Episode 8 - Bathrooms

In this episode about bathrooms, Kate and Jenny delve into everything from taps and toilets to tiles and tanking.

Items mentioned:
- Terrazzo and Zellige tiles, both from Mosaic Factory.
- Microcement
- Tileable shower tray
- Coloured grout
- Lefroy Brooks hardware
- Japanese soaking baths (Ibani)
- Tile sealant
- Concealed thermostat
- Back to the wall cisterns
- Bidet hoses

Chapters

• 0:00 Episode 8 Bathrooms
• 0:41 Episode intro

Transcript

Episode 8 Bathrooms

Jen: [00:00:00] You are listening to rip it up the renovations podcast. hi, I'm Kate. I run the Instagram page, Victorian 

Rathmines. And I'm Jenny. I run the Instagram account, Worker's Cottage.

Kate: This podcast is all about renovation and interiors from the renovator's perspective. We've been through it a few times between us and it hasn't scared us off. In fact 

Jen: we loved it so if you are planning to do up your own home you can expect to hear lots of advice from our own experience along with plenty of tips and inspiration. 

Kate: This episode is all about bathrooms, where Kate and Jenny will delve into everything from taps and toilets to tiles and tanking. 

Episode intro

Jenny: Welcome back to the podcast. Hi Kate. 

Kate: Hi Jen. We're on episode eight. 

Jenny: Wow. Wow. Eight in. Eight in. How did we do that? I know. That's unbelievable. I know. And yet there's like about a million more episodes we could do I think. Oh yeah. 

Kate: Double up on I think all the 

Jenny: ones we've [00:01:00] done so far at least. Yeah. And we are here today to talk about 

Kate: the loo.

The loo. The loo. The toilet. The bathrooms. Everything to do with Pooping, peeing and 

Jenny: washing. Okay, we'll come back to the pooping and the peeing and the washing. But I want to start on my personal favourite topic when it comes to bathrooms and that's tiles. Yeah. Because I think if anyone's out there thinking that I need to upgrade my bathroom, I need to redo it, it's usually tiles, I 

Kate: think.

It is, yeah. This is somewhere where I think we kind of differed a little bit. I love tiles. I appreciate tiles. But then I didn't use them an awful lot in my last house. You don't love them like I do. No, I definitely don't love them like you do. But I do appreciate them, and I like nice tiles. Yeah. I just don't like Kind of cheapy plain tiles or something.

I'd like yours to be a big feature, like terrazzo or something cool like 

Jenny: that. Yeah, go hard or go home, basically, tile wise, is your issue. So, first of all, I think there's a million different styles that we [00:02:00] could choose. I think we'll come back to that. I think the first thing you need to know when you're choosing your tiles for your bathroom is what different materials are there, what's best for a bathroom, what works in a high traffic area, you know, what's waterproof, all that kind of stuff.

There's a whole bunch of different ones. I have cement personally in my downstairs bathroom. Okay, and I have porcelain in my upstairs 

Kate: so Does the quality massively matter? Are they all hard enough that they'll do the job? 

I think pretty much, you want to be careful on your floor 

with 

some ceramic 

tiles, because they're not usually as hard-wearing as porcelain. or tiles that have a glaze. , on them.

Kate: sometimes the real budget stuff can have a very So, it's a really thin glaze or thin coating that if it is a high traffic area you'll start to see wear, you'll start to see a little bit of colour change in those areas. And possibly even like if you've a lot of light in one spot versus another you'll actually see a difference in the colours of the tiles over time.

Jenny: Especially if you've bought tiles where the pattern is printed onto the surface and isn't a colour that is [00:03:00] infused throughout the entire material of the tile. Okay, so 

Kate: when you say clay tiles it's kind of like Another name I've heard is encaustic tiles, so it's kind of like the colour is all the way through.

Yeah. It's not just on 

Jenny: the top surface. Exactly. So the pigment is mixed into the actual material that the tile is, is made from and set from versus you can get tiles and this can be a really good budget option too, especially if it's a low traffic area and you, you know, you see something you really like and And it can be an affordable way to go but it's where basically a pattern is printed on top of the tile and that can wear off and that can bleach down and that can be you can wear over time.

