The Great Bathroom Adventure - episode 1

Not for the first time in our lives have we started life in a new home by renovating the bathroom. In fact it has happened too often to count, an indicator perhaps of a certain fetish-ness or there again possibly just a sign that we have a different view on bathrooms from most others. 

Here, by way of example, is what the estate agent captured some months ago when our present house was being marketed for sale. Note particularly the pink cushion, the net curtains, the wood panelling and also the patterned carpet covering the floor. Hmm... none of these is our thing. Out of shot is the tiny shower cubicle (something I have commented on before in this blog and one of three we have in this house) and this being left out of shot may be a hint that the estate agent's views were not dissimilar to ours - best excluded from a marketing perspective.

We are now in the depths of winter, one of the consequences of which is that working outdoors in the few short hours of daylight we have is somewhat limiting, so naturally our thoughts turn inwards. Which brings us back to the bathroom. 

Like many internal house alterations this one starts with something called 'ripping out'. It doesn't take long before the changes become significant, and then more so when we engage the services of a plumber, a professional 'ripper-outer', but also someone who knows what he is doing. 

My role here is to remove the covering up bits to make access easier and we are soon far beyond the point of no return as the shower and bath disappear and this is swiftly followed by the sink, all of which join the toilet in the street outside, ready for transport to the tip.

Soon the bathroom is an empty room and we can see what state the floor and the walls are in and make decisions on what best to cover them with after our plumber has returned to fit some new bathroom bits.

The floor is less than perfect, as it turns out, so we cut a big hole to remove the imperfections, later filling it with a piece of leftover kitchen worktop, just one more item conveniently left behind by the previous owner. There are numerous other imperfections in the floor and the walls but nothing a can of expanding foam and some Polyfilla cannot take care of.

One other item a little further down our ToDo list was to enlarge our bedroom by taking out the en-suite. The estate agent measured this little 'room within a room' internally at 2.6 by 0.8 metres (8ft 6ins by 2ft 7ins), a space big enough to hold a shower cubicle, toilet and a tiny sink only by leaving just enough room for a small human standing upright with arms by their sides. The presence of a plumber in the house bumped this task up the list so that removal of the internals seemed a sensible thing to do. We made the decision to do it, despite this leaving our house almost toilet-less. Fortunately we are not completely devoid of facilities as we began this adventure with no less than three toilets in the house. Not so with the showers, however. When we took occupation there were showers in each of the two bedrooms, another cubicle in the bathroom and the bath also had a shower fitting between the taps. A day's worth of ripping out should have left us with one working shower but as it turned out both en-suites ran off the same water supply so we lost both of them... leaving the house with none. Christmas and New Year just got more exciting.

This is the point where our confession starts. Our house stands on a hill overlooking the marina where our boat is berthed. It is winter so she is high and dry at present, perched on her trailer in the marina car park, but the recently renovated toilet and shower block remains open to berth holders and visitors all year. There are those who live on their boats who will use these facilities all year round, so why not us? The short walk downhill, a luxury shower, then a flog back up the hill gives us a spell of exercise and a breath of fresh air too.

Whilst our plumber takes his winter break abroad we amuse ourselves with ripping out the walls of the now emptied en-suite, the main tools being a large hammer and a crow bar, the main noises being... loud bangs and ripping sounds.

It takes two days of hard work before suddenly our bedroom has expanded. We are delighted by this transformation, despite all the dust we have created settling on every flat surface. This picture shows the before and after.

We are left with some large panels of plasterboard and lengths of timber with large nails sticking out at all angles (most of this is destined for the tip) plus a number of nail and screw holes which need filling. Out comes the Polyfilla again.