Here we are in a new year with the stubborn remnants of the old year clinging to it like dirt on the last lump of piled up snow in the corner of the car park.
I really thought the house was last year. I was looking forward to a nice new start on some new dolls and some writing. When I bought the wadding to re-upholster the dining chairs and subsequently some fabric in a sale, which I realised later was only going to be strong enough if I quilt it, I thought that would be it. On with more creative stuff than tarting up the abode.
So yesterday morning with the luxury of the other half out golfing most of the day and the house quiet for thinking in, I got relatively poshed up (well, all right then, I put on a clean pair of trousers) and on my way downstairs just popped into the bathroom, cleaned the sink and on my way out noticed a black bit on the edge of the bath.
The bath sits directly over the kitchen sink. One of the major problems with it has been water leakage into the kitchen from the bathroom. It’s quite a gloomy thing; rain in the kitchen. It used to slide down the wall where the last idiot had hard wired the electric extractor fan and either seep into the hole or just drip off the windowsill. Eventually I put a pot of herbs in the way, though whether watering your parsley with your bathwater seeping through the masonry is desirable or not, I did not consider as much as the time saved not wielding a sponge.
I had a system of seals round the bath. First I had a bit of corner angle plastic sealed twice going round and then on top of that a flat strip sealed at the top, the water tightness of the whole ensemble thoroughly compromised by the tiles applied to the wall by the previous owner on a modern version of mediaeval ridge and furrow ploughing; some were sunken and others were proud but never two the same next to each other. So there were varying amounts of silicone sealant applied in layers by me over many years. And it sort of worked, sometimes.
Until yesterday.
In my posh trousers, with jewellery, I pulled a little black thread and released unending inches, yet more feet, yards and blinking yards flipping miles of acres of lengths of elastically stretchy, suppurating, velvetly luxurious black mould.
So I got back into normal clothing and removed the plastic layers from the wall. It’s a wonder we’re not both dead or sprouting black fur like Cousin It. This no doubt is the magical source of the permanently mouldy shower curtain. You could scrub it with bleach, turn your back and it was mouldy again. As if the mould fairy had danced across it.
It took the whole rest of the day to get the bath top, the tiles and the half inch gap between them, back to the state the bath fitters left them in, stained, dead rough and nowhere near each other but clean.
About six years ago I bought a patent bath sealing plastic strip invention from a shopping channel at a knockdown sale price. It has two plastic strips, like my version and a flexible gasket between allowing a heavy hippopotamus to shower without breaking the seal between the bath and the strip and the wall and the other strip.
Well the tiny tube of glue for melting the corners together had a pin hole in it so that was a shopping trip. And we did the bit where you assemble the plastic strips jointed and had lunch and then discovered that the giant jet propelled can of major sealant had gone off too. And that was a call to the manufacturers and another shopping trip. So having glued the first bit on we read the instructions for the trillionth time and discovered that you had to have a gap of 4mm between the strip stuck to the wall and the bath. ‘Aha!’ cried the other half, ‘the tile spacers!’ For we were only four months ago in possession of hundreds of 4mm tile spacers, which, having used, we washed, laboriously and put in a place.
There is only so long in January that you can spend in a freezing garage searching for pre-loved tile spacers without losing the will to live, so currently the intermediate grey strip is propped up from the wall by plastic cocktail sticks and I am typing this while the other half visits the bank. To make arrangements for our expensive house tarting-up habit.
Oh why is nothing ever cheap or easy?
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JaneLaverick.com – plumber ho!