When you live in an old house, you have to expect that anything can happen at any time. I originally wrote that sentence a different way, but I am slightly superstitious and did not want to tempt the fates. If you have ever watched one of those home renovation shows, you’ll know that any “simple” renovation project can become a complicated headache.
The bathrooms at Kroll Manor are original and, for the most part, mostly untouched since the house was first built. They were state-of-the-art and elegant in their day. That day, however, was many decades ago. Styles have changed. Technology has changed. And, based on the height of the counters and showers, people have grown exponentially in size.
Everything new is old again
Before I moved from Philadelphia back to Allentown, I had planned to renovate the primary bathroom in my townhouse. What’s telling about that is that the house, at that time, was less than a decade old. I had always planned on the townhouse being my forever home and wanted to make everything to my liking. So why did I leave? The answer to that question will probably take up several chapters in the memoir that I’ll probably never write.
But back to the townhouse bathroom. The bathrooms came with builder-grade fixtures and finishes. No options were given to make design or aesthetic changes. The idea of a Jacuzzi bathroom was great, in theory, by I soon found that I only used it when I was feeling sick or had sore muscles. The standalone shower stall was great, but very low-frills.
What I wanted was to create a massive shower with more shower heads than you could shake a proverbial stick at. “I want to be hosed down like a circus elephant,” is how I described it. I wanted the shower to be the equivalent of a human car wash. There would have been no bathtub. The plans never came to pass because the idea of moving somewhere else loomed large and renovating a bathroom that I wouldn’t get to use seemed like a waste.
Not wanting my money to go down the drain
When I first walked into the Hess Mansion, the first thoughts that ran through my head were how to utilize the space. Thinking about how I wanted to alter it or make changes to it were not forefront in my mind. Okay, that’s not entirely true. I knew immediately that the horrible baby poo green/yellow paint would have to go. (Sorry previous owner who I know absolutely loves that color.) For me, a green/yellow bedroom made me anxious and was not going to be conducive to rest and relaxation.
Beyond the changes to the paint palette, it took a while before I started to start to keep a log of all the things that I wanted to change. I believe the experts say that you should live in a space for a period of time before you start to pick up a sledgehammer and knock down walls. The rationale being, of course, that you should observe your patterns, habits, and needs before you spend money — because you don’t want to spend money on something that you don’t need to spend money on.
Hypocritically and against the sage expert advise, I knew the landscaping in the front of the house would have to be changed. There was no “living with it” for a period of time. If you missed Part Two of the Manor Makeover series, you can read all about that here.
To be clear, there were many things that I wanted to change. I suppose if I had won the Powerball, I could have tackled all of those things. I tried to remain practical (with the exception of that whole pool thing, which will probably be a future Manor Makeover topic once the weather gets warm again) and only do things that made sense: replace an appliance only when it stops working, not because you want a fancy new dishwasher.
Letting the idea of a new bathroom sink in
It became clear a few years into living in Kroll Manor that the primary bathrooms needed to be dealt with. Yes, there are two primary bathrooms for some reason. Maybe it was a his-and-hers kind of thing? Maybe it was just to be able to pee in as many places in the house as possible. I have no idea.
You’d think having two primary bathrooms would be an embarrassment of riches. You’d be mistaken. Somehow, each of the two bathrooms had some sort of shortcoming. That’s a euphemism for “something that wasn’t working.” In one, one of the faucets leaked. In another, the shower wasn’t working the way that it should.
So while you could brush your teeth in one bathroom, you couldn’t shower in it. Conversely, you could bathe in one, but not take care of plaque and tartar. As silly as it sounds, it was really kind of annoying to have to use two or three bathrooms just to get ready in the morning.
It wasn’t until 2019 that I finally decided that something needed to be done about the bathroom situation. But, being me, I knew that I didn’t want to start with the big dig. I thought it might make more sense to focus on one of the smaller bathrooms and use it as a case study for future renovations.
What would everything look like once it was ripped apart? Would there be mold or water damage? Might the plumbing infrastructure be in bad condition? Could it be like opening a semi-nautical version of Pandora’s box? All those questions and more would need to be addressed.
Taking the plunger, er, plunge
In 2019, I met with the team at Agentis Kitchen and Bath here in Allentown. They were very excited by the prospect of getting to work on a locally historic home. I told them that there was a lot of work to be done here and hoped it could be the start of a beautiful partnership.
As a side note, I always tell businesses that I am an extremely loyal customer. I prefer long-term relationships and don’t like to hop around from contractor to contractor. I think it is especially important when you have a larger home or a complex situation to deal with people that are familiar with your situation. The painter that painted my townhouse in 2006 was the same painter that I used to paint rooms at Kroll Manor in 2016. I’ve had the same brand of notebook computer since the 1990s. And I’ve been loyal to Honda cars since I first learned to drive.
