I have messed up. My executive decision making skill has proven to be non-existent. In the world of bathroom design, I am a right royal cock up.
Our family bathroom has started to take shape. No longer is it a dumping ground for old photos, proliferating roller boots and dust. The ceiling has plaster on it, there are pipes for a shower and the embryonic shape of a shampoo shelf is cut out of the wall. All of this is good.
But we have a dilemma with the bath tub.
In my ideal bathroom, there would be an enamel offering with clawed feet, sited imperiously in the centre of a grand room with a large window. There would be space to swing small children, and room for an Edwardian armchair draped artistically with towels made from Egyptian cotton…
Sadly, the Funny Little Bungalow doesn’t stretch to such grandeur, and the bathroom is more of a standard size, verging on small.
This in itself is not to be helped – when we marked out the rooms, we chose to donate the space to Mini Seymour’s bedroom instead. After all, bathrooms are not for dancing in. (More’s the pity.) They are for soaking in, sitting on the throne in, and for brushing one’s teeth in. Besides, Mini Seymour needs the extra space for her make up collection that she’s nicked from me.
But, three houses in, I, at least, have quite specific ideas about what we do need in a bathroom, and so the bath tub we chose simply had to allow the bather to lay back and look at the window. The other way round would not do.
Big Seymour wanted a reinforced bath bottom, so he didn’t have to worry about people standing in it for showers. (The space does not allow for a separate shower, no).
But we decided (OK, it was mainly me who decided) that the room was not big enough for a 750mm wide tub, so the 700mm would have to suffice.
Poor Big Seymour. He spent most of last Saturday merrily fitting a lovely, stylish bath, excited at the prospect of soaking in it later that night, only to discover that it just doesn’t cut the mustard. It’s a little too narrow for his shoulders, it’s not got a reinforced bottom and the sloping end near your feet (we stupidly didn’t think to order a single end and just fit it the other way round) means that it’s tight, because of the configuration of the toilet cistern nearby. So one’s nether regions poke out.
He didn’t particularly enjoy his long-awaited ablutions.
We skirted around the issue for a few hours, and tiles went up (they look fab, by the way!), until we both decided that we didn’t want to compromise on the bathroom. Annoying though it was, we decided to go back to the drawing board, and have a re-think.
After all this hard work, Big Seymour really deserves to have the bath of his choice. And so we are going to do something we hate to do. We are going to waste money, and buy a different bath.
Luckily, though, we have recently been doing rather well selling second hand furniture, and so instead of putting that towards carpets (oh, to have carpets!), we will instead be buying a replacement 750mm, single ended bath with end taps and a reinforced bottom. So what if the floor space is tight? People only drop their pants on bathroom floors anyway. Less room for pants has to be a good thing.
And if anyone wants to buy a lovely, double ended 700mm pristine white bath tub that is perfect if you are not broad shouldered, you don’t want a shower over the bath and you don’t have a toilet cistern to fit in next to it, roll up! Roll up!
We’ll do you a great deal!
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