bathroom

When we first moved into our house september 2002, the bathroom was pretty much non existant...
I felt like I was using a garden shed with conveniences just thrown in for use!.
The walls were covered in awful lilac painted artex (not even a pretty shade of lilac, which can be one of my fave colours!), it was all flaking off, damp and tatty, the door was badly hung and wouldn`t close properly, the window was draughty, with broken handle and lock, and rotten or even missing seals. The window sill was covered in mouldy, cracked sticky backed plastic covering. The bathroom suite itelf wasn`t in too bad condition, but was neglected beyond my personal hygiene preferences and had to go! Around the hand basin and bath were horrible big bulky dark green tiles which were all chipped and scratched. There was nowhere to hang towels or toilet paper, and there was no cabinet for toiletries. There was an old shoddy mirror barely hanging on the wall, and another standing on the window sill...neither of which had much actual mirror surface left!.
There was an old shower unit on the wall over the bath, which I refused to even touch for fear of it falling down or exploding... and a rail for a shower curtain was just about hanging on the walls, but I daren`t even breathe on it!. An old pair of curtains were hanging at the window, the pole actually through them - rather than using hooks, the pole was in grave danger of collapse and the curtains were held back with nails and elastic bands, and when I took them down they literally fell to bits!.
The bath had been plonked into the small crevice area, so was hard to get at to clean unless you stood in it, and instead of sealing the edges with proper silicone sealant, they had stuffed them with awful yellow foam which looked disgusting and did not serve the purpose, and they hadn`t even bothered to smooth it down tidy, it was all blobby and looking more like a nasty fungal growth than anything else. The floor was covered in 2 layers of wet mouldy carpet, under which was a layer of ancient cracked peeling lino type tiles. The radiator was barely working and the pipes were leaking, and the paintwork was all a boring shade of terracotta (again one of my fave colours in the right shade and used properly!)...(incidentally, this same terracotta paint has been used in every other room in the house, and outside on all the fences and all the sheds!)
First we began by getting rid of all the old carpets and floor tiles, then we stripped all the ugly lilac artex from the walls, repainted the skirting, door frame and window sill white,and the ceiling- which was also painted lilac! off came the green tiles and in went a new radiator.
Then we got someone in to fix the window handle & lock, and Gareth resealed the frames. Next out came the bathroom suite and in went the brand new one, swapping around so the bath isn`t in the crevice... the hand basin is!. I put up new wall tiles, new curtain track, roller blind, wallpaper, cabinet, towell rails, toilet paper/ toothbrush etc holders, brought new curtains and floor mats and put up a few pictures, Gareth put down the new floor tiles and installed new bath panels and we got someone in to put a new door up ( plus another 5 elsewhere in the house!).
Now all that has to be done is to cover the pipes from the hand basin and it will be finished.
This took about 3 and a half months because we had to get the money together to do the major work, plus it was really hard stripping the artex from the walls. Also, Gareth was working during the week, so I did bits during the daytime and he did what he could when he wasn`t working. Besides working on the bathroom we have also had a lot of other major works going on, so the bathroom was done in between everything else!.
Unfortunately, I was in such a hurry to start stripping the artex, I didn`t think of taking any "before" photo`s. I only got one "during", after the artex had gone but before the window was fixed or the bathroom suite changed. I have taken some "after" photo`s, here they all are!...