Stairs
So I went round to Third House today clutching a very fingerprinty, sweaty, possibly teary, beat-up and dog-eared THE GREAT BIG MONSTER BATHROOM CATALOGUE!!! I have most of two bathrooms to kit out–thus the way building work always runs away with you, laughing maniacally, with your chequebook between its teeth.* The new upstairs sink and loo are what were on the official agenda. Then the tool-belted brigade had to change the boiler because the old one more or less crumbled to dust when they touched it, like Miss Haversham’s wedding cake, and the new one required new shower fittings. Then when they peeled up the floor in the rest of the bathroom for some reason** they discovered that the toilet had been leaking quietly for years.*** I not only need a new toilet I need a new floor.†
So. Anyway. I have been applying myself to THE GREAT BIG MONSTER BATHROOM CATALOGUE! In the first place, it’s all white. Mind you, I want white, but I grew up in the era of coloured bathroom suites.†† In the second place . . . I had no idea you could have hundreds of variations on a basic theme of loo. One’s eyes begin to resemble shiny white ceramic after a few hundred pages.††† On the other hand I have fairly strong opinions about both sinks and taps and I’m the kind of person who wants the taps that are in the glossy photo of the perfect bathroom of your dreams‡ but not somehow listed anywhere in the catalogue part. But I am valiant in the face of dire perils like the threat of never getting the building work finished, of having dusty homeless boxes of backlist whimpering and following me around for the rest of my life. So I had decisions to come to and report to Mr Builder & Friends.
This is where I came in. I went round to Third House today to report on bathroom fixtures and . . .
The stairs are in. There are STAIRS. You can even walk UP them and ARRIVE on the FLOOR ABOVE. Because there IS a floor above.‡‡ It’s even . . . beginning to look like a room up there.‡‡‡ Yaaay. Eeep.§
* * *
*Of course you can laugh maniacally with a chequebook between your teeth. In fact all the best maniacal laughter is produced with the teeth clenched on an inappropriate object.
** I have no idea. Because it was there.^
^ Damn. I should have told them to put in a cellar while they were down there idly stabbing the ground for the thunking noise indicative of another ancient gold torque+ or the high-pitched squeals of Malefic Toads.++
+ http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/archaeology/excavations_techniques/fact_files_02.shtml
++ Which is what Malefic Tadpoles grow up into, of course.
*** So what a good thing builders see floors and just have to have them up. The problem at present is that there is no loo at Third House. I’ve been afraid to ask what the builders are doing.^ It also means that at the moment I’m not even thinking about spending a few afternoons sorting out the garden, which badly needs sorting out at this point.^^ But I discovered the disappearing toilet last weekend when I’d gone up to Third House to water Things in Pots and view the damage and discovered that the stairwell had been framed in–no stairs, mind you, but there were walls again which gives the impression of progress–and I thought, oh, great, I can finally use the toilet without worrying about the neighbours, turned the corner, and . . . no toilet.
^ I care about that garden. It may not look like it at present, but I have plans.
^^ Must. Buy. Lawnmower. The grass will be tickling my chin soon. The hellhounds leave swathes, like lions on the Serengeti.
† I’d really like an ancient gold torque, please. The British Museum could have it for a very reasonable price.
†† And while the coloured appliances of my childhood were really scary colours^, I’m extremely cranky that the coloured kitchen appliance mildew is now creeping slowly over the market again slightly behind personal demand: I could’ve had a pink electric mixer! A pink toaster!
^ I am blighted for life by a particular pink and deep maroon bathroom with black wallpaper with soap bubbles and fluffy mules and things painted on it. LSD didn’t become popular till the late 60s but obviously there were some bathroom-design folk experimenting with it earlier than that.
††† It’s even worse than the radiator catalogue.
‡ The perfect bathroom of my dreams includes a self-cleaning, limescale-proof facility which I have never yet seen advertised.
‡‡ I admit I have to take the weight-bearing part on faith, but there was some pretty serious looking hardware on display before they drywalled it over.
‡‡‡ The new dormer window gives a splendid view of the garden . . . which really, really needs some focussed attention. By someone with a strong bladder.
§ I still have to look at tiles, but this involves actually driving to a tile store. I would rather be planting sweet peas, my big fat leafy rooty plugs of which arrived today, only I didn’t do that either because I had to hurtle the hellhounds early so I could go ring Colin’s frelling garage bells.^ I swear I was worse this week. I had the chance to ring Stedman Triples and I blew it because I can’t frelling handle a four-pound bell on a string!^^ There were three beginners there too and you know, you spend most of your ringing life looking like the slow tool^^^, you really want to look (relatively) clever and reliable for beginners, and . . .
^ See last Tuesday’s entry.
^^ Well. That’s the given reason I blew it. Chances are I’d've blown it anyway.
^^^ The slow bent tool with a few teeth missing from the gears, the chip out of the handle, the rust spots, the headstock that keeps coming off the rotor, the . . .
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