When we walked into our home for the first time, nearly four-and-a-half years ago, we were thrilled that we would have a two-and-a-half-bath house. The bathrooms were small, but certainly practical and we just added the dated, ugly blue tiles in the master and pink tiles in the other bathroom to a growing to do list for some time in the future.

Unfortunately, that future came way too soon for the master bath. What put us over the edge in deciding to upgrade our master bathroom was when the cheapo suction shower rod fell on me during my morning shower one morning at 4:15 a.m. After numerous attempts to get the curtain to stay up, I finally shrieked, “Let’s get a glass door…now! NO! Let’s redo the entire bathroom fast!. Somewhere, we’ll find the money.”

I immediately began my mission to get estimates and move ahead. Meanwhile, my great neighbor attached a new curtain rod by using Gorilla Glue. At least that did the trick for the short term.

After chatting informally with several friends who had spent tons of money on bathroom renovations, I happened to stop at Home Depot during Christmas break. I was looking longingly at one of their shower displays, dreaming about enlarging the shower and possibly the whole room, when an associate stopped and asked if I was familiar with acrylic shower enclosures. I looked at him quizzically and said, “You mean this shower model isn’t granite or granite bathroom tiles?”

He smiled and said that these kinds of bathroom remodels have been around a long time, but are becoming more popular now because people are using acrylics not only for shower makeovers but for entire bathrooms. Within a week, my wife and I had a sales guy sitting at our dining room table, outlining the albeit costly but practical advantages of acrylic remodeling and showing us looks and colors that would transform our small but charming bathroom into a space we’d embrace and love quickly. The representative, who explained how expensive an enlarged bath could be, helped us feel just as comfortable in our current space.

Our new bathroom, he explained, would include a beautiful faux granite shower and white acrylic wall covering halfway up the walls that would resemble wood paneling along with wainscoting all around the trim. Of course, it was hard to visualize our new bathroom from just the pictures and short video he showed us. And before he left, we had made the commitment for an April installation.

Fast forward to the end of April. Our acrylic makeover happened just a week ago over exactly two days and the bathroom looks gorgeous. Except for the need to repaint the walls above the wainscoting, we couldn’t be happier.

Of course, no project is without little problems and ours had nothing to do with the look of the bathroom, but with the shower instead.

On that first morning, I turned on the shower, prepared to enjoy my regular time, but the shower had other plans. Water spurted out for a few seconds and suddenly became a trickle. Fortunately, our other shower worked.

As I came back into the bedroom, my wife smiled and said, “So how was your shower?”

“Just great,” I replied, chuckling. “What shower? You mean the one that didn’t work? Looks like we’re back in our other bathroom and thank goodness for that backup.”

Of course, one of my first calls that day was to the bathroom refitting company. And after checking around the new bathroom once more, I informed my representative that, not only did the shower not work, we no longer had a toilet paper holder, cup and toothbrush holder and soap dish. I thought they would replace those items or add new ones. They graciously offered to come out that Saturday to repair the shower and to install new accessories but I ended up purchasing those things myself — cha ching.

Steven Gaynes is a Fairfield writer, and his “In the Suburbs” appears each Friday. He can be reached at stevengaynes44@gmail.com.