Kate: So if you're going cheap on your tiles, you're better off to maybe keep the 

Jenny: cheap tiles to the walls? Yeah, keep the cheap tiles on the walls. And you're not walking on 

Kate: them and it's not high traffic. And maybe when you're going for floor tiles, if you have to go cheap. Don't go up mad patterns 

Jenny: that might wear too much.

Yeah, don't go up mad patterns because they will wear off in certain areas They're not they're not perfect now You can buy a sealant for a lot of different tiles and it's something you'd rub on [00:04:00] maybe, you know Every few months to a year kind of a thing and that does increase the hardiness But I would say just up the budget a little bit and get some hardier tiles for the floor and be careful of those printed on Patterns.

Kate: Yeah, so we actually had encaustic tiles or those clay tiles on Our kitchen area in our last house, but also in our outdoor path. So there are the Victorian kind of mosaic tiles where you do a checkerboard kind of effect. But you can see that the colour was right through and I suppose that's why they're in outdoor paths.

Because they won't wear over time and you won't start to see fading and stuff. But that's interesting. 

Okay. Yeah. So I, I said I differed from you a little bit when I did my first renovation. I didn't do tiles. I did almost no tiles in my last bathroom.

Yeah, You did a 

Jenny: bit. 

Kate: We had the Victoria Mosaic on the floor. Yeah. Or in Octagon Dodd actually it was. Very kind of, I suppose, Victorian style and then the walls were 

Jenny: micro cement. Yeah, I loved that. And I didn't know that, I didn't even hear of that before your house, so it gives you that kind of polished concrete 

Kate: look almost.

Almost, yeah. [00:05:00] It's almost like a polished concrete and I was kind of trying to make the room, or the en suite that we put in, look like it was the original room, if that makes sense, because it wasn't originally a bathroom. So I wanted to make it look like it was kind of always in the house. So, that's why we went with micro cement walls, I wanted no tiles on the walls, just on the floor.

We had the Victorian Mosaic tile or the Optical Dot tile, , I even did a tileable shower tray. Wow. 

Jenny: So, it was kind of soaking into the joists. So, this is a shower tray that goes below the floor. Exactly. And then you cover it over with your 

Kate: floor material. Okay. Yeah, so either the floor needs to be built up around it with some sort of maybe marine ply or some sort of board.

or you can sink it into the joists. Mm-Hmm. . So when you start off or when the tiler starts off, everything is kind of level and that til of a shower tray has a slight slope in it for allowing the water to 

Jenny: drain. And is there any issue then, do you need to like seal the surrounding joists or anything like that to 

Kate: Yeah, you usually tank like you would for a normal kind of wet room.

So what that means is you kind of like supposed to do a waterproofing almost. Like, it's almost like this plastic paint. Yeah. Black [00:06:00] paint that kind of comes up from the floor up the walls. Yeah. And usually there'll be a tape on any of those joints. Yeah. This kind of tanking tape. It's a kit that comes, usually tilers will do it.

But you'd need to have that whole room tanked like a wet room. Yeah. 

Jenny: And then that micro cement, you had that all the way through on the walls into the shower area. So is that waterproof then on its own? Yeah, 

Kate: it's actually used in swimming pools and everything. Oh, no way. Yeah, on the continent. So I actually bought the micro cement from a place in Spain.

Yeah, but the supplier was from there and it was really inexpensive to buy the stuff, the actual micro cement. And our plasterer did it. Now, standard plasterers may not do this, but he was a kind of a line plasterer. So he was a specialist plasterer and we showed him the stuff and he spoke to the place we bought it from and Spain and you know, he was confident he could do it.

So he actually did the light or the micro cement on the walls. And yeah, it's kind of like that polished concrete. And then you put like the tiles kind of a sealant. And there's different [00:07:00] grades of sealant. That's kind of a. More kind of, I suppose, severe sealant for the shower areas, and then your normal wall is going to have the kind of general sealant.

Just the more sealant that goes on, the slight shine. Yeah, 

Jenny: I was going to ask, there's no, is there, does it have a 

Kate: finish on it? a little bit, a little bit of a kind of a shine in it, but I wouldn't call it shiny. You know, I just, I just kept that kind of sealant to the shower areas. And you didn't really notice it because it was behind glass anyway.

