Since I was a little girl, I have always been fascinated by bathrooms. I visited so many of them (a reputation I have never been able to live down) that my father became convinced I was gathering data to write a book someday.
The size and shape of bathrooms-and especially the fixtures-intrigued me. The stranger, the better. So when I moved into my brand new apartment 3 1/2 years ago, it was only fitting that my unit (one of 306 in the building) had the booby trap toilet-one of those baffling bathroom enigmas renters would prefer to live without.
For me, the problem surfaced early. Just a few months after signing my lease, the toilet began developing its own peculiar personality. Without any provocation, water would gush forth from the bowl, spilling endlessly to the floor, which would, in turn, empty into my adjacent closets, soaking everything in sight. My neighbors weren’t immune either. Four other apartments were drenched during the first episode.
Fortunately for everyone concerned, I learned how to turn the water off. In fact, I soon perfected my method for dealing with the unwelcome outbursts. The biggest problem was my lack of control over when they would happen.
As I was rushing out the door for an early meeting, when I was exhausted after a weekend trip, or invariably on a Sunday just as it was approaching midnight-these were the times I would beckon the building’s maintenance staff to my bathroom.
Of course, paranoia set in whenever I would leave the place. Who knew when the toilet would erupt?
Take a lesson from me. When you’re looking for an apartment-checking out all those amenities, marveling at the view or anticipating your first cookout with friends-maybe you should think about performing the necessities of life. Maybe you should check out the bathroom very closely.
Easy to spot
As bathroom peculiarities go, most aren’t quite so elusive as mine. For example, when Drake Winters rented his first apartment in East Rogers Park, he immediately noticed something strange. “I saw this 3 1/2-foot box sticking into the (building’s interior) hallway,” says Winters. “The bathroom was too small to fit a sink, a toilet and a bathtub, so they knocked out part of the wall, pushed the tub as far as it would go, and built around it.
“I knew it was weird, but I never thought about the actual problems that might be encountered using a bathtub like that. First of all, there was no shower and I’m 6-foot-3. I had to adjust my thinking into taking baths again. I hadn’t taken a bath since I was 6.”
But that was the least of Winters’ problems. The 3-foot wall encasing half the tub created far worse complications. “The wall came all the way down on one side of the tub, so you couldn’t rest your arms. You couldn’t do any real soaking in it, that’s for sure,” he says.
Getting in and out of the tub was difficult, too. “I had to lean away from the wall,” he recalls. “If I wasn’t careful, I’d hit my head. That bathroom,” which incidentally was painted purple with pink fixtures, “was strictly utilitarian. I’d take care of whatever I had to do in the bathroom and then get out.”
Oddly enough, renter Tim Brent didn’t notice anything curious about his former Sheridan Park bathroom until he tried to get out. “You had to lift the seat of the commode to open the door. It was the type of thing you’d never notice unless you were trapped in the bathroom,” says Brent, who claims the rehabbing blunder never caused him any fuss. “It never bothered me. I lived alone and usually didn’t shut the door. It was more of a problem for my friends. You could hear them in there, whacking the door on the side of the commode.”
Shared bathroom peculiarities can be more difficult to overlook. After all, just sharing a bathroom can be a challenge in itself. But when the eccentricity involves size, as Oakbrook Terrace renters Tony and Kelly Arcaro found out, living conditions can be tested to the breaking point.
“If my wife opens the door while I’m in there, she’ll knock me right off the toilet,” says Arcaro. “I have to use my toes as a doorstop. The bathroom is puny.
“Or if I’m not sitting up straight on the bathroom seat, the door handle can bing me in the head. Basically, every day is a series of mishaps,” he adds, noting that the couple never realized how much coordinating a pint-sized bathroom would require.
“You really take your bathroom for granted,” says Arcaro. “When you’re looking for an apartment, the No. 1 priority is whether the living room is big enough or if the kitchen is OK. You don’t think, `I’m not going to rent this place because the bathroom’s too small.’ You just expect that the bathroom facilities are going to be adequate.”
