Flushed with pride

Here at Hilltop House we have no less than two bathrooms that are in dire need of renovation. Unfortunately, renovating bathrooms is obscenely expensive.
One of our bathrooms is going to get done properly, sometime this summer hopefully. The other one got a mini make over recently, and it actually all cost less than 200 £.

We were so eager to get this hideous monstrosity out of the house, that we forgot to take a "before" photo. However, here it is in all it's glory.

Old, broken and BLUE. Hard to believe, isn't it? That somebody once thought this was chic. You can't imagine how good it felt to take this to the rubbish tip.
But it wasn't just the toilet and wash basin that needed changing. There was an old lamp which gave a strange yellow light that made you look pale and pasty. Not that it mattered much, because there was no mirror. There was no place to put any thing, no towel rail and the only heat source was a rusty old electric heater high up on the wall. It was probably a fire hazard, and we never dared to use that, so it was always freezing in there.

I know, we really ought to demolish the whole room and start from scratch, but it will have to do for a while yet. What we wanted was a small and inexpensive upgrade to make it look just a little bit better. We got two hundred pounds from my mother for Christmas, and decided to use them on the bathroom. We were lucky enough to pick up a few bargains in the after Christmas sale and actually managed to get everything for about 198 £. I'll have to spend those two extra pounds on a bar of soap or something.

We started by removing the old toilet. It was surprisingly easy to put the new one in place, even though replacing a toilet is a job we have never done before. We turned off the water mains, unscrewed the old toilet from the floor and lifted it away. Without going in to detail, the drainage pipe was a bit yucky, but was not difficult to scrape clean. We covered it with silicone before we lifted  the new toilet into place, screwed that losely to the floor, tilted it to one side and sprayed silicon on the floor, before tightening the screws. Then we could connect the water again. Easy peasy.

The wash basin proved to be more difficult. It is located behind a door, and with only just over a half-meter to our disposal, there was no room for bathroom furniture. We needed a very small basin, and decided that a ceramic stand underneath would look pretty.
With most things we try to fix in the house, we are somehow confronted with the DIY projects of the previous owners, and we have long since concluded that they must have had considerably more enthusiasm than expertise. One of the strange things they had done was to switch the hot and cold water. Obviously, we wanted to correct that, so we had to buy flexible pipes. To connect them was easier said than done, because the dimentions were all wrong. We had a few days with leaking, but Hubby has proven to be a competent plumber and finally managed to get it watertight.

We put up some new towel hooks, and of course, I saw this as an opportunity to invest in a few new towels. These are from Vossen, one of my favourite brands. The soap is the gorgeously scented Verbena range from L'Occitane.

 The old heater was replaced by an electric towel warmer, which also heats up the small room - to a certain extent at least. It is such a nice luxurious feeling to wrap oneself in warm towels after the morning shower.
These towels are from Christy - another one of my favourite suppliers. I admit it, I am totally addicted to soft and fluffy towels. Ah well, it's not the worst thing to be guilty of, is it?

A small cupboard with a mirror door provides supringsly much storage space. Well, enough for all my little bottles and jars anyway. The style is rather minimalistic, so I needed to pimp it a little bit. A friend gave me this lace heart for Christmas. Cute, isn't it?

At this time of the year I need a good hand cream, and this one from Clarins does the job really well.
The little "Rings and Things" jar is something I found when tidying. It must be from the eighties. I thought it was a bit cute, and decided it would be a good place to keep cotton buds.

I bought this jar at the Sunday market in Bangkok. it is supposed to have real gold on it. I doubt that, but it looks pretty and is ideal to store cotton pads in.

 A good air freshener is a must in a bathroom and this jar is filled with lovely vanilla scented hearts. Really nice.

I wanted another small shelf on the wall, but couldn't find anything that fit, so I made this one. It was really easy, just a couple of white brackets and a melamine plank. Finally, I also found a spot for this old calender picture that I've held on to for decades.

Okay, so I didn't really need the shelf for storage. I just wanted a place to put little nice things.

This small rattan dresser was here when we moved in. Not the smartest piece of furniture perhaps, but size wise it fits the bill.

I've tried to make the window look a bit nicer too, but I definitely need new curtains. Or perhaps wooden blinds.

So, here is the result of 200 well spent pounds. Nothing fantastic, but a definite improvement from how it used to be. I'm actually quite proud of what we achieved with so little.

This is our budget:

Toilet: 50
Wash Basin: 19.90
Stand: 9.90
Faucet: 25
Pipes: 15
Towel Rail: 25
Towel hooks: 7.80
Cupboard: 29.90
Shelf: 3.80
Shelf brackets: 1.90 
Lamp: 9.90
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Total   198.10 GBP.
            1981 NOK
            353 USD
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