But yeah, that's what I did in my whole bathroom. So your, your 

Jenny: shower then wasn't 

Kate: enclosed? I just did a, a shower screen 

Jenny: or a wet room towel. Yeah, that's what I have in my downstairs bathroom. Walking around, I think it was a 

Kate: 1400mm one. Yeah. And we 

Jenny: walked in around that. Yeah, the exact same thing in my downstairs 

Kate: bathroom.

Yeah, and I was then, that, that tile of the shower chair I mentioned has a drain. And you can get the drain. To any corner or end of it, depending on, you know, the layout of your room. We just had kind of all at the kind of head of the shower, it drained down into that spot. Okay. So it's 

Jenny: just on a slope basically.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have very similar in my [00:08:00] downstairs bathroom. It's not tileable. It's basically a shower tray that just goes at the same level as the rest of the bathroom. Okay, so I It was kind of a cost option really. I just didn't Have and I'd already dug down my downstairs floor So I didn't have much extra to kind of go so I just got a white one that kind of goes with the, the tiles.

And you don't even notice it then when it's the same level. Yeah, although it would be nicer if the tiles were on it. But yeah, you don't notice it because you don't have to step into it. And there's no, you 

Kate: know. And the glass is a natural break as well. Yeah. So you don't kind of, your eye doesn't detect 

Jenny: it as much I think.

Yeah, that's true, that's true. And you only have the glass on one side. And then mine isn't a wet room. But similar to you, I had that kind of sealant in the surrounding areas. Yes. That shower tray is also sloped so the water runoff goes down towards the drain and it's slightly long, like a slightly rectangular kind of shaped shower so it doesn't, a lot of water doesn't splatter out into the front of it.

So I don't need an extra an extra door there. I think that's key, 

Kate: you know and it's, it's something you really need to consider. So a lot of people want [00:09:00] that kind of walk in, wet room kind of shower, but you really need a good splash zone for it, especially now when like, People have pumps in their systems and your shower is pumping out 12 to 20 liters a minute like there's gonna be a lot of water There's gonna be a lot of splashing.

So you have to have like I would say a minimum kind of a thousand millimeters Yeah, absolute minimum, but you will get a little bit of splash with that. I think depending on your shower head but like ideally up to maybe 1, 400 depending on the size of your rain head and the amount of water that's coming out of it because otherwise you'd be mopping your floor all the time.

You're mopping your floor all the time and 

Jenny: you risk, you know, water. The problem is that you risk water seeping through the floor, getting into the floorboards underneath and the joists and things rotting slowly over time and that's obviously not what you want. Yeah. So. So, it's, you don't necessarily need to go full wet room unless you're planning on having one of those showers where they like spring out from the sides and you're full like rain forest and you're just going to have a complete like water bath in your whole, in the whole bathroom.

But yeah, [00:10:00] as you said, about a hundred, a thousand, a thousand millimetres, 

Kate: ideally plus to make sure you're out of the splash zone. And it's not a huge. That's not a huge ask. No, it's not. The 

Jenny: alternative then is, if you don't want that, is just having a raised shower tray that's totally, see it, that's totally closed off so you have a door on either side.

The reason I don't want that and didn't want that is because the space I was working with was so tiny that a fully enclosed shower was just way too much in that space. Yeah. I didn't know real room to open that second door and it would just have felt way too boxed in and way too suffocating. So talking about 

Kate: shower enclosures either closed in or kind of open wet room style Talk to me then about like your thermostat or how do you control the shower 

Jenny: before you get in?

Well, I this is something I would do differently if I was doing it again Because I didn't realize that you can have the thermostat or like the controls that turn the shower on and off and control the heat In a different place to the shower head and I don't wash my hair very often I know that sounds [00:11:00] disgusting, but I just I've got pick curly hair and it's or wavy hair and I don't, I don't wash it every single day.

I wash it maybe every second or third day. And so I love getting into the shower and not getting wet. So I wish I had put my thermostat controls, you know, on the far wall or something like that. So you can turn the shower on and then get into it. Yeah. 

Kate: Yeah. So you've kind of two options here. One is called the concealed thermostat and that's where you've kind of just your dials on the wall at the entry point into your shower.

and the shower head's up at the other end. This obviously requires kind of pipe work and controls to that control and also to the shower head. So it's a little bit more complicated. So if that layout's not already in your bathroom, expect to have to do some plumbing work to put that in. Yeah, 

Jenny: so is it just an extender?

