Andrea Peterson and her husband wanted to add a D.C. touch to their shower stall.

Pics by Andrea Peterson

Andrea Peterson and her husband wanted to add a D.C. touch to their shower stall.Pics by Andrea Peterson
Peterson is also working on this D.C. penny flag made of pennies, possibly for another bathroom.Pics by Andrea Peterson
And she's also the artist behind this portrait of abolitionist John Brown.Pics by Andrea Peterson
More penny art from Peterson's kitchen.Pics by Andrea Peterson

Washington residents have many ways of expressing their D.C. pride. Some choose to put up a D.C. flag in their front yard, while others get a vanity license plate, a t-shirt, or even a tattoo on their forehead.

But Andrea Peterson wanted something a little more … unique to show the District love.

So when the time came to renovate her home in Eckington, Peterson and her husband made a giant map of Washington in their shower stall using approximately 10,000 pennies.

“It’s our adopted home city,” says Peterson, a writer, artist, and musician who moved to the District from Kansas about ten years ago. “We really wanted to have some pieces of our house renovation that felt very personal.”

The couple’s District-themed bathroom was showered in praise on social media when Peterson’s husband, Matt Separa, posted a picture of it on Twitter. The post even caught the attention of Mayor Muriel Bowser and of the D.C. Council’s Twitter account.

Peterson, who came up with the design, says that building the shower artwork was a laborious process. She started by picking up four boxes of rolled up pennies at the bank, each worth $25.

“We’ve gone through a lot of pennies,” she said. “The whole shower is about 10,000, which is only $100, but it’s quite heavy.”

Then, she sorted them by color and shine, and washed the most discolored pennies. After that, she drew her design on a piece of waterproof cement board that she put up in her bathroom stall, and started gluing the pennies in place. Finally, she grouted between the pennies, and sealed the masterpiece with epoxy and a coat of acrylic paint.

The entire process took several months, Peterson said. But she and her husband worked on the project in spurts. “I’ll go in there and I’m binge-listening to podcasts while gluing a bunch of pennies,” she said. The decision to build the penny map in the shower emerged from Peterson’s love for kayaking, and her desire to “connect the shower to D.C.’s waterways.”

And it’s not Peterson’s only penny project. The former Washington Post reporter has also made a portrait of abolitionist John Brown from one-cent coins, and is working on a D.C. flag for the floor of another bathroom. “I’ve got a lot of hobbies,” she said. “It’s spiraled a little bit out of control, but in a fun way.”

For the moment, the now-famous shower stall is not open to the public. But Peterson says she is considering renting her home out on AirBnB, so District fanatics could soon get a chance to try the shower out.

Filed Under: art, d.c., district of columbia, weird,