Morgan Tate tells PEOPLE she considered designing her remodeled bathroom around the unusual hardware piece before ultimately deciding to let them go
Credit: Courtesy of Morgan Tate
NEED TO KNOW
- Morgan Tate and her husband gutted and remodeled their 35-year-old home, replacing an old, rusted sink that had unusual swan-shaped faucet handles
- Tate admits she considered keeping the quirky fixtures, but it wasn’t until thousands of TikTok viewers mourned their loss that she began seriously regretting the decision
- After viewers demanded a tour of the remodeled bathroom, Tate received strong reactions to its new look and is now considering bringing some of that unexpected personality back
Morgan Tate and her husband gutted and remodeled an entire house, knocking down walls, replacing dated finishes and turning the 35-year-old property into a home they love. But after all that work, the renovation decision Tate still thinks about is much smaller: getting rid of a pair of angry-looking swans attached to an old bathroom sink.
“I did consider keeping them!” Tate tells PEOPLE of the unusual faucet handles, which she believes were original to the house. “I thought they were so iconic and wondered if we could somehow remodel the bathroom around them, but the sink itself was very old and rusted, so ultimately we decided to replace it.”
At the time, replacing the sink made sense. The house had only one previous owner, and although Tate never found a brand or learned exactly where the swan fixtures came from, their age and the condition of the sink suggested they had been there for a long time.
Still, the swans apparently weren’t quite ready to be forgotten. Tate later shared them on TikTok, joking that after the headache of gutting and remodeling an entire house, she found herself “low-key regretting” getting rid of the distinctive handles.
@morgan_tate_ Sometimes I forget the headache it was to gut and remodel an entire house. But sometimes I find myself still thinking about these angry goose faucet handles.#renovation #remodel #home #funny
♬ sparks – florteo.mn
She expected viewers to find the old fixtures amusing, but the response went much further than that. Thousands of people mourned the loss of the swans, leaving Tate to reconsider a decision that had seemed practical during the renovation.
“I never expected thousands of people to be genuinely heartbroken that the swans were gone,” she says. “That was when I started thinking, ‘Wait…maybe we actually got rid of something really special.’ ”
The fascination didn’t end with the original TikTok. Viewers wanted to know what had replaced the swans and began asking Tate to show them the renovated bathroom, only for strangers to have plenty more to say once she gave them the tour.
“It was honestly hilarious and a little surprising how invested people became,” Tate says, noting that commenters were divided over the updated space and even joked about her being a millennial. She took that part in stride: “And, to be fair, I am a millennial!”
Despite the criticism, Tate doesn’t regret the larger renovation she and her husband completed. They chose a style they genuinely love, she says, and she can appreciate why people feel nostalgic for the unusual swans without wishing she could undo the home they created.
“I think people forget that it’s okay to have different tastes,” she says. “I can appreciate the nostalgia of the swans while still loving the home we created.”
The comments did, however, make her see those old fixtures differently. Some viewers even tracked down similar vintage swan faucets for sale and discovered that they could be surprisingly expensive, adding another layer to Tate’s growing regret.
Now, she’s considering going beyond simply reminiscing about them. Tate says she has thought about replacing the newer sink with something more distinctive, even if she can’t bring back the exact fixtures she once had.
Credit: Courtesy of Morgan Tate
“What I appreciate about the swans now is that they were completely unexpected and had so much character,” she says. “They weren’t something you could just buy at a typical home improvement store.”
The swans are also unusual in another way: They’re essentially Tate’s only major renovation regret. The couple preserved their existing hardwood floors and most of the home’s original layout, while knocking down a couple of walls to create a more open-concept space.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
There aren’t any other dated fixtures Tate finds herself wishing she had rescued from the renovation pile. For all the choices that went into remodeling an entire house, it was those two peculiar faucet handles that proved impossible to replace.
“Honestly, the angry swans were probably ‘the one that got away,’ ” Tate says. “I think the swans are special because they were one of those quirky little details that you can’t really recreate once they’re gone.”
Read the full article here