Like 

Kate: an extender? Yeah, well there are pipe works, so I suppose it has to be kind of a, it acts as a kind of a manifold where the pipe work will go into that, then the controls will direct it on again to the shower head. So there's kind of, I suppose, an extra network of pipework. Yeah. And 

Jenny: would [00:12:00] that be a good bit of extra cost or not, if you're already doing you're 

Kate: doing.

Yeah. If you're not doing it, no. Not really. If the stud work is there and the plumber can work around the stud work, great. But if it's not and your walls are plastered and you're just planning to retile your bathroom, yes, then you're looking at maybe chasing out walls and doing new pipework. Yeah. Yeah.

So it's a bigger job if you're not planning a major renovation of the bathroom. The other option is an exposed thermostat, which essentially the controls are directly below the showerhead. And sometimes you can even see the pipe work 

Jenny: from the controls up to the showerhead. Which is a look, and can look really cool, yeah.

Especially if you've nice, if you have really nice sanitary wear and you've bought the nice hardware, then that can look great, yeah. And 

Kate: you were saying you don't like kind of washing your hair every day of the week, and a lot of people are like that where they don't want to use that big rain head shower over their head.

Yeah. Because it gets your hair wet whether you want to or not. Yeah. So some people use the kind of side rail one or the smaller rail one. So an exposed thermostat, one that has the pipe work, sometimes that little handheld one can run up and down that rail with that pipe. Yeah, lovely. So that's actually kind of a tidier option if you [00:13:00] prefer to kind of switch between the rain head and the 

Jenny: handheld.

Yeah, and that's what I have both my jars. I have the rain head overhead and then I have a little hose type thing. Which is so handy for everything from like just a quick little body rinse to like washing my dog. 

Jenny: So if I was doing it again and I was going full bathroom renovation, I would I would choose to have the controls 

Kate: opposite, 

Jenny: on the opposite wall of the rain head.

Yeah. But, in the absence of that, I have found that having the separate handheld shower rail thingamajiggy hose is perfect, 

yeah. 

Kate: Yeah, and also I think the handheld or the separate handheld is key for cleaning the glass. Yes! 100%! So if you have a fixed rain head, you can't clean it. Like, you're kind of throwing buckets of water or whatever.

Like, you can't clean it properly. Yeah. So I would say it's key for kind of, for that glass cleaning. And I will say 

Jenny: for the dog. I just always ask the dog to 

Kate: come down to take a shower sometimes. So I think it's key, even if you do like the big rain heads. I have to be honest, I'm not a major fan of a massive rain head, unless you have massive water pressure.

If you don't have massive water [00:14:00] pressure and you don't have a pump in your house, do not put in a big rain head. Great point. like it will just be spitting on top of you, whereas like, you need that big kind of 15, 17 litres a minute pump to really make that rain head feel any way kind of powerful. That's 

Jenny: a really good point and I will give thanks to my plumber who put a pump, I had to have a pump put into the house anyway just for whatever water pressure 

Kate: we had locally but it does make a huge difference.

Yeah it does. But even But in here you can just, even so the kind of rainheads you can get everything from like six inches or all the way up to 12 inch. That's a bit too 

Jenny: big, that's a lot of water. I've even 

Kate: seen some that are built into the ceiling and it's like almost your whole shower kitchen, like you want 

Jenny: like hotel.

Like how much are you actually getting on your body? 

Kate: So much water waste. I think like six to nine inches is a sweet spot for like shower heads or rain heads. Anything bigger than that is a bit of waste. Yeah, mine 

Jenny: are six and that's plenty. It's plenty, plenty. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so back to tiles, right, because we swerved.

I have a mixture, as I said, of I actually have a mixture of all three. I have cement [00:15:00] in my downstairs bathroom, and they're terrazzo, and they are the pattern goes all the way through, so they're proper terrazzo, which means that it's basically made of a combination of small stones of varying different colours, and varying it's usually quartz or something like that.

And then cement is poured around that, and then it's polished down so you can see It's the pattern of the stone coming through. Chunks of it. Exactly. Lovely. One thing that's brilliant about that, and we spoke about this in the kitchen episode when we were talking about natural stone kitchen countertops, is that if something happens, if there's a minor surface crack, which is super unlikely on a, on a cement tile, but if something, you know, there's a stain that gets into it or something like that, you can polish it out.

