It is the downstairs bathroom that we can blame for many of the giant cockroaches that so dearly loved to grace us with their presence. They came from The Hole, which was directly in front of the toilet, positioned so that if you sat on the throne and weren’t careful your foot might end up in it. And forget about standing – you’d be butted (literally) up against the washing machine, and any movement from this position might lead to your left foot slipping into The Hole. The best approach, while standing, would be to take the bog side-on.
A distinguished feature of the toilet was the playful fountain effect when you flushed it. Several holes in the piping made sure that half of the (thankfully clean) water intended to remove your business was actually washed onto the floor instead. Without the full allocation of water coursing its way into the porcelain, a bucket occasionally had to be utilized to submerge and carry away the more stubborn deposits.
The attachment for the washing machine was outdated and dripped profusely when a load of laundry was being done. This same attachment was also used for hand washing, and was positioned directly over the large, rectangular tub – which you can see in the first picture. The original use for this tub was that a grubby user could fill it with water and dunk a bucket in, pouring water over himself in an attempt at cleanliness. I’m sure it was somewhat effective, but in this modern age of showers the bucket system is no longer necessary. Any water coming from the tap – either for hand washing or loose laundry leakage – trickled out a gap in the base of the tub, across the floor and down The Hole.
The door, seen in the first picture, lead to the back yard and was never used. We decided to have it removed and bricked over.
The original room as described above. The black square on the floor is where the washing machine was. Unfortunately you can’t see The Hole from this angle.
Goodbye tub and doors, hello bricks. I don’t know if it’s a Malaysian thing, but everywhere you see brick construction – even in fancy apartments – the top layer of bricks is always on a weird diagonal. Why is that?
BLURGH.
Another large hole is discovered under the toilet. One possible explanation was that it was once a squat toilet, and the hole was never properly filled when the new toilet was added. We’ve been told that the hole has now been filled completely with cement. Hopefully this is the truth.
All prepped for tiling. The funny (not ha-ha funny) thing is, at this stage we haven’t realised that the attachment for the shower mixer has been put in upside-down. Wonderful! This is the first of MANY errors during the bathroom works.
Note the protective cover over the new tiles. Also, that wall is supposed to be all white, not half/half. In the soon-to-be-extremely-frequent words of Mr. Ng, the builder once informed of the issue, “Okay no Problem!”
The tiles have been put in correctly, but probably are damaged. The shower mixer attachment is still upside-down…
Now here’s where we raise our eyebrows. Firstly, the mixer is clearly upside-down. The fact that it doesn’t function properly at this angle notwithstanding, the LOGO is upside-down. That should be the biggest clue, right? Secondly, instead of putting the plate outside the wall it’s been burrowed in. Badly. We argued with the builder, and the upshot is he redid the tiles (again) and put the mixer up the right way. Take another look at that picture. Everything in it is brand new.
But the next day we see the bathroom it’s like this. The plate has been sunk into the tiles (again – inexplicably) and the hand-shower is protruding from the top at and angle that will poke the back of the person showering. So we go and buy a right-angled elbow and give it to the builder. More small arguments. Then they finally do it properly. Having to rip out tiles again.
A small note here. We didn’t take photos of every discrepancy, and I didn’t outline everything that went wrong above, but the new tiles in this bathroom had to be pulled out and redone a total of four times. The same problems happened in every bathroom. In fact, the tiles in the joint bathroom upstairs (which will be in another post) had the tiles changed six times. The master bedroom had the tiles changes five times. To the builder’s credit, he paid for the replacement tiles. Now that we’ve moved back in, there are still incorrect screw-holes in some of the tiles from misplaced items. Most glaringly obvious are the holes left from the bottom of the mirrors, which were originally installed so low that they would only be functional for, in the words of Julian, “Shaving your nipples”.
So now we are in a situation where the bathrooms are functional, but the finishing is terrible. So we’re about to begin what will surely be a very enjoyable process of talking our builder’s price down, and finding someone who knows how to finish bathrooms properly.
Below is the current state of the bathroom, which admittedly is a whole lot better that the original situation. It’s only when you get in close that you see the chipped tiles, the rusted screws and drain cover and fixtures (from pouring corrosive acid to clean the tiles AFTER the fixtures were installed), and the wobbly toilet. As Caroline wrote in a letter to our contractor, “If bathrooms mummified in plumbing tape were in fashion, I wouldn’t complain so much.”
Plants help.