Having spent days and days painting and prepping the walls, stripping off the old silicone and regrouting tiles, the bathroom is starting to come together:
And the bathroom now has a shower. It has been a bit hellish, really. So, when I plumbed in the sink I made two errors. The first was that I forgot that the shower would need a pressure limiter, which would need to be hidden away somewhere. The second was I didn’t think to check which way round the shower pipes needed to be. Largely, because in my head I assumed it didn’t matter.
It does, of course, matter. We have exposed pipework, and it’s chrome pipework, which makes it quite difficult to negotiate the matter of crossing pipes.
In the end, I hacked the plumbing apart under the sink, abused a flexible tap attachment, and made a gentle S shape which allowed the pipes to cross underneath the sink and emerge the right way up. The pressure limiter sits, in a somewhat ugly manner, behind the waste water outlet (large lump of grey plastic that it is). But, at the end of the day, the shower is in and working.
Today, though, was spent on the taps. These rather fetching Victorian / Edwardian mixer taps that we got to replace the cruddy plastic / chrome ones that were in the bathroom when we moved in. However, having got the old ones out (a hellish job in itself, the access is incredibly limited), I discovered that the new tap attachments didn’t fit the period mixer taps. Whilst the thread gauge, and the external diameter were right, for whatever reason, the internal diameter of the taps was too small to take the modern tap adaptors. They’re meant to fit. But they don’t.
Eventually, after much cursing I went to the local plumbers merchant*, who didn’t have the flexible DIY pipes that people seem to love so much. So, having not had a shower since yesterday, grovelled in the dirt under the bath and on the bathroom floor, and having reached a level of tiredness from holding my arms in an incredibly uncomfortable position for a couple of hours, I headed to B&Q, who did have the hideous plastic flexy adaptors.
One of them went on perfectly. The other one was either faulty when it went on, or was broken by me as it went on. Turning it on (gingerly, as I do anyhow) lead to me being sprayed with cold water. The rubber seal it turned out was broken. I wailed a little and contemplated heading to B&Q again, before (thankfully) recalling that lurking in the garage was another QuikPlumb joint that the plumbers had used to give us temporary plumbing. I sorted through the fleets of plumbing stuff and found the requisite object. Having taken the broken one to bits, reassembled it and installed it, I finally got to have my bath….
I can’t shower yet because the shower curtain rail is not yet attached to the ceiling. Also, it’d be nice to get the flooring down. I originally wanted to tile the bathroom, but the pain of taking the door off it’s hinges, trimming it and putting it back has put me off. So we’ll go with lino. I know, I hate lino. But it’s not so bad in the tiny area of the bathroom. It also means there won’t be a huge step from the corridor into the bathroom. What’s that? I’m rationalising? Yes, yes I am.
* Who are apparently under the impression that I’m pro or semi-pro. Odd.
