The bathroom, part II

So, the "after" shots you've all been waiting for (if you missed the before shots, click here):

Welcome to the Municpal Bath & Wash-House. It will cost you 3d for a first-class bath. Note, if you will, the extended bathing times for men, and the only-three-hours-on-Wednesdays for ladies. I mean, we all know men are smellier than women, but come ON! (I bought this sign years ago in Bath)



But I digress... Right, bathroom. Here's the laundry corner - front loading washing machine, with pull out indoor clothes line above it (cleverly placed on the wall that contains the heating flue from our gas heater downstairs - this wall gets REALLY hot in winter). On it, you can see (styled for the photographs!) an assortment of Hugo's holey t-shirts, my undies (oo err) and a tea towel that came free with a delicious magazine.


Looking into the room, we kept the existing bath, the shower is exactly where it was, and the mirror cupboard is the same cupboard. This helped minimise costs.


To your left, the vanity: made of an old table bought for under $15 on ebay, and reusing the door from the old vanity (now painted shiny white); basins also bought on ebay (around $150 for both), taps from ebay ($200 for all the taps for the bathroom). The two boxy things with our everyday stuff (sunscreen etc) I bought in Paris, the pot the plant is in is from Ikea, and the small silver pots with hair things in I bought in England.


Above the vanity is the mirror cupboard - you can see the art on the other wall reflected in it. The big jar at the end is for soap, it used to be in the kitchen, the green glass bottles were my great-grandmother's (I am named after her) and there are a couple of Moroccan tea glasses the same colour that I bought to match. The two boxes at the end - the bottom one my friend Robbie bought me back from India, it has incense in it, the top one has essential oils in it, Annoi got it for me at the Fairy Shop when she worked there.


And I can't resist showing you a shot of the inside (don't worry, all the really gross stuff is in the cupboards underneath, which I am not going to show you!) just because it was so disorganised before (yes, there are eleventy three tubes of toothpaste because they were 80 cents off so I stocked up):


Next to the mirror cupboard is a porcelain art work by Katie Parker, she's a porcelain and cut paper artist (you can check her work out here, I think she's amazingly talented). You can also see the pipe - that's part of the grey water system, the water is pumped up through this pipe, across the roof, down the other side and waters out garden. WIN! Next to that you can see the end of the old towel rail - I got Peter, our handyman, to put it up above the bath, so now I can dangle handwashing off it on coathangers (whenever I actually get around to doing some):


Under this is a hook for my shower cap - I love this, because it has a happy little person on it. I've had it for years and I've moved it from house to house (or apartment to apartment, to be more accurate). I think I bought it in England in 1995, there was a boy one too, but I think an ex-boyfriend has it.


Then if you glance upwards, you'll see a fan/heater/light - and also the plantation shutters on the window.


Then at the end, the far-less-festy shower, with water saving showerhead (free from South East Water) and corner shelf thingy ($20 from Ikea)


Bottom of shower, now coated in river pebbles ($5, ebay, factory seconds). Slightly damp in the pic cause Hugo had a shower at some point during the afternoon, which makes some tiles look a different colour. They're not, they're all dark grey.


Then on your right, a lovely painting of ducks (from the op shop), towel rail (ebay, $10), mirror (factory second, $25)


In between, only you can't see it in the previous shot because I'm aiming higher, there's a stool/washing basket (Ikea, don't remember how much, because my aunt bought it for me as a gift, but let me tell you, they are bloody flimsy and I have had to glue the stupid thing back together several times - the last time I took it apart and glued the whole thing with wood glue, so hopefully now it stays together) - let me tell you, it is MADE OF WIN being able to sit down while you brush your teeth (yes, I am lazy). Two other essential accessories for any bathroom - rubber backed soft fuzzy bathmat (strangely also a gift from my aunt, she's good with the practical bathroom gifts) and a Siamesey. Note how colour-coordinated with the bathroom she is. This was not actually deliberate.


The tiles, which no doubt you have noted throughout, were free - they came out of a skip. Hugo and I were with my PU#2 one day at the local shops, and we happened upon a skip outside the local pharmacy. Now, neither the PU nor I can resist skip shopping, so we loaded the car with eleventy-three floor tiles and voila. They have been grouted with dark grout, because it's heaps easier to clean* than white grout.

Paints are mostly Porters Paints - Silver "Alchemy" paint on the door, untinted white everywhere else (semi-gloss on walls) - the white gloss on the cupboards etc isn't Porters because they don't do one, it's Wattyl IQ (I think).

And I hope it's not disappointingly bland! There's a lot of colour in the rest of the house, I really wanted the bathroom to be restful - white/natural, and silver, and wood with touches of green.


*By which I clearly mean, it doesn't have to be cleaned because you can't see the dirt. Clever!

Further to my previous post on bogans

May I direct you to this blog all about things bogans like?

http://thingsboganslike.wordpress.com/the-full-list/

Anyone want a free electric towel rail?

We got this to put in the bathroom, but unfortunately turns out there is no possible way for the electrician to put a powerpoint where we need it, and I'm not willing to have cords draped all over the bathroom (safety fail!)

The idea was we'd put it on a timer switch - it uses 75 watts, so about the same as a brightish non-energy saving lightbulb - from, say, 5.30am to 7.30am so I'd have a warm towel in winter (luxury!)

So anyway, it's white, it's still in the box, it's a wall-mount model (not free-standing), and if any of my readers want it, it's yours free - as long as you can pick it up (or you can pay for the postage I guess... probably cost about $15).

Otherwise it will go on ebay if I can be bothered or freecycle if I can't...

The bathroom, part I

So, I think what I'll do is post the "before" pics of the bathroom today, and you can have the "after" pics tomorrow. That way you get a bit of a sense of anticipation - not dissimilar to the very long wait I've had for it to be finished (more than two years!) only much, much shorter. Same, same but different, as they say.

So, here's what it used to look like:


The wall tiles had been painted grey - and not with tile paint, someone had just slapped ordinary paint over the tiles. FAIL. the cupboards, woodwork, doors etc were painted the same dark grey, and the walls a drab lighter grey. The bottom of the shower was brown mosaic tiles (I have a mosaic tile phobia, I can't stand them - literally, I can't stand ON them, so you can see my thongs in the bottom of the shower to protect my feet from the icky), the door of the shower was one of those three-panel things that get mouldy in the middle. There was no ventilation. So when I say moudly, I mean MOULDY.


This was the vanity - grey doors, grey laminate top a washing machine tub on one side and a grey basin on the other. Did I mention the whole frigging thing was grey? Way to choose a depressing colour for everything, previous owners. You can see the grey door and the daggy 80s doorhandle in the corner of this one. The washing machine drained directly into the sink.



You can see the paint peeling on the wall behind the towel rail, if you look closely.

Everything was very disorganised because it was too depressing to try to organise anything when everything was so... grey.

Close up of the icky mosaic tiles, with the grey pebbles I planned to replace them with (ok, a *small* amount of grey is not so bad).

And a general sort of shot, showing the bath, shower and towel rail.

In fact the grey was so depressing that it made me just long for shiny whiteness, so the new bathroom (really just an updated bathroom - do you know how much it costs to rip everything out and start again from scratch? I nearly fainted when I got quotes!) is mostly white. As you'll see tomorrow - same bat channel.

I have done none of my things for today

What I have done is call a man about an airconditioner. Of course it turns out, as with everything else, that installing it will be a fucking ridiculous exercise that will involve making holes in the roof, walls, floors and ceilings.

Nothing says good design like a complete inability to access anything like essential plumbing or electrics. Fuck.