The Bathroom Part 1

So, completion day came, by now I'd stopped crying and had told myself this was it, I was stuck with the flat, whether I liked it or not. We picked up the keys from the estate agents and went straight round to inspect the bathroom which was not as big as I had remembered it was a lot more tired than I recalled. Thinking back now, I don't know if I even looked inside the bath, oh how I wish I had, it was revolting. I've always felt strange about baths, I don't like to use anyone else's and this wasn't about to change, the bath had to go so an entire new bathroom suite was our top priority. The avocado suite had seen better days, the bath was faded to grey and full of cracks, the sink and toilet were tired and well, they were green. 

We went straight to MFI - see how long ago this was? - and chose a new suite, there was a 6 week wait. I lined the bath with horrible rubber mats and got on with it, counting the days till the new bathroom arrived.

Here it is before we got to work...

Tiles everywhere, fine if the tiles don't look like this

The formerly avocado bath, complete with cracks

Vanity unit, even more tiles

Further bathroom related trials and tribulations to come...

In the Beginning

December 2006, the month we completed on a flat we'd spent a year trying to buy. The day before completion I stood in the kitchen and wept. Twelve months of arguing about a structural report had finally taken its toll, some time in the next 24 hours we'd be home owners, and I didn't like the flat any more. I could feel Ian's dismay, I had been the driving force behind the move, he hadn't even wanted to buy anywhere and here we were about to take on a 125% mortgage (yes, we were those people) and now I was telling him I didn't want to buy the place.

For years tenants had lived there with their many cats and dogs, the place had a strange odour to it that we hadn’t noticed in the viewings. The carpet that had been in the bedroom had disappeared, along with the burglar alarm. The three piece suite had been abandoned in the living room, they couldn’t be bothered trying to get it out and evidently thought we would get rid of it for them. I toyed with asking our Solicitor to take it up with the owners, ask them to replace the alarm and the carpet that were listed in the property details and to pay for the furniture to be removed. I didn’t have the energy to do it, it was more effort than I could face and the next day we got the keys, that’s when the fun started. I say fun, I mean, half arsed attempts at DIY, and that’s the point of this blog, to catalogue how far we’ve come. It may serve as a reminder for us that we’ve come a long way, it may also serve as a warning for us to never try this again. 

The three piece suite and animal pee saturated carpet we inherited