I'll openly admit that we got in way over our head with this property; we were completely naive in how much work (and money) it was going to take to get it fixed up.
The bathroom in particular has always been a sore point. Not so much because it looked like a German sauna from 1972 gone bad but because it was teetering on the edge of functionality. The shower and plumbing to the shower had such a bad leak that we had to turn the water off to the bathroom when we weren't using it. Taking a bath or flushing the toilet meant that we had to turn the water on and then promptly off when finished; followed by emptying out a rusty casserole dish that the sellers had kindly left behind for us (but had removed from sight during the viewings). Having friends around was a bit of an embarressment; showing them how to operate our bathroom was like something from a Jules Verne novel.
Our trusty plumber has been around for the last two weeks with his team and I'm pleased to say that I got to throw away that rusty dish away yesterday. Not only do I like my plumber because his work is excellent and he's always on time; but because he said "You know, yours is the only bathroom that I've ever worked on that looks better after the first day when it's all torn up." And you know what, he was right. Even having to flush the toilet by dumping buckets of water in the basin is far superior to emptying out the rusty catch-all. Here's how far we've come:
We've come a long way, not quite yet done - but almost there. I'll post the 'finished' photos when we're done with heaps of praise for my awesome plumber and his team.
