Plumbed and Primed

Dave and Laura, the plumbers, finished the bathroom at 1.30 p.m. today, Saturday. They have done an excellent job and I can't praise them highly enough.

I used to have a champagne bath, sink and loo (leaking for the last 5 months) with dark walnut panelling, vanity unit and loo seat, champagne cabinet and shelving, biscuit-colour tiles half way up the walls and gold coloured taps and fittings. I had dark pink flotex carpet tiles on the floor. When my late husband installed the champagne suite, 27 years ago, it was the latest style. Now it looked, well, dated and dreary.

I now have a white suite, with a shower-bath (with the wide, round bit at the shower end) a power shower and a clear curved screen. There's a white vanity unit under the sink. The taps are chrome mixers and the shower and accesories are chrome too. Over the sink there's a large mirror with a shelf at the bottom and canopy above it with a light.

The walls are tiled to half way up, from the floor, with large pearl-white tiles that have a slight "bump" so they're not dead flat. The tiles go up to the ceiling around the shower, the bath and the window. The floor is tiled with "warm-feel" slate grey tiles.

There's still an "airing" cupboard in my bathroom, behind the shower end of the bath, but it doesn't air anything as it's where the combi-boiler has lived for the last 6 years. It's doors have been primed/undercoated, as has the small shelf unit Colin set into the wall when he bricked in the small window that was once over the loo. They need gloss painting and the 3 walls that are half tiled need emulsioning, we've chosen a mid-turquoise/blue, but that will get done when I'm completely over this blasted chest infection. I'm also going to get a new door fitted (and one for each bedroom too).

Even before the finishing touches - my bathroom looks fabulous. When I'm in there I feel like I'm in a hotel. Now, if only the rest of the house looked as ultra-smart as the bathroom.......