Ooops!

Our bathroom is much the same as it was when we bought the house, with the small addition of a venetian blind and something to put the toilet paper on.

With winter we've been driven nuts by icy water from one tap and burning water from the other - you want lukewarm, you put the plug in and mix.

Sooooo we bought a little mixer tap off ebay - brand new, $19, thought we'd put that on one of the taps and cap off the other tap. Good, right? Wrong.

The sink (enormous beige ceramic thing) is so ancient and the taps on it were so seized up it broke when we tried to get the taps off. Quite spectacularly broke, in fact. Totally unsalvageable.

Also, the waste under the sink turned out to be an old lead pipe with a massive crack through it, which explains all the mould under the vanity. The vanity itself is a homemade '50s special, complete with little round flyscreen windows, rusted metal handles, floorboard shelves, white paint that has self-antiqued, and a blue mottled laminate top with no edge stripping. Can you spell U-G-L-Y?

So we've siliconed the sink back together so it is at least useable for now, and after many phone calls we now have to go to Adelaide in 2 weeks to pick up a nice new cheapar$e 310x610 melamine vanity (can't go fancier, it would clash with the blue floral tiles in there - but still pushing $400). The floor under there is untiled in a 250x1200 patch so we need to put in a 250x600 infill cabinet (another $50) as there's no way I'm retiling the floor in there.

On the upside, now I have a good excuse to actually tile the splashback in there - formerly a blue/grey/black LINOLEUM monstrosity - and after the new vanity is in there'll be a 50cm gap to get to the toilet, not the current 40cm one. Which means if I rent the house out I will be able to get a *cough* larger class of tenant :) And we can still use our nice new mixer tap on the new sink!

Always good to know that noone in our household is wider than 40cm :D

We were tossing up redoing the bathroom but have always been put off by how disruptive it would be, as well as the expense. Now it'll be a job for either the new owner or a between-tenants job if we keep it. Meanwhile the bathroom gets blessed with the cheapest stuff we can get away with because it is so ugly and we KNOW it needs replacing with good stuff.

Oh, the joy of small upgrades that turn into much more expensive large upgrades ...
 
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So what did you put the toilet paper on Elf? We have a dilemma at the moment as we are installing a toilet next to a glass shower screen with no wall on the other side. Would be uncomfortable stretching around to hang it on the back wall so what can we get to put the TP on? :(
 
We have the loo roll holder attached to the glass shower screen but it was done when the shower screen was measured and the holes for the holder drilled by the shower screen company before installation.

If the screen is already there, what about those nifty hangers where you stick them on the glass and then pull a little strip to remove them.

Or, you can get nifty suction fittings these days that look pretty good, instead of looking really bad.
 
I'm not a very nifty consumer Wylie. :D Where would I go to source these products? The screen will actually be new but I thought it would look a bit strange hanging off the glass? Thanks, :)
 
A very cheap and nasty regular chrome toilet paper holder, stuck to the massive and hideous old vanity with screws. I find it rather incredible that the previous owners didn't have ANYTHING to put toilet paper on besides the window ledge :eek:

When the vanity goes we'll probably get a (cheap and nasty again) plastic self-adhesive one and stick it to the wall. Walls are the 50cm thick 100 year old stone variety and are hell to get screws into so self-adhesive is the way to go on these. Wouldn't look good on glass though. Actually they are pretty ugly fullstop, I have one at my old house - 130 year old 50cm thick stone walls again.

Can you get toilet roll holders with suction cups to put on glass? We bought a chrome shower caddy doodat from Bunnings a while back (as in, 6 months ago not last century lol) to put the shampoo and conditioner in (instead of on the edge of the bath where the toddler can get them) and the suction cups on it are incredibly powerful and have this chrome locking mechanism on, nothing like the pathetic rubber suction cups I was expecting. It actually looks pretty classy, very out of place in there :D
 
It looks pretty good on the glass. It has two small screw holes. The problem will be when we need to change the toilet roll fitting, but at least with two holes, we should be able to change it and find another holder that will fit at least one of the holes.

I would guess most good bathroom shops would have a big selection, and Howard Storage World would have some (they have everything else you could think of :)).

Of course, the other old standby is the chrome spare toilet roll holder where you slip three or four rolls one on top of each over over a big chrome spike and use the top roll as your main roll. This would have to be better than trying to reach around and grab the roll off the top of the cistern :eek:.

What you save on fittings, you would end up spending at the chiropractor.
 
Oh, the joy of small upgrades that turn into much more expensive large upgrades ...

Oh, yes. Watch out.

Once I had a kitchen where it was a real pain to get into the spice cabinet. So the annoying spice cabinet turned into a $300 cabinet. That was so good that we continued by building a new $60K kitchen. The builders were so fantastic that we decided to keep them around and did a further $300K remodel.

Mr Amadio still refers to it as the spice cabinet house.
 
That looks like the same suction cups i have on my shower caddy - I wouldn't be surprised if it'll hold the weight of your son :D (ok, ok, it says 15kg, but close enough)
 
cheapar$e 310x610 melamine vanity (can't go fancier,

have you tried the renovation dept shops, or liquidators? i bought last week and very nice ceramic top 900w, two pack double cupboard and 3 drawers (with stainless handles) for around $465 on special.

$400 for a cheapie laminate job sounds expensive.
 
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