Kate: . Brilliant. And also I think when you have those solid tiles, or kind of clay tiles, acoustic tiles, or that kind of terrazzo cement tile, you have no blank edge when you cut the tile.

Yeah. Which means if you have a really good tiler, you can actually expose the edge and you have no horrible tile trims. 

Jenny: Yeah, it's very hard to find a 

Kate: nice tile trim. I mean, there are tile trims, don't get me wrong, they're fine, like sometimes they're just I don't a necessity, you just [00:16:00] need them. But if I could avoid tile trims at all, I would.

And so like, even when you're planning out your tiling, plan it that it goes to a corner where you just don't need a trim. You're going wall to wall, or you're going floor to ceiling, or whatever it is, or you're going up to some sort of timber trim or whatever higher up. But just try not to have tile trims, because they never look nice.

Jenny: One place I think it's always worth having a tile trim is At building a recessed shelf into the wall of your shower. Yes. Nothing worse than moving into your brand new house and your bathroom looks amazing and then you just have this pile of like shampoo bottles and whatever, soap or whatever else like in the corner.

Yeah. And you don't want to get one of those kind of. Metal racks. Yeah. That hang over your shower. Yeah. Yeah. So I would always, always, always in every shower I would build in a recessed shelf into the wall. Yeah. For your. 

Kate: Do you know what I've actually seen a lot done now? Rather than a recess, say rectangle inside your shower area, just a ledge, the whole length of the shower area.

Oh, okay. [00:17:00] Either at the top end if that's the more hidden end when you come into the bathroom or at the kind of side edge or whatever. But rather than it just being a pocket, it's just a ledge the whole length of the shower and I think it looks really slick and it becomes a natural kind of break in your tile as well if you're If you're splitting between two different tiles.

You could 

Jenny: have micro cement on top and tile it. Yeah, but if you 

Kate: have a tile like yours, you could literally miter the edge of that shelf. So that's 

Jenny: what I've done in the downstairs. And then you've got no trim. Which 

Kate: is beautiful. Then it's just tile to tile to tile. It'll look so slick 

Jenny: I think. I do have tile trim upstairs.

So my upstairs bathroom I used the, I'm going to butcher the pronunciation, Zeliga or Zeliga tiles. I think it's actually Zeliga. Is this 

Kate: Zeliga? Z L L I G E. Z E L L I G E tiles, yeah. There you go. 

Jenny: Which are, which I love in a bathroom. I love them in a bathroom. And they need very little grouting. Yeah. Because you're supposed to place them really really close together.

So they're perfect in a bathroom. I love them. But I do have just a very, they're white, so I just have a [00:18:00] plain white tile trim on the side of them and my chair. And I, even I resent that. I just don't like 

Kate: a tile trim. I, I don't love tile trim, but I would always be kind of of the school of thought that like, match it to the tile as much as possible.

When people say, well you can get these lovely brass tile trims, I'm like, no, like I don't want to see the tile trim. Yeah. So match it to the tile as much as possible. And I know people will say the metal ones are better than the plastic ones or whatever, but I honestly think the closer the tile, the better.

Jenny: Sorry. I hear, I, yeah, I like the metal trims. I do like them. I think if, if you've a bit, it's a nice way to bring in a bit of, Brass. I think I exclusively like the brass ones actually. I don't know if I like the chromy ones. Definitely don't like chromy ones. 

Kate: You can actually get all these kind of sandy coloured ones and everything now.

There's actually quite a good range of them. 

 Mentioned as well, when you were talking about Zelica. I call them Zeliche. I'm obviously wrong. I don't know how to pronounce it.

Anyway, those tiles, you talked about grout as well. They can have very tight grout lines. Which I love. [00:19:00] Yeah, and Greg's a bit of a tricky one sometimes in the bathroom because You might want to match the tile, but if the tile is very light in colour, your grout will go off colour, especially if it's on the ground.

And the answer 

Jenny: to that, if you have to do that, is the magic sponge. You know those magic sponges that you buy? I don't even know where, they're in like, Mr. Price, and Yeah, yeah, but Smiley face on! Yeah! It cleans, I don't know what it's made of, I don't want to know what it's made of, they are absolutely unreal.

Really? Oh my god, they're unreal. That's what I use on my grout. All I use on my grout. 

