.....kindly step up to the podium, please 😒 I don't think that I've already told you about our bathroom woes but it dragged on for so long that I may have forgotten by now ~ you'll just have to excuse me as an "old woman" who repeats herself if I've mentioned it before😏
Waaay back in the mists of time you may recall that we had our downstairs bathroom completely gutted and everything replaced. Fast forward a few years and we were noticing a fair bit of condensation in the room along with mould appearing, especially in the far corner beside the toilet. Then we noticed that what we at first thought were cracks were appearing in the glaze of the basin. When we ran our fingers over the "cracks" we realised that it was in fact crazing and we couldn't feel anything on the surface at all. The crazing slowly but steadily got worse, which was a little disconcerting to be honest.
Then a few months back we found that the basin was leaking so we had to call on one of the local plumbing companies to sort it out for us. Turned out that something had cracked and we were advised that it would probably be better to replace the basin, especially in view of the ever-increasing crazing in the glaze. We were happy enough to do this and thought that a basin set into a vanity unit would be better than the arrangement we currently had, which was a small cabinet stood between the basin and toilet. Whilst we had the plumber there, we took the opportunity to ask him about the condensation/mould issues we were experiencing. He said that it was most likely because the bathroom was now very well insulated ~ which is a good thing, of course ~ but the water coming into the toilet cistern is extremely cold, hence the condensation building up on the latter and creating moisture to build up in areas where there wasn't any air flow.
We asked him if there was anything we could do to combat the condensation and he suggested that since we were already planning to change the basin, we could perhaps consider changing the toilet to a back-to-wall style set against a WC unit. He also told us that insulated cisterns were available to fit inside such a unit.
The upshot of this conversation, my lovelies, was that we decided to bite the bullet and go ahead with the changes. It took a couple of months before the new units had arrived and the plumbers could come out to make the changes, so in the meantime whilst we could still use the shower and toilet as normal, we had to wash our hands in the kitchen.
Finally the grand day arrived and the plumber arrived, along with our new units. Things were going well and we also decided to have the whole of the wall behind the toilet and basin covered with a wet wall panel to match that in our shower. To make life easier, the plumber also took down our bathroom cabinet which he later re-sited to sit centrally above the new basin.
Alas, when Peter took the toilet pan out of its packaging he discovered that the corner was cracked 😒 A new pan had to be ordered so we were now without a downstairs toilet for a couple of weeks. I decided not to put stuff in the basin unit until the replacement toilet had been fitted, but I did give the wall cabinet a good clean and put everything back in it that usually lived in there.
Ta-daaa! Behold, our new bathroom fittings! Don't get too excited, though, my lovelies...
because sadly for us, that wasn't the end of this latest tale of woe as there was a leak beneath the basin 😳 Luckily I hadn't yet got round to putting stuff in the cabinet so all that got wet was the glass shelf. So Adrian had to make another call to the plumbers, who to give them their due came out quickly to rectify the problem. We've given it a few days to double-check that all appears to be well, and I've now made a start on sorting out all the "bathroomy" things that are currently in the cupboard in the little utility area beside the bathroom.
The freestanding cabinet that we had previously had in the bathroom had a tiny drawer atop the cupboard space. Everything that was in the cupboard part is now stored in the small section on the left of the basin unit. I bought a couple of long, narrow, wooden storage crates from Woodeedoo on Etsy and have used them for holding the bits and pieces on this side of the cabinet. This section is pretty narrow, so it's easier to pull a crate forward and take what I need rather than trying to scrabble around with everything loose, as it were.
I'm still sorting out the other stuff that I want to move into the large section of the cabinet, then I can rearrange the cupboard in the utility area. The latter is really full at the moment, so having extra storage space is going to be really useful as I won't have to have everything so squished together 😄
Fingers crossed that we don't hit any more bumps in this particular road!
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