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Mirror: Is it the ugliest bathroom of 'em all?
By ED QUIOCO © St. Petersburg Times, published February 19, 2001 ST. PETERSBURG -- On the brink of gaining fame for having an ugly master bathroom, Mandy and Kevin Cottrill feverishly worked Sunday to prepare their four-bedroom home in the Venetian Isles neighborhood for a nationwide audience. The Cottrills' bathroom -- with its heavily stained peach carpeting, shiny teal and mint green wallpaper, LumaDome ceiling and harvest gold tile with matching toilet and sink -- beat about 300 applicants in an ugly-bathroom contest sponsored by ABC's Good Morning America. The reward: a free, televised bathroom make-over and perhaps a small dose of nationwide embarrassment. "We have a lot of stuff we want to do with the home so anything that someone else wants to do for us is great," said Kevin Cottrill, 42. The segment, "Good Morning America's Four-Day Bathroom Makeover," will air for the first time this morning between 8 and 8:30 and throughout the week. Clearwater native Ron Hazelton, who has a traveling home improvement show called Ron Hazelton's HouseCalls that airs on ABC, will supervise the make-over. "My main goal is really to make a big transformation, and to do it visually," said Hazelton, ABC's home improvement editor. The network targeted the Tampa Bay area for the make-over show because Hazelton's vehicles and tools were stored in Clearwater. About two-thirds of the applicants were from the Tampa Bay area. The couple found out Friday they had won the contest. "The tile in the shower is mustard-gross gold, as well as the toilet and sink," Mrs. Cottrill, 38, wrote in a letter to the show. "The counter tops are oh-so-ugly brown faux-marble laminate, and they rest on cabinetry of brown wood-like formica." For those of you thinking you have a much uglier bathroom . . . well, you had your chance. "There are uglier bathrooms, but she just thought about sending it in," her husband said. Hazelton said the Cottrills' bathroom was picked not only because it is tacky, but also because it fit several criteria that had nothing to do with ugliness. For example, the show's producers were looking for a bathroom that was big enough to fit large television cameras but small enough so it could be remodeled in four days; the bathroom needed to have two doorways to increase camera angles; and contest applicants had to be willing to work with Hazelton during the make-over. The make-over will be based on pictures Mrs. Cottrill picked from recent editions of the Kitchen and Bath Ideas magazine. When the make-over is completed, the Cottrills' bathroom will have numerous improvements such as a pedestal sink, a framed mirror, wall sconces, a frameless glass shower enclosure and French doors. And the harvest gold tile, mercifully, will be refinished to white. The Cottrills moved into the home about a year ago and have been slowly trying to remove the retro '70s look that filled the 2,300-square-foot house. Now if they could persuade someone to make over their kitchen. . . "That," Mrs. Cottrill said, "would be just the most wonderful thing in the world."
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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