The original bathroom edged out the second floor kitchen to be “worst room in the flat”. I don’t think it had been renovated since the house was first divided, probably 70 or so years before we bought the flat. It’s built on a floor added to the back of the flat, supported on steel beams atop stone walls, themselves built on top of ground floor extensions.

It was a small, dingy, cold, damp room. The shower was a metal cubicle, and every aspect of the room was grim.

On the April 2004 trip we met with our builder and George Nichol, our neighborhood kitchen and bathroom guy. George would supply the bathroom materials according to our design and the builder would install everything. We asked that the room be stripped in order that it could be furred and insulated before installing new plasterboard. A wall vent over the shower stall would help with humidity management.