Maybe you imagine, as I did around this time last year, that a quick bathroom revamp is just the thing to give the house a lift. An early Christmas message for cheery optimists: don't do it. Not now. Not ever, unless you have a sunny disposition and about six weeks off work. The smallest room can be the biggest nightmare.
Ours was, and is, small in the extreme. A space six feet by nine, wedged into the return of a Victorian house, with no viable possibility of enlargement. With its wide, jerry-built counter of chipped tiles, textured hide-the-cracks ceiling, faded cork and dated pine, it was an uncomfortable reminder of our era of enslavement to DIY. Wall shelves were laden with ageing ointments and cosmetics. There was barely room to wriggle in a towel. It was awful.
So I called on the treasure of a builder we'd used a few years ago for a much more complicated job which he had executed on time, at a fair price, with impressive skill. A detailed discussion ensued, with a lot of nodding. The bathroom would be out of commission for one week, he warned - but at least we had a tiny shower room with a separate water supply elsewhere. Better than washing at the kitchen sink, the groaning teenagers were reminded. "There's just one thing, though . . . " the builder said, looking anxious. "You're not expecting me to have this done in time for Christmas, are you?"
I had rather hoped he might - but no, January would be fine. It would give me more time to plan, dream, drool over seriously stylish bits of kit. We had decided, early on, against any attempt at a retro Victorian look for our cramped space. We'd go to the other extreme and try to make our small sanctuary look bigger with a modern, uncluttered interior - a mildly warmed-up version of minimalism. I pored over catalogues and magazines. I began to haunt visually thrilling but financially ruinous showrooms like Ideal Bathrooms, Bathrooms of Tomorrow and Elegant John so frequently that one salesman gingerly mentioned office speculation as to whether he and I were having an affair. Looking back on it, this planning and sourcing process was the only aspect of the overhaul that I really enjoyed (apart from finally bidding the builders farewell). But perhaps because of undue pickiness - deciding on one make of bath, another make of basin and a third brand of WC, for instance, because of design details or size constraints - it was a messy business. I'd be afraid to calculate how many days were spent deciding on things like lights and shower knobs . . . all for a skitty little washroom. Mad, maybe - but my reasoning was stolen from the clothes world, where fashion editors keep saying good accessories are the salvation of the most unprepossessing basics. There would be nothing much in the cool, new, clutter-free bathroom except a few accessories, I reckoned, so they'd better look right.
We bought a bath in the January sales and, thinking work was about to commence, had it delivered into the hall. It sat there for several weeks while the chirpy builder popped in and out promising - always promising - imminent action. Nothing happened, except that the bath was rehoused in the garage. Easter passed, my phonecalls became more frantic, the builder more elusive. Work began in early May and ended five weeks later - mercifully the day before the Leaving Cert introduced a new form of domestic trauma.
The construction boom, which had shoved our miniscule bathroom revamp right to the bottom of the builder's, agenda also plastered Murphy's Law all over it. "First thing in the morning" usually meant 5.30 in the evening and a frenzied rush to get something done - anything, really, to keep us quiet. "For jaysus sake get over here and get this plumbing sorted out on your way home," I'd hear one lad begging another on the mobile. "Yer woman's goin' mad."
Mad wasn't the word for it as the crazy mistakes piled up, substituting bathroom blitz for bathroom bliss. A gaping hole was knocked through decorative Victorian brickwork for a waste pipe. The smooth oak built-in unit we'd specified arrived in chunky looking tongue-and-groove, fit for a country kitchen, and took a week to remake. A row of silver mosaic tiles, procured from Roscommon by post to add a bit of glitz to plain white, was fixed in place with the silver side cemented to the wall. The bath surround was laid sloping the wrong way so that, instead of draining inwards, a great pool of water collected all along the edges. And then, just when reasonable progress seemed to be assured, a carpenter dropped a lump hammer on the newly installed lavatory and smashed it.
The supposedly simple, one-week job was so prolonged that I'd be tempted to settle for a latrine and a plastic basin on a tripod, the way we did at Guide camp, rather than go through such upheaval again. It wasn't just the weeks of cement dust, banging and lack of hot water that were wearing, but the acrimonious arguments - the "I said" . . . "No, you didn't" debates.
Culminating - you guessed it - in an unseemly wrangle over the bill.
Was it worth it? Strangely enough, yes. With a much shallower countertop than before running the full length of one wall (in Corian, a tough, marble-like synthetic material which I warmly recommend), a plain glass shower screen instead of a flapping curtain and a wall-mounted heated towel rail doubling as a radiator, the room seems infinitely bigger. A semi-recessed basin and concealed cistern contribute to the neater look. The new bathroom is also much easier to keep clean, with all the clutter stashed away, either in the new cupboard under the sink or in a tall steel cabinet on the wall. Just as well, because it's staying this way for keeps.
