Our Bathroom is *almost* finished!

When we moved into our home last March, I was so excited to finally have a place that my family and I could call “home” and be a place to raise our children in without the prospect of having to move again at a later date. It ticked all of my boxes; 3 bedrooms, a big(ish) kitchen, a good sized living room, storage space, a big back garden AND a bath. In our flat we only had a shower, which was fine for us, but it made me think of all the times I used to love having a bath as a kid and getting all my toys out and just splashing about. I wanted that for Lily, and honestly, I really wanted a bath too, for those days where I just wanted to unwind with a candlelit bath and bubbles.

So it didn’t bother me when we moved in that there was no shower. “Who cares?” I thought. “I’ve got my bath now!” And then reality hit me…This bath is tiny. To say it was a funny sight watching Martin try and bath in this 4ft tub is an understatement. For those who know Martin, you’ll know he’s tall. Very tall. 6ft 9in to be precise. So you can imagine how comical it was for me to see him in the bath for the first time! I had to stifle my giggles when I noticed he’d hooked his legs over the sink just to lay down to get his hair wet!

The Finished piece!

Naturally, this event ended with; “We need to get a shower.” As that was going to be the cheaper option than buying a bigger tub. – It was also the more practical option as our bathroom is unfortunately on the smaller side. I was also leaning towards a shower too, the novelty of having a bath was wearing off and there were days I just wanted to jump in the shower for a quick wash instead of having to run a bath every time. We wrote to Freebridge, our landlords to ask permission to put a shower in, which thankfully was accepted! It was just down to us to source all materials, have the work signed off officially by a qualified electrician and tile the wall all the way up.

Each month on payday we’d say, “Yep. Let’s get the bathroom done this month!” and then something else crept up instead. It eventually took us about a year to finally buy the shower unit, which was an absolute bargain from Screwfix on Fathers Day! (Gotta love a sale!) We were also extremely fortunate and grateful of Martins cousin, who had also recently renovated their bathroom and had spare tiles laying around that he generously gave us. Luckily for us, there were just enough to cover the space of our wall (almost…) We had to go out and buy another pack of tiles, which were a slightly different colour – but you can’t really tell, and even if you can they blend well together!

So whilst we went away on our family holiday, I left my housekeys with my dad who had kindly offered been assigned the job of tiling the wall and fitting the shower unit, whilst my brother had also been roped in to complete the electrical side of things! With a busy week of work, it wasn’t quite finished when we came home, but it was finished about a week later!

Hooray! A working shower!

The ‘makeshift’ shower curtain

Unbending Hook

Then we realised that the showerhead wasn’t able to bend up or down on its hook, it could only slide up and down the pole. Bugger. UPDATE! Martin has discovered that it DOES bend up and down on the hook. This is a real game changer, I’m not now blasted in the face every time I turn it on!

We had also forgotten to buy a curtain rail and curtain…Again, this took us another 2 months to buy. Now we have the rail, I’m just waiting for it to be put up (don’t ask me to do it, I would literally make a fuckery of it.) but until then, Martin has come up with a “temporary solution” of using pins to hold up our old shower curtain. It’s actually quite clever really. And eventually we’ll get around to painting the other walls a colour we want!

The main thing is, the shower works and I don’t have to battle washing my hair and getting in & out of the bath whilst pregnant. Winner winner! Maybe this time next year I’ll be able to write about our fully finished bathroom. I live in hope.

How do you get on with DIY home projects? Are you a dawdler like us, or a get-on-and-do-it kinda person?

Becky x