Dodgy DIY

My hands are covered in paint.  My expensive South-of-France tan has been whitened by paint thinners.  You guessed it, I have been doing a spot of DIY again.  Never buy a rendered house would be my advice.  And never, ever buy a new house.

 It seems to me that if a corner can be cut on a new house, builders will cut it – and then some.  Bits keep dropping off which is bad enough, but it is the sheer shoddiness that gets me.  As far as I can see all the woodwork in my house has received one coat of cheap trade paint and even cheaper white gloss from a DIY store.  No primer, no undercoat… not even any weatherproof paint out of doors.

 Things get even worse in the bathrooms I have not one, not two, but three white bathroom suites.  One is boring enough – especially as they are badly fitted, necessitating some careful remedial work.  I also have some of that twee bathroom furniture stuck to my flimsy plasterboard walls.  You know the sort of thing – cheap laminate cabinets that hold a couple of toilet rolls if you are lucky.  Assuming the door doesn’t fall off.

And owning a new house has other things to worry about apart from cheapness and appalling workmanship.  You see a new home has to be an ethical home.  So the light fittings take those hideous expensive somehow green bulbs that give off appalling light and can’t be disposed of safely.  You might even be lucky enough to have your roof blighted by a solar panel or two that occasionally delivers enough hot water for half a bath – at vast expense. 

OK a house is for living in.  But there will come a time when I have to sell this place.  Will a coat of white paint indoors and out be enough to fool potential buyers?  Or should I cash in now and contact a cash for home organisation and spend spend spend?  I’ll think about it while I put a second coat on the window frames

Baths or Showers?

I just had a nasty thought . I honestly can’t remember when I last had a bath. Not because I reek of body odour and can knock out the dog at 5 yards – it’s simply because nowadays I prefer to take a shower rather than stew in my own dirt and sweat in the bath.

Somehow that still seems strangely anti-British. There was a time when showers were a strange American phenomenon. Not to sophisticated continentals though – my sister was surprised to find that the house in Holland they moved too did not even have a bath. Dutch real estate execs must have been waxing lyrical about the joys of ‘wet room’ years before it cropped up on UK radar.

I used to be a ‘bath person’ myself. There is nothing quite like relaxing in a hot bubbly bath after a hard day’s work – or exhausting bit of exercise. Except I can’t actually recall either doing a hard day’s work, nor a tiring bit of exercise.

I also suspect there is nothing quite like a nice hot bubble bath with Keira Knightley and a bottle or two of champagne. But that pleasure too seems to have passed me by for some unfathomable reason too.

So as you might have noticed I am more of a shower person nowadays. But I do have one gripe. Why are shower enclosures so minute? I can understand why seats at football stadia and on trains are built with anorexic dwarves in mind – they are in it to make money and squeeze a few more people in.

But surely when you are in the comfort of your own home you are entitled to shower enclosures big enough for one. Or even one and a half if Keira Knightley can be persuaded to join you?

Outside of that, things are looking good. You can buy all matter of showers with head that look for all the world like 1950’s metal colanders, through to multiple power showers that threatened to power you straight back out of your tiny shower cubicle.

You can even have cold or warm water – but not exactly when you anticipate if hard water has played havoc with the shower controls in your bathroom. I wonder if electric showers have made big strides forward. When I was student our flat had two electric showers – and neither was entirely reassuring. One alternated scalding hot water with icy cold. The other simply blew a fuse.

I used to wonder why – but now I am a bit older I realise that it happens to us all with advancing years and being expected to work first thing in the morning.

Bathrooms are all white

It must be a strange and lonely world being a bathroom designer.  Even stranger for showrooms who have to stock range after range of almost identical products. I guess if you have genuine design skills, you don’t aspire to cutting edge toilet design.  But why is it that all bathrooms, everywhere are now expected to be white?

 

I was reminded of this strange state of affairs yesterday when I was watching one of those ghastly cheap TV shows about buying houses.  Mr Smarmy had found a delightful cottage in the country that appeared to be ticking most of the boxes for Mr & Mrs Smug when oh no…. the bathroom suite was blue!

 

“I know” said Mr Smug “It looks like it last had a makeover in the 80s”.   The inference being that you could rip it all out and buy something much cheaper and nastier in white.  Which of course you can – but it begs the question – who on earth dictates style in bathroom fittings?  And who actually is mug enough to believe any of it?

 

Presumably there was a time when all bathroom suites were white and made of cast iron.  And taps were silver and all looked the same.  Then plastic got invented and things moves on.  Soon even low level flushing toilets and panelled baths with nowhere inaccessible for the dust to gather were de rigueur.

 

The bathroom designers went really wacky and offered us baths in all sorts of different colours.  And boy were we pleased to jump on the coloured bathroom bandwagon – because you could match those coloured suites with garish tiles. 

 

But sadly, as is often the case with such things, we went too far.  Tasteful shades of blue, yellow and pink began to be replaced with ever-more outlandish offerings.  Some people even went so far as to transform their lives with suites in what I seem to remember was called Avocado.  Which is designer-speak for a particularly nasty and dull green.  Even diarrhoeal tan brown was the order of the day for some people.

 

And of course, if the height of sophistication was two sinks in the kitchen… you couldn’t live without a bidet being squeezed in your bathroom.

 

But my how things have changed.  Henry T Ford would be proud of today’s bathrooms.  You can have any colour you like as long as it’s white.  You can even have retro overhead flush to your toilet… or a strangely shaped bath on legs.  Toilets can be square, round or oval… as long as they are white.

 

One day soon I suspect a daring bathroom designer is preparing to reliance Avocado bathroom suites on an unsuspecting world.  And Mr Smug on his lousy TV house buying programme will be sneering condescendingly at white bathroom suites which can be oh so easily changed.