According to the Oxford English Dictionary middle age is between 45 and 65: "The period between early adulthood and old age, usually considered as the years from about 45 to 65." Hubby and I, then, are well into the middle-aged years, since we are 60 and almost 58 respectively ~ hurtling towards old age, in fact, according to the OED!
Since our bladders are becoming so ancient it hasn't always been comfortable living in St Abbs once we've gone to bed for the night. The bathroom, you see, is downstairs which entails an epic journey down the stairs, through the dining room and the little bathroom lobby before finally making it to the loo! Not exactly fun when one is suddenly awakened from a deep sleep with a bladder demanding to be emptied pronto ~ and especially unpleasant during the cold winter nights 😮 By the time you get back to bed, you find yourself wide awake and resorting to counting sheep in an attempt to get off to sleep again LOL
So one of our priorities was to turn the little box room upstairs into a bathroom. It's a bit of a strange room, to be honest. It was obviously used as a bedroom at one time but it must have been very awkward as it's such a small space.
We had a two or three plumbers come to have a look, none of whom really wanted to takle the job. They all suggested we should have a macerator toilet, as well, which we really didn't want. In the end, though, we were put in touch with a local company who didn't see any problems with what we wanted ~ and were more than happy to fit a "proper" toilet, too!
I'm not saying that it was a totally straightforward job, but that's just par for the course with St Abbs it seems! Chris and his guys had to dig a trench in the front garden to marry up with the sewer running from the downstairs bathroom.....
so we now have a manhole in the lawn and a patched-up concrete path.
They also had to cut through the floor in the sunporch to take the pipe out from the house to the garden. Once they'd broken through the concrete they found a whole load of granite stones ~ surprise, surprise! I forgot to take photos of the work in progress (nothing new there, Sharon, I hear you say!) but the plumber sure earned his pay. He had to get the water from where it comes into the house in the downstairs bathroom lobby up to the floor above, and then run it under the floor in the guest bedroom. We also had to have a mains pressure water cylinder fitted but I'm glad that we no longer have a water tank in the downstairs bathroom roof space.
To get the copper pipes from the downstairs bathroom to the upstairs, Greg had to bore a hole through the side of the house ~ our stone-built house with very thick walls! The bathroom isn't original to the house, it is an extension built at the side of St Abbs in the 1940s we think. He then had to go through the walls again, this time from the hall out to the sunporch, with the waste pipe.
It was all worth it in the end, though. Who would have thought that as simple a thing as an upstairs bathroom could be such a life-enhancing pleasure!
Shug, our joiner, did a fabulous job with all the woodwork and fitting the shower enclosure. It's so nice to be able to have a shower, as I'm not at all comfortable taking baths with my back problems.
You can see how small the room is, but it's plenty big enough for what we needed upstairs. The flooring is sheet vinyl with a textured finish and it looks very much like a wooden plank floor.
We really like the look of tongue and groove panels, and I'm glad that we got Shug to line the window recess the same as the walls. The window does have frosted glass but as it's at the front of the house I thought it prudent to hang a voile curtain ~ we don't want to scare the neighbours, now, do we!
We are delighted with our new bathroom, and our bladders are pretty pleased, too 😉
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