The before photos
It made the most sense to start with the bathroom in my office. Proverbially shackled to my desk for 12 to 18 hours each day, my office is where I spent most of my time. I’d even started using the shower in that bathroom because it was closer to my desk in case I ever got a tip on some breaking news.
As background, considering that folks did not work from home in the 1950s the way they do now, my office was previously the bedroom of one of the Hess family’s children. What I liked about the bathroom was that it was blue. If it were socially acceptable, I’d probably have everything in some shade of blue. In fact, I surprise myself when I pick something in a color that isn’t blue. Aside from the color palette, it also had the most amazing Sherle Wagner seahorse faucet.
The bathroom matchmaker: Is there an app for that?
The lead designer at Agentis presented three possible options. One was immediately ruled out because it was green. It came down to a grey theme and a blue theme. If you know where this is going — you might be wrong! The grey theme spoke to me, but not all of it. That meant I was going to need to find some ways to personalize it.
I strolled the aisles of various tile stores and even looked online to find to find things that I liked. I looked for inspiration everywhere magazines, television shows, and when I was in Los Angeles, I even went to the Pasadena Showcase House to get ideas.
The bathroom isn’t overly large — maybe eight feet by six feet. I wanted to make sure that the tile chosen didn’t make the space look small, but I also didn’t want it to look “busy.” It was extremely important to me to get things right because I didn’t want the first renovation project to be something that I ended up not liking. That’s where the Agentis team really came in handy: helping me find products that I liked, while also making sure that those selections checked the boxes of what I was trying to accomplish with the renovation.
In the end, I picked three different tiles: penny rounds for the shower floor, sextagonal tiles, and a new take on subway tile for the walls. I signed off on the designed, handed over a deposit check, and demolition was scheduled for late-March 2020.
An unexpected clog: Susan Lucci?!
As March 2020 neared, we started to hear more about more about an illness that was making people very sick. A day or two after my birthday, the world pretty much shut down. That meant that the bathroom would need to be delayed a bit. Turns out, it was quite a bit.
When things reopened, there were backlogs and those infamous supply chain issues. Plus, not everyone was eager to go back to work. From my side, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of a bunch of strangers coming in and out of my home. By the time I felt comfortable letting people into the house, there were a lot of other customers ahead of me on the schedule.
Eventually, my renovation job inched ever closer to the top of the list. Unfortunately, when it did, there were going to be extended periods of time when I would not be home. That further delayed the project. I asked to be put back at the end of the list and started the waiting game all over again.
The next two times that construction was set to begin, it didn’t work for my schedule. I either could not be awake early in the morning or needed total silence in the house to record interviews. We eventually agreed upon December 2023. I never do anything in December, so this was a sure thing. Except that in 2023, the Daytime Emmys were postponed from their usual midyear date until… yup, December.
Sledgehammer!
Before this article takes five years to read, I’ll skip ahead. We decided that the project would start in April 2024. There would more than likely need to be a pause somewhere in the project because of the 2024 Daytime Emmys, but it would only be a temporary thing.
As they dismantled the bathroom, I made sure to save some souvenirs. I have a bunch of old blue tile that I plan to use for something. Maybe I will take up art as a hobby and make some sort of mosaic. I also saved the old faucets for a more straightforward art project that I will work on this winter.
The demolition photos
The demolition took less than a week, but if you ask the men doing the work, it probably felt a lot longer than that. All those fears of what might lurk behind the walls were unfounded. The bathroom was built like a fortress. It took numerous sawblades to cut through the plaster walls. They probably should have ordered some of those old stacks of Acme TNT that Wile E. Coyote used to use.
Funnily enough, I had forgotten what the bathroom was supposed to look like when it was done. So much time had passed, that I forgot the small details like the tone of the fixtures, the paint color, and what lighting would be used. The tile, though, was etched into my brain. There was, however, a really good reason that I didn’t remember the paint color: one hadn’t been chosen. I headed back to the Agentis showroom and pored over paint colors and samples. The lead designer had three colors picked out, but I wasn’t feeling any of them. Eventually, I found a color that caught my eye. The designer agreed that it was a better choice. With that, everything was selected and I could sit back and relax.
The putting things back together photos
The team from Agentis Kitchen and Bath was great. They created a little bubble around my desk so that I could still work during the renovation. That led to many a “Moops!” references. They also asked for my input on things that might seem trivial: the configuration of the tile, the spacing of the recessed ceiling lights, and the height of the mirror.
In all, the total process took a little longer than expected. Some parts from the manufacturer weren’t right. The company in charge of cutting the marble cut the pieces wrong three times. And a century old white oak tree came crashing down on my property and literally uprooted life for a few weeks. In the end, it was worth every penny and every extra day.
I think the primary bathroom project will be the next big renovation. It involves combining two rooms, eliminating closet space, and turning the “second” primary bathroom into a massive, sprawling walk-in closet. In the meantime, while I try to predict the winning Powerball numbers to make that happen, here is a look at some before and after photos from the bathroom project.
