It’s A Family Affair Part 4: A Refuge
Photos by Chinasa Cooper and from Harper Family Archive. Originally published in AphroChic magazine Issue 4, Summer 2020.
One of the more interesting functions that my family house has served over the years has been that of a refuge for members of my family as they made the transition from one stage of life to another. My Uncle Allen — my grandmother’s brother — lived there for several months after leaving the Air Force. My uncle Rodney did, too, having served in the Air Force as well. Other family members came and went for a multitude of reasons. More than once the change in circumstances came after a fire had claimed another home. For me, the house was my first home. I lived there for a year before my parents moved first into an apartment, then into the house that I grew up in.
No matter where home was for me, “The House,” remained a constant, though it was much emptier by the time I arrived. In fact, for all of my life before 2005, the family home was just “Mom-Mom’s house,” to me. My grandmother lived in the home alone when I was a kid, and as the youngest grandchild I had no grasp of how long it had been in the family, how many of us had lived there, or what it had meant.
It never occurred to me to wonder what it was like for her to live alone in a place that had once been full of so many people she loved. Whether it felt a little lonely or if she was grateful for the quiet wasn’t something she ever expressed to me. Had I thought to ask, I suspect her answer might’ve included a little of both. But whatever her answer might have been, it wasn’t a question I considered when my turn came to have the house (mostly) to myself.
I moved into the house after college along with my brother Andre. By the time we took up residence, Mom-Mom, whose health was dwindling, had moved to live in my parent’s home. After years of dorm rooms and tiny apartments, it was good to have an entire house with what felt like massive spaces, more bedrooms than we needed, and one of the tiniest, most weirdly designed bathrooms either of us had ever seen.
There’s a reason why real estate agents say that bathrooms and kitchens sell houses — it’s because in both cases, bad ones will seriously impact the experience of living there. This bathroom had survived the coming and going of many family members, but along the way it had developed both structural and aesthetic issues. The bathtub and shower were separate, the latter consisting of little more than a closet with an ill-fitting curtain that kept all of the light out but none of the water in. The sink was too small, and the toilet was crowded in by the massive radiator (painted an oppressive dark green) that actually dominated the space.
On the aesthetic side, the bathroom had received a beautiful facelift about 15 years before we moved in. Time had done its work on the very 1990s look, however, and by the time we were there the wallpaper was peeling, tiles were cracking, and pieces of the popcorn ceiling were frequently on the floor.
It’s not that the bathroom made life there unbearable. I loved living with my brother, and 22-year-old men are rarely bothered by inconvenient bathroom architecture. But even then it was easy to see that there was room for improvement. So when the opportunity came, years later, to renovate certain parts of the home’s interior, there was one space that was definitely at the top of my mind.
Smart renovation is about picking your battles, and even then there are some you win and some you lose. For us, that meant accepting that there was a lot about the bathroom’s structure that we couldn’t change. There wasn’t time or money, for example, to bring the bathtub and shower together. In fact, just changing the bathtub would prove a nearly impossible task. After starting the project we quickly learned that not only was the cast iron tub original to the house, but it had actually been built into the structure of the home in a way that made it impossible to remove in one piece. The solution was a sledge hammer and a lot of work for my brother-in-law Will.
For this iteration of the bathroom, we wanted to create something with a more timeless feel. We simplified the color palette to a classic black and white, expressed together in the large, dazzling patterned tiles that replaced the earlier speckled pink versions. As the centerpiece of the room, we placed a larger vanity with a marble top and black base that worked with the lines of the new bathtub and toilet to give the room a more modern feel.
Though Mom-Mom never got to see the bathroom’s redesign, we thought a lot about her when bringing it to life. The house was not just a refuge for those on their way to something new. Mom-Mom was young when the family first moved into the house. She raised her daughter and her grandchildren there. It was open to everyone who needed it and when the time came, she passed it on. It was her house. We wanted to honor that by creating a calm and relaxing space she would have enjoyed. Hopefully it will last for as many years, and offer as much comfort to the family members who are there now and those who will be there next.
