Psycho Bathroom Redux: A Grim Failure . . .

Some time ago, I took it upon myself to redecorate the bathroom of our Toronto apartment with a Psycho-inspired bloody bath mat and shower curtain combo that actually ended up looking pretty good.

But when Niki and I moved from Toronto to St. Catharines only six months later, we discovered that what had looked creepy in a fun and kooky way in the modern, finished bathroom of a downtown condo didn't work as well in the partially unfinished bathroom of the 30+ year old rear extension of an 80+ year old house. It was still creepy, but in more of a "I-don't-want-to-go-back-in-there-ever-again!" kind of way. In fact, a few house-guests have simply refused to use that bathroom at all.

The actual shower curtain and bath mat are still perfectly fine. I think in the right space they could still work.

It's the color of both the walls and floor of the room that really made the space so cold and uninviting.

I suppose the severed head of KISS' Gene Simmons is what certain house-guests found most objectionable, but the rubber ducks had taken up residence in the upstairs bathroom and I needed something to distract from both the unfinished state of the vanity . . .

. . . and the column of exposed brick left over from the old chimney. This is what I hated most about this room, exposed brick is nice, but . . . in a bathroom?! To build over it would have been costly and annoying, so I just sealed up the gaps with some drywall putty and left it as it stood.

It was pretty much the same thing with the vanity. There was a fairly large gap between it and the wall, but to tear it out and start over would have been more hassle than it was worth, so again, I simply filled in the gap with some putty and smoothed the whole thing down.

The fixtures in the room were fine (for the most part). A nice chrome towel bar and a matching toilet-roll hook, but the air vent register was pretty rusty and where I had Gene hanging from was a robe hook where a hand-towel ring should be.

I was content to leave all these things as they were while Niki and I got settled into the house and comfortable with our new surroundings, but once that was taken care of I knew I would have to make some changes to this room. Changes which have now, nearly two years later, finally been finished!

More to come!

-DE

Celebrating two years of DE/VL-ish love . . . in the DEAD ZONE!

November is here and that means Halloween is over for yet another year, but there's still the great memories of a really fine Halloween season to enjoy!

First and foremost, to the one who makes sense of all my insanity, my best friend, my love, my wife: Happy Anniversary! It's been two years since we swaggered down to Las Vegas and had ourselves a kick ass wedding on Halloween. There have been great times and times that have pushed us both to the edge of reason, but I wouldn't want to spend it with anyone else in this world or any other.
This year we proved just how perfect we are for one another in the simplest way possible, by unknowingly getting each other the same card for our anniversary!

After the necessary evil that is re-caulking the bathtub two months ago, I was inspired to redo the bathroom Psycho-style as my anniversary gift to Niki. I'd been hanging onto a mini poster of the 1998 remake (not a great version of the movie, but a pretty cool poster) for a while now and Niki had shown me a bloody shower curtain/bathmat combo that just looked amazing, so after acquiring said combo and grabbing some matching towels and a frame for the poster, it all came together real nice and spooky.

I'd played around with the faucet while cleaning the bathroom one day and had the idea to install hot and cold running poison. Turns out it wasn't really that hard to do. Now our spooky ducks have got a creepy little lagoon of their own!

Since both Niki and I have an obsession with finding haunted houses and cool movie shoot locations and I'm a fiend for Stephen King related locales particularly, it was fitting that we spent time on Halloween in Niagara-On-The-Lake spotting scenes from the 1983 version of The Dead Zone directed by David Cronenberg.

First up was the famous murder scene gazebo built for the movie shoot and afterwards presented to the town as a gift.

Situated right at the north-east corner of town on King St. and looking out over Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Niagara River, the gazebo gives a fantastic view of Fort Niagara on the U.S. side.

It was only a block down King St. that we came upon the house used as Johnny Smith's apartment in the movie.

Located at 17 Byron St. and used as the rectory for the Anglican church next door, tales of ghosts haunting the house (as well as many of the other houses in town) abound.

A little further down King St. and making a left on John St. we came upon another famous Dead Zone location. The fictional Weizak Clinic is where Johnny Smith first woke up from his five year coma with the power of second sight.


Located directly across from an area called Butler's Barracks (well known for several ghostly sightings of soldiers from the War of 1812) and once the home of The Niagara Institute, the building used as the Weizak Clinic is now a private residence known as Randwood.

Continuing our adventure through both The Dead Zone and N-O-T-L's own local haunted legends, we made our way further south to the infamous Screaming Tunnel on Warner Road.

The scene of Johnny Smith and Sheriff Bannerman's psychic investigation before discovering the last victim in the gazebo, the tunnel provided the movie with some of it's most famous imagery. The spiderweb-like brickwork has been used for various international poster art for the movie over the years.

According to local legend, if you light a wooden match in the very centre of the tunnel you'll hear an unearthly screaming and the match will blow out, purportedly the spirit of a young girl caught in a fire in the tunnel. It was pretty windy, and Niki claims to have heard some creepy sounds as I investigated within (I'd forgot my wooden matches, though).

After all that time spent lost in the Dead Zone, Niki and I decided to get our Tommyknocker on and headed down to The Flying Saucer on Lundy's Lane in Niagara Falls for lunch.

My Favourite Martian.

Chillin' out somewhere near Mars.

A little souvenir I left behind for the folks at the Saucer in honour of our Dead Zone day and as thanks for a delicious lunch.

Happy Halloween DE/VL fans! I hope everyone out there enjoyed our little photo tour of the Dead Zo . . . er, Niagara-On-The-Lake.

DE