A Story About a Soap Dish

In 1962 the finishing touches were put on a brand new piece of midcentury architecture in the heart of what had been a thriving, if working class, community in Washington, D.C.   Charles Goodman, who had designed what is now known as Terminal A of Regan National Airport, was the architect responsible for the aluminum clad vision of yesterday’s tomorrow.

Goodman seen in his office surrounded by samples of the aluminum cladding that would come to cover his new project

 

Like any good designer, Goodman was a man of detail and when it came to appointing bathroom fixtures he specified nothing but the finest in rocket age paraphernalia.  Apparently that included this soap dish which occupies a place of derision in my shower and in my heart.

My shower soap cove

 

It’s not all the soap dish’s, or Goodman’s, fault.  At one time this forsaken cove of shiny medal would have been fitted with a plastic insert at the bottom which would serve to actually hold a bar of soap.  So I guess rather than calling what you see here a soap dish, it’s more of a soap dish cove into which a soap dish might go.

My soap, not fitting in my soap cove

 

The reason for this cove to have a dish is that, as you can see, the cove can barely contain a bar of soap.  In fact what you see above is a half used bar of soap because the brand new ones just fall out.  I want to fix this very first world problem of mine by getting my hands on a happy new plastic soap dish for my naked soap dish cove.

Just as there is more than one way to skin a cat (or so I’m told) there’s more than one way to replace 50 year old bathroom hardware.  I could buy this little guy from a place like Vintage Plumbing and hope that it’s the right one.

New-ish soap tray care of Vintage Plumbing

 

The problem is that I don’t actually know who made my recessed soap dish cove lo those many years ago.  Maybe the curve at the back is slightly different, or the little metal prongs that hold it on place aren’t quite in the right spot, or who knows what else could be ever-so-slightly askew.  No thank you.

Fancy new soap cove

 

Next up, I could buy an entire new soap dish cove complete with a new soap dish.  This one, for example, would run me all of $15 and could be at my door in about a week.  Sure it would take some finessing to cut the grout out from around my current soap dish cove and swap in this new one; but really we’re talking about a few hours of pretty easy work.  This would by far be the most responsible choice moving forward.  Lucky for you, Mr. Ess laughs in the face of responsibility.

The third, and clearly least reasonable, thing to do is to purchase pile of parts for fistsfulls of cash, manhandle them into a printer, model a digital soap dish to fill the void in my soap cove, tweak and tweak and tweak the printed result, and finally produce a passable replacement part.  Yes please!

-Mr. Ess

Stay tuned to read all about which 3D printer I’ll be using and why.