I hope you are enjoying my house stories. I thought I should probably blog about our bathroom/ toilet story. And the lessons learnt as a result.
This was the original bathroom upstairs. The design was dated and the walls were fully tiled. The floor tiles were old. The previous owners had a standing shower and a bathtub taking up too much space. We figured out if we should need to do some work, such as the toilet, we needed to do it before moving in and not at some point in time in the future - where are we gonna shower then?
We scoured around magazines and stores for inspiration. Finally at B&Q in one of their showrooms, I fell in love with this:
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| My inspiration! We worked with this classic English bathroom in mind. |
Getting a good contractor in this country as we found out is akin to striking the lottery. We have heard of horror stories, and watched the local programme "Cowboy Builders" and we were very wary. Friends back home who have got their own place will breezily say they have their own interior designer "ID" for short.. and the ID would do everything for them. All they need to do is to approve and supervise. Although I hear complain stories of their ID, if they knew the lengths we went to just for our bathroom and toilet… seriously I wish they would just stop complaining.
From friends here, we went to a few websites such as Rated People, or Find a Builder, to get quotes for the job and also read the reviews of each of the builder. Meaning friends would tell us so-and-so had a foreign builder (mostly Eastern European) and this and that happened… so we thought, maybe paying a bit more to get a local British builder might be a better idea. Seriously? No. Not the one we got at least. It depends entirely on recommendations, or pure luck.
We met a few builders and repeated our requirements of what we needed to be done that we felt like a broken record. We got a few quotes over a few weekends. We would shuttle between the new house and our old apartment every weekend. Some builders were confident, some said it's a big project; even bigger if we wanted shower facilities in the toilet downstairs. Another said "wow big kitchen you've got here. So much potential! See if you are keen, I can help fit a Magnet brand kitchen for you…" Umm excuse me, we are asking for a bathroom quote? Another pair said "wow a lot of potential for loft conversion! We can do a really good job for you. For your size, maybe GBP36,000 minimum." No thanks. We just want a new bathroom and toilet!
We finally got this guy called M. He seemed sincere enough and even came down twice to check the inside and outside of the house, in case he needed to hack away some part of a load bearing wall in which "I would get very nervous about" he said. K wanted to get someone else but I thought M had good reviews plus he is a local which we wanted, so let's go with M. In all honesty he did what was required but boy was the process painful. Because we were both working, we could only pass him the house keys and trust that he got the job done. A few times we went down on a weekday during lunch time he was not there. Tried calling him to no answer, and then a few days later he would return the call saying "oh no Belinda I couldn't go down that day cos I had a dental appointment…" Everyone told us it's pretty clear he is doing what other contractors are doing - doing multiple jobs at the same time to earn more money. And we are the easiest to do it on because both of us are at work and can't monitor his attendance at work, so to speak.
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| In progress: the tiny toilet downstairs |
People tell us it's always easy to hack away the bathroom than to put in the new stuff. It took him ages to remove everything in the bathroom. When it was finally stripped bare, he insisted that the walls were too wet to tile. And for weeks there were no progress. We kept asking and one day he even called to demand why we turned our heating down. K did that, but we saw no reason to turn it up when no one lived there! He insisted that we had caused him to delay his job because the cold air didn't help with drying the walls. Hello, but there wasn't even any heater in the bare toilet! Someone told me a professional builder would have a huge dryer machine to blast hot air directly to the wall so that it dries faster but he didn't have anything like that. He was relying on some random hot air from another room to dry the bathroom walls. Bad episode aside, whenever he saw us on Saturdays, he would try to bring K aside asking for another part payment. But how could we pay him more cash when there was no progress?
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| It took us more than a month to get to this stage |
Another crucial thing for renovation works in this country. You need to buy everything yourself and I mean absolutely everything. The builder only turns up and fixes the stuff you bought for you. So K and I had to learn the stuff we needed to buy for renovating a bathroom and toilet. The tiles, the adhesive, the grout (the amount was also another interesting aspect.) The floor tiles, the underfloor heating parts, the shower, the bathtub.. EVERYTHING. We even had to pay GBP160 for a skip to come and collect away all the rubbish can you believe it? Neither did I.
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| Coming slowly together. VERY slowly. |
After countless angry conversations, arguments, accusations, and a 2 month delay, we finally had our bathroom and the toilet downstairs done. We thought we would never see him again even though the general guidance is for contractors to provide a one year guarantee on his project. We had leaks and what-not in the first 2 weeks which we needed him to come down.
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| We would drive down after work to check on the progress once a week |
To cut the long story short, we decided to give him the boot and will not ask him back again, even if we have any more leaks -
even if it was through his negligence. His work is not fantastic, and K was so upset he wanted to write a truthful review about him (the excuses, the delay, the accusations..). Being the timid me, I stopped him because he knows where we live, god knows what he would do? And it's not like we have a security guard like in our previous apartment block. What are we gonna do if he turns up in front of our door turning violent? "Let's just forget about him" I suggested.
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| After a lot of painful conversations, this progress you see here is a quantum leap. |
We learnt that we won't rely on such websites in the future and will only go with recommendations by friends and word of mouth.
And duck egg? That's the colour I chose above the white tiles. It turned out to be more like the Tiffany blue though but I love it. Does it look similar to my inspiration picture? I think so! :)
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| Finall after an almost 2 month delay, the bathroom is finally up. |
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| I love the classic English design |
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| I chose this atomic looking ceiling lamp for the small toilet downstairs |
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| The finished toilet downstairs with the consistent theme |
Almost everyone we know have heard our painful story. And now so have you!
Now if you need to renovate your bathroom or toilet, K and I can be your advisor! Down to the details of grout, adhesive and sealant!
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