---
id: tetris-shower
title: Tetris Shower
summary: "The downstairs shower, retiled in 2009 as a game of Tetris in progress: every piece whole, no row complete, and one piece still falling."
collection: Historical projects
status: archived
url: https://www.thingelstad.com/2009/05/03/tetris-shower.html
started: "2009"
topics:
  - making
sources:
  - kind: website
    url: https://www.thingelstad.com/2009/05/03/tetris-shower.html
    role: reference
  - kind: website
    url: https://www.thingelstad.com/2020/05/03/the-tetris-shower.html
    role: reference
connections: []
artifacts:
  - file: the-bathroom.jpg
    title: The whole room
    caption: The shower from the doorway, with the yellow walls and the rubber ducks.
    date: 2009-05
    source: https://www.thingelstad.com/2009/05/03/tetris-shower.html
    url: https://thingelstad.xyz/things/tetris-shower/artifacts/the-bathroom.jpg
  - file: piece-falling.jpg
    title: A piece falling
    caption: The top rows are empty because the game is still going, and one piece is on its way down. The dark spot on the yellow wall is the dust speck on Jamie’s camera sensor, which his post points out.
    date: 2009-05
    source: https://www.thingelstad.com/2009/05/03/tetris-shower.html
    url: https://thingelstad.xyz/things/tetris-shower/artifacts/piece-falling.jpg
  - file: the-tub-wall.jpg
    title: The tub wall
    caption: The stack from the tub to the shower head, with a gap in every row.
    date: 2009-05
    source: https://www.thingelstad.com/2009/05/03/tetris-shower.html
    url: https://thingelstad.xyz/things/tetris-shower/artifacts/the-tub-wall.jpg
  - file: close-up.jpg
    title: Close up
    caption: The whole pieces up close, in the shower’s six colors and white.
    date: 2009-05
    source: https://www.thingelstad.com/2009/05/03/tetris-shower.html
    url: https://thingelstad.xyz/things/tetris-shower/artifacts/close-up.jpg
  - file: the-corner.jpg
    title: The corner
    caption: Where the two walls meet the tub, and the pieces carry on around the corner.
    date: 2009-05
    source: https://www.thingelstad.com/2009/05/03/tetris-shower.html
    url: https://thingelstad.xyz/things/tetris-shower/artifacts/the-corner.jpg
page: https://thingelstad.xyz/things/tetris-shower/
---

# Tetris Shower

The downstairs shower, retiled in 2009 as a game of Tetris in progress: every piece whole, no row complete, and one piece still falling.

The Tetris Shower is the downstairs bathroom shower in Jamie’s house, retiled in 2009 as a game in progress. After twenty years the house had settled enough to crack the old tile. [His post](https://www.thingelstad.com/2009/05/03/tetris-shower.html) says a friend helping Tammy with the design drew up a Tetris concept, and “I loved it right away!”

The rules were his part. “It was critical to me that the tile pattern be correct.” Every piece had to be whole, and no row could be complete, because the game would have removed it. To get boards like that, he played several games of Quinn, a tetromino game for the Mac, and captured the screens. He had to learn to play “specifically to not complete rows.”

Terry Owens of Como Lake Carpentry laid the tile. The top rows are empty because the game is still going, and a single piece is on its way down.

It is archived because it is finished. Eleven years later, [Jamie wrote](https://www.thingelstad.com/2020/05/03/the-tetris-shower.html) that it “is still one of my favorite home projects we’ve done.”