Of mud and mayhem

Just for those of you who like to know how a major renovation can go wrong is getting on nicely, this is a glimpse of my revamped bathroom as of 5 o'clock this evening. It requires a little explaining.

Top right: a corner (well, leg) of the freestanding bath, finally plumbed in and working at 5 o'clock, after a drama with the wrong-sized waste and some improvisation by a determined plumber. There's a window where the builder broke two panes of glass.

I only wept once today, and then secretly, alone in the sitting room, and only for a moment, honest, when it looked like I might not have a bathroom for yet another weekend.

Lower left: the corner of the walk-in shower, not working because of wrong/missing fixings; our second attempt to have them posted out from the manufacturer won't yield results till some time next week.


Centre: the missing floor tiles? Well, before they were even finished being laid, let alone grouted and sealed,  a builder who shall remain nameless trod large clods of red mud all over them. Then a joiner who shall also remain nameless swept them with the broom, smearing the mud liberally all over those tiles, by now firmly cemented into place. Whereupon the mud stained the tiles - not cheap tiles, mind you - and could not be completely cleaned off. I went on a bit about this, as you can imagine - "my friend has cream porcelain tiles in her kitchen, with direct access to the muddy garden, and her floor always cleans up like new...." and so on.

And so the foreman was summoned, and the worst tiles were chiselled out laboriously by the two nameless ones, somewhat subdued by now, and are to be replaced; the supplier will be given a stained tile to ponder over quality issues.

The rest of the bathroom looks no better; in fact, for authentic bleakness, it should smell of carbolic soap and have a ragged scratchy towel hanging up on a nail in the wall. And maybe one splayed-bristle toothbrush used by the whole family and for cleaning the plughole.

It will get better though. The supplier sent the wrong size of basin but a bigger one will be in place on Monday. The toilet seat and lid will also be replaced with a soft-close one (honestly! how princessy of me!) and behind the slatted blind, the rattly broken window will be removed to be repaired and completely reglazed, and hopefully won't allow whistling winds to make little waves in the bathwater.

So we must try to imagine it with the walls painted in some yet-to-be-determined gorgeous colour, heaps of  lovely fluffy towels, candles, plants, a shiny chrome towel radiator, gleaming mirrors, delicious scents, and me having forgotten all about the past two weeks' rather spartan arrangements, accidents and mud.

But now - well, I'm going to find my scratchy old towel and that bar of carbolic soap, and .... no of course I'm not. I'm going to have a lovely bath in my unlovely bathroom, and just be glad that we got this far.