Estate agent details: Modern hotel-style bathroom featuring an Aston Matthews sink, German hydrostatic shower, Italian designer taps, sleek white bathroom furniture, and Mediterranean tiled floor.
The Reality:
In the beginning, talking a shower was a very complicated business. First you needed to generate water pressure by turning on the basin tap - not too hard or water would overflow from the large gash in the sink. Kneeling in the cracked and stained 30 year old bath tub, you could lift the shower hose only 2 foot from the bath base - any higher and there wasn't enough water pressure for the cold water, coming from the water storage tank, to balance out the hot water, coming from the mains supply. Mildewed and peeling paint complemented the cracked and stained assortment of tiles and bright pink mirror. Friends admitted the would wait until they went home, rather than use our toilet, which directed faced the bathroom door and front door.
Then mid 2003 - a new experience - hiring a builder in an aim to turn a 6 month DIY process into 2 weeks of inconvenience and a very large bill. In the end, it took well over 6 months to design the bathroom, seek, wait, chase, question, wait, re-seek quotes and then, finally, for the building works to be completed. We encountered several dodgy builders, unscrupulous and pretentious bathroom stores and amassed over 10kg of brochures, but in the end, Morrie's brilliant bathroom layout, Abacus Bathroom Suppliers, the tile shop down the road and a wonderful Lithuanian builder made taking a shower a whole lot more enjoyable.
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Next page: Anna's room
Other pages: living room
Other pages: master bedroom
Other pages: entrance hallway