Kate: But grout You can obviously match the tile, you could do a contrasting grout, and now there's mad colour grout. I 

Jenny: love this look so much. I think it's so fab. I actually saw it a few weekends ago, I was down in Kilkenny, and there's a lovely little cafe in the centre of Kilkenny, and what they've done is really just plain, normal, white tiles in their bathroom with a bright yellow grout, and it looks so cool.

I love it. So you can get all different kinds of colour grout, and that is, I think this is such a brilliant way to bring in [00:20:00] A really strong look because, you know, you can get normal white tiles or any colour tiles and patter than any way you want. Like if they're rectangular, you could have a box pattern, you could have a chevron pattern, you can have whatever, you know.

But bringing in colour grout, it just completely elevates it up. Like it's only notches. 

Kate: Yeah, a really basic shape tile. Very low cut. Yes, grout doesn't cut very much. Really low cut. So yeah, that's a good way of elevating a very basic kind of white tile or white subway tile or something like that. But yeah, I've seen it more and more recently and I think it's really cool.

I love it. I've seen blue tiles with, like you said, that kind of yellowy, sunny yellow mustardy grout and it's fab. Yeah. 

Jenny: It's a really cool way of doing it. It's also brilliant on the floor because it's, like, basically anything other than white grout is a blessing because it's not going to get dirty. You don't have to clean it.

White grout, obviously you do have to clean it pretty regularly and it just will get dirty. Like, I'm just telling you now, if you're thinking about it it will get dirty. I find white grout, even on walls and 

Kate: showers. If you're a fake tan wearer, I think it will discolor. Like washing your makeup or whatever.

Yeah. tan or anything in the shower it will discolor that white grout. Yeah. And I'm [00:21:00] usually like, I haven't tried the smiley face scrubby sponge, but I might, but I think floor, mid grey grout or darker. Yeah. Otherwise your head will be 

Jenny: wrecked. Just save yourself. Like I know the white looks amazing when it goes down in the photos.

It is not going to look like that for more than a week. It is a nightmare. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, there's loads of different colors available. You can actually buy grout. Okay. So, if you're not, if you don't want to do a whole re grouting on your wall or your floor or whatever, you can buy pens to basically colour.

Now, there's a bit of effort in that because you have to literally, like, get down on the floor and, like, 

Kate: cover it up. Depending on the tile size you yeah. A lot of grout lines. True, 

Jenny: Okay, that's tiles. Yeah, 

Kate: what about toilets? No, so, ceramics in general. So your toilets, your cabinets. Your sanitary ware. Yeah, so your toilets, your bath, your sink, like, does it matter quality wise here?

I wonder in ceramics sometimes, like it's ceramic, it's hard enough, it's white, you can bleach it, you can scrub it, like Like, I'll throw 

Jenny: this one out to listeners, have you ever had a [00:22:00] broken toilet? Broken toilet? Yeah, a broken toilet, yeah, but like, the white never comes off No, the white never comes off, like 

Kate: old period houses like that, they might still have the same toilet since the house has been built in Yeah 1880 something or 1910 or whatever And we have in some of the houses that we've viewed, and like, the toilets are fine.

And it's, 

Jenny: it's certainly not something I considered spending extra money on. Yeah. Because, they just last forever. Like, that stuff is so hardy. So, I didn't bother. 

Kate: The only thing I would be kind of led by when it comes to toilets anyways, the shape. If I like the overall shape. And it's not like, overly big in the space.

Yeah. You know? So there's obviously different styles of toilets. Like, the traditional toilets, where you can kind of see the pan and the cistern separate. And they're connected by kind of maybe, Like a chrome pipe or something like that and this 

Jenny: is where the money comes in because I think that that is worth spending money On the connecting hardware not necessarily, you know, the porcelain or the ceramic of the of the toilet itself But the pipe work that goes in between it.

It's really worth investing there if you're having that on display But 

Kate: [00:23:00] recently I find toilets and toilet toilets more and more confusing when you look at them so you've obviously like the traditional kind of cistern and pan separate connected by this pipe then you have new ones which are like back to wall you have closed coupled you have 

Jenny: wall hung yeah what do you have in yours I have back to wall and I I do feel I have some strong feelings on it because I don't really like wall hung and I don't really like the cistern in wall yeah the closed cistern because First of all, I don't feel like it looks different enough for it to be worth it to me.

