Posh!

Before I go on to tell you about my spiffy new wet room, I'd like to plug my second blog, Still Life. It's where I can post and write about stuff that interests me as a Quaker, without tangling it up with my knitting stuff. Not that the two things are separate, but the audiences might be different :)

How will I keep up two blogs when I have trouble updating one? Only time will tell ;)

When I moved in here (nearly a year ago - it seems like yesterday!), my bathroom had a bath with an electric shower over it. This was no good to me, as I needed a walk-in shower like the one I was leaving. For reasons that I still don't understand, my Housing Officer announced that, in order to have the new house released to me, I would have to sign a waiver agreeing that I would not ask for a shower cubicle.

My first thoughts were that this was at least immoral, and probably illegal, but she would not budge, so, making my feelings very clear as I did so, I signed the waiver.

After about six months of being sponge-bathed by my carers, with the occasional hair-wash (hanging my head over the bath whenever my vertigo wasn't too bad), I decided that I had waited long enough for the Housing Officer to change her mind, and contacted my Occupational Therapist.

Thanks to her, within a few weeks, there were (very nice and friendly) workmen in my bathroom taking out my bath :)

We thought they would be putting in a large walk-in cubicle like I had in the old house:

Sorry it's so dark, but you can just about see the waist-high cubicle and the width of the area behind it.

It soon became clear that they were actually turning my already sizeable bathroom into a wet room! Apparently it is no longer protocol to put in cubicles, as wet rooms are so much easier for clients and carers alike. They gave me a bigger shower curtain and rail, a new portable screen to protect the carers' clothes if they wished to stand behind it, a new shower chair, an extractor fan, and some lovely new tiles. That was quite funny, actually - they said that, if they couldn't find matching tiles, they would re-tile the whole area, but I said I'd be happy with a close match, as the tiles are perfectly good. They found the best match they could - plus a border to act as a dado rail, to make the two colours of tiles look deliberate! They were so chuffed about it, and so was I :)

Finally a specialist company came in and laid a non-slip floor. Part of the process absolutely stank (I don't know how they work with it!), but it was soon over, and we just had to wait a few more hours before we could try it out.

I can't begin to tell you how lovely and refreshing it is to be having showers after all those sponge baths. And the bathroom seems enormous :)

Tigger says, "I don't see why you make all this fuss. All you need is a tongue."