By Jim Mullen

“Hmmm, that looks comfy.” Sue was flipping through a glossy home-decor magazine and stopped on a section on bathrooms. The featured element, the tub, was a harsh rectangle with welcoming, knife-edge corners made of grey, poured concrete. If it weren’t for the rose petals floating on top of the water, you might mistake it for a particularly cruel horse trough. Maybe the rose petals are there to lure alien life forms, because certainly no human will ever sit and soak in that tub. How would you clean it? Sandblast the soap ring?

If the tub was harsh, the sink looked as if it came from the Country Club Prison Collection. It was a stainless-steel basin that jutted from the wall with no visible plumbing that could be used as a weapon in an escape attempt. The toilet, we decided, came from the future. It looked like one of those Tour de France bicycle seats. At first glance, you wouldn’t quite know whether to sit on it or to feed it ants.