Only now, 18 years later, have I become familiar with our upstairs bathroom

When we bought our house back in 2003, I had a dream that I was walking through it and discovering all sorts of long hallways and new rooms of which I hadn't been aware. The house just went on forever.

It's a decent-sized house for our family, but trust me, it's not that big.

Except I'm experiencing a little deja vu, as I'm only just now getting to know a room in the house where previously I had spent maybe an average of 30 seconds a week.

That room is our upstairs bathroom. Or, as I've often referred to it, "the kids' bathroom." The kids' rooms have always been upstairs, so that bathroom has pretty much been theirs over the years.

The only time I generally set foot there is during my weekly toiler paper rounds, when I happily restock each of our four bathrooms with TP. And that has been about it. I never used it to shower (or any other purpose for which it's intended), and it's not a room I've ever cleaned with any regularity.

Until recently.

By the time you read this, I'm hoping our master bathroom renovation is complete and it's no longer the case that the upstairs bathroom is suddenly the most popular room in the house.

As I type this, though, we're very much mid-renovation, so all showering and other functions are happening up there. A bathroom that rarely entered my consciousness previously is now the star of the show, as rooms in our house go.

I've heard reports that this bathroom is dirty and disgusting, usually relayed by one child blaming the state of it on a sibling. So a few days into the renovation, I cleaned it.

My conclusion: It wasn't exactly pristine, but I've seen far worse.

If nothing else, I have newfound appreciation for this full bath that has existed in relative anonymity (at least in my mind) since George W. Bush's first term.

Not that I'm ever going back in there, mind you, but it was nice to get to know a place that I'm paying for.