Clean living
Cleanliness is a major factor when it comes to bathrooms, particularly with female renters, says Tim Wiley, president of Chicago Apartments and Condos, a realty firm that leases apartments along the city’s lakefront. “People will rent an older place as long as it’s clean, but a new bathroom that’s filthy, nobody will have any part of it.”
As for learning to live with an odd bathroom, “it’s like anything else. If the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, you end up adjusting. You cope,” says Wiley.
That’s precisely what Bridgeport renter Mark Williams did. Williams decided to make the best of his strange bathroom because his rent was so cheap. “It was clearly installed after this building was built,” says Williams, dating the three-story walkup to the late 1800s.
“The bathroom is 7 feet deep by 3 feet wide and until I had a new toilet installed” around the holidays, “you basically had to spread your knees to sit down. There were less than 6 inches between the front of the toilet and the wall. You couldn’t read while going to the washroom. It was physically impossible.”
But Williams found ways to compensate. “For a while, I had a lovely detailed drawing of the Nebraska State Capitol dome on the wall,” he explains. “I went to visit friends more often than I normally do. And I spent time at the library.”
The renter had to overcome yet another peculiarity: The apartment has no sink. “All I have is my kitchen sink,” he says. “I put up a little mirror and I keep my medicine in the hanging cabinets. But I can make coffee and brush my teeth simultaneously. And the little squirty hose on the kitchen sink is excellent for cleaning Trac II-type razors.”
Not every renter is keen on having a bathroom filled with anomalies. Frequently, a brush with the bizarre brings the importance of having a comfortable washroom into clear focus. “I spend so much time in there,” says Tracy Shryer, who is searching for a new home with a better bathroom. “I put my makeup on in there, I shower in there, I dress in there. I do everything but sleep and eat in there. It’s where I start and end my day.”
At the top of Shryer’s list is finding a bathroom where she can stand up straight. “I have a pedestal sink that’s in a corner against an angled wall, so I can’t stand up,” she explains. However, it wasn’t until Shryer spent the night at her sister’s that the bathroom’s profound effect came into full view.
A revelation
“She found me slouching over the sink,” says Shryer. “She asked me why I was standing in such a weird position. That’s when I realized that’s how I had to use my basin at home.”
While the reasons behind such bathroom peculiarities may vary (namely poor planning and improper installation), the rationale for not remedying them is fairly fundamental, according to Roger Peugeot, chairman of the Plumbing, Heating, Cooling Information Bureau, headquartered in Chicago.
“Many times the person who owns the apartment will never be in the more private places like the bathroom, so if the mirror wasn’t positioned right or the lavatory wasn’t installed correctly, he’ll never know,” explains Peugeot. “But more likely, a tenant will think, `It’s not mine and I’m only going to be renting for a short period of time, so they’re probably not going do anything about it anyway.’ “
Of course, there are some renters who will ask landlords to fix the problems, says Peugeot. In those cases, the building owner may retort, “Well, the guy ahead of you tolerated it. Why can’t you?”
Yet even when landlords attempt to fix the peculiarities, their good intentions can fall flat. Wrigleyville renter Deborah Newmark’s bathtub is a case in point. The tub, an old, cast iron, claw-footed variety, was terribly eroded.
“In the beginning I was hesitant to take a bath in this tub without scrubbing it really well,” says Newmark. “But there was nothing I could do to get the rings to go away. Then a few years ago, my landlord decided he would refinish the tub. These people came in and went through this elaborate process of stripping it, painting it, and then it had to cure for three days, so I couldn’t take a bath.”
The initial results seemed promising.
“The tub was like one of those old-fashioned milk bottles with milk inside, very pristine and pure looking,” says Newmark. “But it didn’t work. No sooner had I taken two baths than the finish started to come off. Now my tub is just as weirdly ringed as it ever was.”
Still, she admits she has grown fond of her quirky tub.
“To me, it’s like a person. You accept a person’s flaws. You just kind of get used to them. I’m not sure if I were building my dream bathroom from scratch that I would include these features, but the fact is they’re there, and it doesn’t bother me as much as it would some people.”
