You may remember the election-night flood and subsequent plans to finally get around to doing the bathroom instead of just keep patching it.
It has needed rebuilding for the longest time, but it has become apparent the stop-cock doesn't work, and I was just lucky that there was a second one just for the hot-circuit with the actual leak.
The builder has been asking me what I wanted.
I dunno.
Doesn't really matter.
But nobody else can decide so I have to have opinions about it. They had me look at some lists of things.
I could only make decisions by making a model so it's a good job I know #blender.
Given the forced-choices in bathroom design here there's isn't a lot of wiggle room.
The first thing you'd want to do is ditch the enormous built-in cupboard in the corner, but that used to hold a hot water tank and may well contain asbestos and I really don't wanna deal with the whole haz-mat containment suit fiasco.
Plaster it, tile it, paint it, but I can't move it.
Likewise the toilet, it has to stay where the sewer pipe is.
There is currently a bath along the short wall but it's tiny and I don't fit in it. Been standing in it showing since I moved in. No point in a bath since anything actually good or useful won't fit me.
There's not even much room for a shower tray either really. Only the minimum-size trays hey make will fit in the gap.
You could in theory try to move the sink, but the only place you'd move it to isn't that much better and you'd only be swapping it's location for a storage rack.
The dehumidifier in that rack is better near the shower instead.
So the layout is all basically forced moves.
Any room where there should be a mirror, the doors are the obvious places for them.
Mirrors on both doors and also on the over-sink cabinet might challenge some, but I shave the back of my own head so my only worry is they'll be angled wrong even with 3 of them and I'll still need a 4th in-other-hand.
I look through the websites they're suggesting for style, and all the individual items that actually attract my eye and attention turn out to be the black things.
Ugh. Goths.
Toilets are all the same. The come in exactly one colour that isn't white. If there was a rainbow toilet or a duck toilet or a tutu toilet or something you might consider it but there's only one choice here that isn't the default.
Then you can't have a goth toilet with a rainbow sink can you?
But oh boy, that's a very dark overall ensemble though.
So, definitely wants a dash of colour there then. I like black and yellow. Waspy. Powerful. Scary. Clashing and bright. How's that look?
Well, I think that looks amazing and if it was someone else's bathroom I'd tell them how amazing I thought it was but, wow, it's a lot eh?
Could I live with it for all the next forty years?
Better try some alternatives.
Alright, so, they do the same tile only not so cool and sci-fi and black and starry but just boring and grey and freckled.
Ugh. No.
It is better and lighter but now the yellow is all washed and pale in comparison.
So the obvious thing is to switch to the other favourite colour of red. It'd match the towels then. Or save me buying yellow towels.
Yeah, the red is all-right.
Not as awsome as the wasp black, but more liveable than the blackness everywhere.
I can see the argument for a brighter floor, maybe try and match the one outside in the hall, but you'd never get it exactly right and I think the lighter floor compromises the effect of the ebony dark facilities.
I prefer it to be obviously a separate room anyway. The kitchen and the hall are basically one and the same but the bathroom isn't part of that little union.
Don't have to do much experimenting to rule out light coloured patterned tiles.
Ew.
So there you go then. That's where I end up when I am called upon to tell a builder how I want the bathroom given the constraints of the existing property and expense of either removing the cupboard or wet-rooming the entire thing and lack of choice of types of toilets.
Ideally the shower-tray would be black too but they didn't seem to offer that in the suggested catalogues at least.
Here's a flythrough video:
I have submitted the contractor's plans to the corporation, assuming the bureaucracy can move fast enough to approve it then ripping out the old bathroom to build the new showerroom starts the day after the bank holiday.
It's gonna be well hectic here for about three weeks. Wonder how much my own work will suffer trying to do it with people in the flat making lots of noise and limited toilet access.
Goodbye old broken bathroom, you were often annoying and usually dirty but mostly at least worked.
I have dyed my hair in you for the last time.
Things will get worse over the next week or so before they start getting better.
Made worse, and that's all that can be done today apparently. Can't really do most of the work until the stop-cock is replaced coz can't unplumb any plumbing.
At least I get the afternoon with the flat to myself.
The stop-cock replacement was made more complex with the realization that we can't disconnect the water for the whole block after all, because that stop-cock is also broken.
Turns out there are two water-inputs into my flat. The mains connection plus also a tank in the roof.
Nobody seemed to want to explain why. Something to do with pressure maybe. But if mains-pressure can fill the tank in the roof can't it also blast my shower?
Anyway, both inputs to the flat have broken stop-cocks, plus the one that feeds the whole block is broken. How do you deal with that?
The mains-input stock-cock does actually just-about work if you get enough leverage on it that you nearly break the pipe. So they can close that one, add a new tap after it, turn turn it back on. Now I have two stop-cocks there and only one is broken.
I think with the other one they drained the entire tank then replaced the tap live when it was down to a drip, something like that. I was mostly working. Dunno what was going on. Splashing and swearing.
Heroes frankly, I was suspecting there'd be months of delays while the bankrupt Thames Water postponed replacing the block's stop-cock.
Turns out there are two water-inputs into my flat.
I guess this is probably why I can safely shower while the washing machine is running. I've lived places where the shower would stutter or boil if someone made a cup of tea, but that don't happen here.