Ya want a new bathroom with that?

Old homes generally have many flaws, commonly known as "charming characteristics." They might include walls that are not quite square, narrow stairways that demand new ways of climbing and descending, drafty windows that confuse insects into thinking inside is outside, etc. Owners, such as the Hero and I, live with these features because, initially, they are charming, and because the real estate agent assured us that "clients pay through the nose to have warped floors," and after a while we live with them because we forget they are there.

That is, until someone else points them out, and we realize that perhaps we have been remiss in thinking that these characteristics are charming.

Such a person is Richard, the all-seeing contractor. Richard came to our home to fix ceiling damage created by a leaky skylight, and left having fixed a half-dozen "characteristics" entirely unrelated to the ceiling damage. He also offered recommendations for roughly 357 other characteristics of our home's interior, many of which, through determined forgetfulness on our part, we did not even know existed.

Each of Richard's recommendations was accompanied by three statements:

1. "I'm not trying to get more money out of ya, but..."

2. "Doesn't that ______ [fill in name of charming characteristic] bother you? I can fix that for you."

3. "Like I said, I'm not trying to get more money out of ya, but..."

Hard as it was, I politely refused most of Richard's upgrade suggestions, which included smoothing out all of the ceilings that were painted in a "popcorn" style and doing something above the kitchen cabinets, which I did not follow, but that would, he promised, "make it look really special. Not that it doesn't look nice the way you have it now," he hastened to add.

We went along like this for some time, Richard making suggestions for repairs and me making excuses for why we didn't think we wanted to replace all the doors with steel and stained glass ones right now. Or, possibly, ever.

Finally, near the end of his visit, he boomed, "Why don't ya put another bathroom in? You got just the one."

At the time we were standing in what the Hero and I call our study, which contains two computer desks, a built-in bookcase, a small sofa, an armoire, a heavy wooden four-drawer filing cabinet, and numerous books without a fixed home because they do not  fit into the built-in bookcase, all crammed into a room the size of a small dishwasher. This is also the room where we generally entertain guests, mostly because our other rooms are more the size of a sink.

"You could put it right there," he said promptly, and with a wave of his hand he obliterated an entire corner of the room, the one housing the Hero's desk and the armoire.

I tried to picture even a small bathroom in the corner of our main living and entertaining space, and failed. Richard was undaunted. When he went downstairs he yelled up, "Or you could put a bathroom down here. Right in front of this brick and stone wall here."

Of course. Who needs a brick and stone wall that holds 170 years of history, when you could have a commode there instead?

Miraculously, the house escaped any transformations as Richard took his leave. "You think about that bathroom, now," he said as he walked to his truck. "Would be real easy to put it in. All's you need is a toilet and sink and a water line...let me know if you change your mind...and the kitchen too -- now there, I would recommend...."

I breathed a sigh of relief when his truck disappeared from view. I think the house did too.