floor under the tub is on its way to rotting out, so maybe when someone gets into the tub and falls onto the washing machine in the basement I can get my remodel.
True! The wallpaper has a big love/hate fan club… more contentious than even Marmite. I would LOVE to meet whoever put it all together. (Or take a peek in their closet!)
Flesh-coloured soap dish is the most off-putting term I think I’ve ever heard – well done.
Kind of like the bath tile also. Or is it just not as horrid as the rest ?
Of all the many, many evils – the bath tiles are definitely lowest on the list. I’m also more given to liking them, knowing the pain & strife required to remove them? The sink/counter top is a one-whack and it’s gone sort of job. Tough call!!
My God, that bathroom is downright creepy. It gave me goosebumps in the half-light of the second photo.
Hi Bec! Thanks for your comment – the half-light shot is its sexy “dressed for dinner” version. Way shinier.
WOW!! That is amazingly bad. Seriously I have seen some HORRIBLE bathrooms but they were gross … like dirty, worn out kind of gross not bad decor choices gross. WOW!!! You have been holding out. can’t wait to see what you do with that.
Julie, I’m honoured. Really. Can’t believe it beats your most recent ’70s reno!
By the way – you should add Facebook Share and Tweet buttons so we can easily share this kind of greatness with others!!!
Done & done – thanks for the tip!!
Dont slap me but that wallpaper is kinda cool, birds n trees are in right now!
An environmental esthetic for the environmental age…
Yowzah! The wallpaper doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the sink. It’s kinda like ‘european’ in the woods and you have to wash your hands in the muddy stream.
Haha! Maybe we should stencil in some woodland creatures?
The sink… troubles me. But at the same time it sort of fascinates me. We’ve been wondering if we could melt the whole thing down into some sort of disgusting art piece?
(Love your blog’s name btw, can you send some beignets up this way please? Yummmm.)
Ahhh, it’s like all my blogloves are converging together here on Ugly Baby! Dittle Dattle, Bon Temps. More and more of the blog authors I read every day are showing up here Lauren! (okay, two is a small example, but hey, it’s Friday, it’s snowing like Mother Nature knew I needed another four rooms on my igloo, and I’m sadly pop-free this afternoon and too damn lazy to go out in the snow and get me some more, so you’ll have to survive on the free brain cells I have left at the end of the week!)
Anyways, who doesn’t <3 Lauren !!
Blogmuda Triangle? Hope you’ve by now found the time & fortitude to cross the tundra in search of caffeine. Igloos don’t run without it.
Thanks Karrie – very kind!
HA… crazy small blog world! And I wish beignets were still tasty after an overnight shipping, but sadly, they aren’t very good even after 10 minutes out of the fryer : (
I *can* point you in the right direction as to where to buy the mix…
http://shop.cafedumonde.com/mpr/mdb-cafed?cfg=cafed&fnc=3&style=4&form=detail.htm&header=detailHeader.htm&footer=detailFooter.htm&rno=6
yum yum yummy
That might be the ticket? But I don’t think I actually ever want to make them myself or I’ll probably never eat them again. Haha, thanks anyway! Maybe best that I love them from a distance.
I LOVE the wallpaper. LOVE IT!! (Everything else can go..)
Actual love? Or like “I loved the fat ugly one in N’Sync because no one else did & I felt sorry for him”… we’ll take both kinds.