TOILET TRAUMA

Too much information and none of it of any use! Have you noticed how useless Google searches have become? I’m trying to find the world’s smallest toilet for my downstairs cloakroom and searches bring up everything but. If I ask for toilets with short projections of less than 450 mm then that’s what I want, stupid machine. I don’t want to see anything else!!

Roper Rhodes Zest - the shortest projection toilet around

Hang on, I’m probably jumping the gun a bit here. I haven’t set my search criteria into context and that brings me back to my earlier post bemoaning all things ‘broken’ or in ‘crisis’. I want a new look downstairs loo.

Dear Santa - I'd like a new loo

When you’ve got a room the size of a shoebox, there’s really not a great deal you can do with it except look for ways to make it look bigger than it is. One way to do this is to furnish it in light colours or with fittings smaller than the norm. Honey, I shrunk the bog! If only….

Now it seems that whilst houses are getting smaller and smaller, furniture and fittings are not. You wouldn’t generally give much thought to toilet sizes but get the measuring tape out and just see how far your loo sticks out. Whoa! Mine’s over 50 cms. Who’d have thought it!

That's a pretty big bog

In a room that’s only 1.64 m long, having a toilet projecting over 50 cms is going to leave your knees knocking against the back of the door. Not a problem for short arses like me but anyone with long legs is certainly going to find it cosy.

Any bigger and you'll burn your knees

In a world that claims to have ‘everything’ what it doesn’t have is back-to-wall toilets that project less than 45 cm. I’m guessing that’s because anything less would equal a hole in the ground or one of those continental ‘squatter’ type loos. You know the sort – a couple of foot marks on a ceramic plate with an aperture to aim for. Yuk! Brings back holiday memories of stinking pitstops at French fuel stations where this type of toilet was the norm. Hold your nose and think of England every time you wanted a pee. Let’s hope French lavvies have moved on from that…

Phew!  What a stink!

And whilst the search continues for a compact and bijoux bog, I’ve been keeping warm this week by ripping up flooring, chipping tiles off walls and steaming wallpaper off ceilings. My downstairs cloakroom is no more.

Al fresco lavvies trending now

Burnt up loads of calories nipping upstairs for a ‘jimmy’ and shaved a few quid off the energy bill by generating copious amounts of body heat crow-barring plasterboard off.

Tiles off

After the plumber's visit