Sometimes I get impulsive and start demoing things without a clear plan for what comes next. Case in point: the towel bars in our hall bathroom. After staring at them for the hundredth time, I finally decided to do something about the madness. Who really needs that many towel bars? And who thought it was a good idea to install one off-center under the window so it jutted halfway into the shower curtain?
That off-center bar bothered me the most. I inspected the towel rods and figured the ones inside the shower were fine since a curtain would hide them most of the time. I also noticed that some of the mounts looked like they were surface-mounted, which gave me hope that I could remove a few without damaging the tile beneath. So I set my sights on the under-the-window bar — my least favorite fixture in the history of towel hardware.
I carefully started to chisel the bar off with a flathead screwdriver and a hammer. Tap, tap… then, crap. The bar holders came off, but not the way I expected. They were inset into the tile, not surface-mounted. That left me staring at two noticeable holes in the tile where the anchors had been sunk. Cue nausea and instant regret.
I hadn’t told John what I was doing; I was hoping for a proud “look what I did” reveal rather than an “oops, I ruined the tile” confession. As I stood there picturing baked potatoes — a weird anti-nausea trick I learned during pregnancy — I tried to think of a fix. Initially I planned to hunt down replacement tiles and Dremmel out the damaged ones for a flawless repair. The longer I looked, though, the more obvious a simpler solution became.
Take another look at the window. There was trim around the sides and top, but nothing along the bottom. Adding a small piece of white wood trim under the sill would balance the frame and cover one of the tile blemishes. We also planned to hang the shower rod up near the ceiling and use one of our long 95″ waffle shower curtains. That curtain would fall right in front of the other damaged tile, hiding it whether the curtain was open or closed. It wasn’t a permanent tile repair, but it would be a perfectly acceptable temporary solution until we found matching tile.
I padded down the hall, sheepish and humming “Oops I Did It Again,” and asked John for help adding the trim and re-hanging the shower rod. He didn’t give me the stink eye; he quietly got to work fixing my mistake while I held the baby and offered ridiculous compliments to keep things light. First he pried out a strip of faux shoe molding under the windowsill. Then he cut a matching piece of trim from our scrap pile, referencing other window trim in the house. He mimicked the profile: straight sides with a small 45-degree cut at the bottom corners, made with a miter box.
John attached the new trim with small finish nails driven at an angle toward the sill, using a nail punch to sink the nails without denting the wood. I painted the new piece with leftover trim paint we found in the basement. About twenty minutes and zero dollars later, any evidence of my impulsive demoing was completely gone.
The change improved the window’s appearance and removed my daily irritation about the crooked towel bar. The ceiling-mounted shower curtain did the rest, obscuring the other tile issue until we can replace the tiles for good. While the whole episode started as a small renovation disaster, it ended up being an inexpensive, effective DIY fix that made the bathroom feel more balanced.
So yes, sometimes a little crazy impulse leads to a better design decision. The towel bar is gone, the window looks finished, and the bathroom no longer has that odd visual tug every time I walk by. Until we replace the tile, the new trim and the high-mounted shower curtain are doing their job. Hooray for productive impulsiveness.
Note: If you’re tackling a similar bathroom update, consider whether mounting style, window trim, and curtain placement can offer quick cosmetic fixes before you commit to tile replacement.