It all went a bit wrong today. We had to go to town and decide on all the 'wet furniture' for the build project (toilets, showers, hand-basins) so that appropriate drains can be designed and installed into the concrete slab base.
We weren't ready for these decisions and had kind of figured they were weeks away. It got off to a bad start and cross words were exchanged. All a bit fraught because there is too much choice and neither of us has a particularly developed sense for the aesthetic.
I haven't designed an exotic house - there is so much more wow factor I could have sought. However much I am in awe of architecturally exotic homes I wanted above all for our home to be sound and weatherproof by design, build, and materials. Architecturally exotic home of friends and acquaintances all seem to have issues with leaks. Houses that have well withstood the decades in our culture, climate and geological landscape (earth wobbles) have certain shapes and materials in common and I wanted to stick to those.
The result of that foundation principle is that whole catalogues of modern designed doors, windows, tiles, showers, porcelain etc are not going to sit well in our spaces. Sifting 1000 options to find anything suitable that we agree on didn't start well. The large hardware store environment didn't help. They stock what they stock (and they want to sell it). Our builder had suggested we visit the plumbing supplier with whom he had a trade account. I'd been reluctant; previous experience there told me it would be expensive and confront us with even more unviable designs that would make me regret my unimaginative house, but we went.
Reality and sunshine into a dull day came in the shape of Helen. She started like a mouse but warmed to the possibilities after having handed us about 8 catalogues each a good 70-100 pages of anguish. Despite their tiny showroom she was clear they could order virtually anything and after handling a few samples we carried off our tomes of purgatory and leafed through them over coffee - tearing out pages as we went.
It took only 1 coffee to reach conclusions on house shower, workshop shower, hand-basin (no 'vanity'), 2 small cloakroom handbasins for the toilets, and what style of toilet if not the actual model to get.
Strangely I developed firm views on toilet. Lots of the smoothed out modern designs look (in my view) like industrial wastebins. OK it IS a wastebin but heck the Victorians knew how to make a waste receptacle elegant.....
 |
| You choose... |
Pear-shaped came later when Mr B managed to bend the ignition key for his truck and couldn't use it to get the truck to drive anywhere after that. We had to walk about a 5km round trip to the only locksmith in town for a temporary fix. When we did get the truck going we went straight home, no stops, to fetch the duplicate key (with the fancy programmed electronic chip). There will be another trip to town tomorrow. Sigh.
(I must ring Helen and tell her she saved our relationship.)
Comments
Post a Comment