The contractors came today and ended the reign of the Vile Brown Bathroom of Horrors (for those of you who've never been to my house, some GENIUS decided, along about 1978, that dark brown was a dandy color for bathroom fixtures. Ugh). Once they pried up the tile, the floor underneath was revealed to be so rotted from years of crappy leaking plumbing that it's a wonder I never fell through.

But the interesting thing was that when the drywall came down, the original back wall of the house was underneath it. House of Wa was built in stages over the course of a century by halfassed weekend hobbyists (at least that's what it seems like) who added on rooms wherever and whenever they felt like it (yes, like the Winchester Mystery House but WAY LESS COOL). When someone thirty or forty or however many years ago decided to add this second bathroom, they just ripped out the original back door and walled up the rest of it. Now it's right in the middle of the house-- but there's still an awesome deco-industrial ceramic back porch light and a spigot for a hose, unseen for decades. And now I know that before this house had yellow vinyl siding, it had cream colored stucco. It's a little unintentional time capsule! I wonder what else is underneath the walls... besides mice, that is.