And second of all, if something goes wrong with my toilet, I want it to be very easily accessible and fixable, you know, as quickly as possible, as easy as possible. So if you have the, the enclosed cistern, the cistern in the wall. and you, something goes wrong, which it does, like, you know, something happens, yeah, exactly, even airlock or something, anything, then you have to remove a section of your wall and I just don't want to bother with that and I don't [00:24:00] think it's worth it, I don't find a cistern ugly enough, like the back to wall toilets, they look fine.

Kate: So you have a few different kind of terminology you might come across here, so closed coupled is where your pan and your cistern are somewhat connected by ceramic, 

Jenny: yeah, your pan being the bit you sit on and the cistern being the upright bit at the back where the water where 

Kate: the water is. So then what you're saying back to wall, you kind of have the ceramic that shrouds, fully shrouds the pipe work, so your soil pipe, your big, what is it, like is it a four inch pipe that comes out, or is it a six inch pipe that comes out of your toilet?

So that soil pipe, like completely shrouding or completely covering that, so your back to wall or fully shrouded toilet. Then you have wall hung, which means the pan is up off the floor and bolted into the wall. Now I had this. And against everything that I thought in my head, I went for it because I was convinced by some bathroom person it was the right option for my, for my bathroom layout.

And we had this kind of funny stud wall, so he's like, Oh, you can put a concealed cistern in there and a wall on the toilet, way better for space in a small bathroom. And I said, Oh, I'm just [00:25:00] not a big fan of those wall on ones, but I went with it. Anyway. It was an old house, it was an old wall, we didn't put extra, kind of, stone work into the wall.

The toilet was creaky every time someone sat in it. It wasn't going to fall off the wall, but it didn't sound very nice when you sat in it. And it creaked. That would give me a complex. Yeah. And secondly, the cistern was in the wall and the button, the flusher button, like, more often than not, didn't work properly or half flushed or 

Jenny: something.

So annoying. They're unreliable, those things. Oh, 

Kate: they're so annoying. time and time and time again, I will go, you know, pan on the floor, toilet on the floor, maybe close cupboard, and shrouded so you don't see the pipework, but I want a lever flusher. Yeah, absolutely. All day long. Yeah. Don't give me any of those stupid buttons that break after 

Jenny: about two weeks.

Yeah, because there is always plastic in them, and plastic always breaks. Plastic always breaks. It's just so frustrating. Yeah. So the, the trade off then. With having it all out in the open, basically, is that you just have a bit of a bulkier toilet and a bit more ceramic. But, the way toilets are made now, like, it's not [00:26:00] much extra, it's, they don't look bulky.

Like, I'll, there's, you know, have a look at my Instagram, or both of our Instagrams, you'll see pictures of our toilets. I don't even know why she's got an extra toilet for Instagram. Bulky. Nice, but don't worry about it. It doesn't often get a spot in the group. But but they're not bulky, they're really sleek these days.

And I just think it's so worth it just to avoid any 

Kate: potential issues. 

 I would say, save your money, if you like the shape of a cheap small one, go for 

Jenny: it. Just go for it, just make your life easier, don't bother with 

Kate: the cistern one. Don't do a wall hung in my experience. Concealed cisterns are not all they're cracked up to be. We're very aligned on that one. 

Jenny: Back then, so that's the, the kind of ceramic Where, but back to the hardware.

Oh 

Kate: yeah. I loved this. You, yeah. Love. This is a big topic for you. I love, so we actually spoke about this when we were both renovating. You were like, I love tiles. And I was like, I love bra wear. Yeah. Shower thermostat. Like the taps in the wall. Like I spent so much time looking at them and I landed on a brand called La Freud Brooks.

Now there's lots of other ones. [00:27:00] I love Burlington. I love Samuel Heath. They're just like solid brassware beautiful details they're almost like the watches of the toilet world they 

Jenny: have all this you have a Rolex battery 

Kate: and like there's more and more kind of coated brassware coming out now you know with different brass finishes and black finishes and whatever and Sometimes I think when you go to the lower budget end of those finishes, you can start to see them peeling all the time.

So do kind of be aware of that. Going cheap and going, kind of, coated. 

Jenny: And what, yeah, coated is the key word there. Because I think you can, you know, you don't have to splash out on this stuff. I don't think it has to be too expensive. Unless you really, you know, unless you're like Kate and you have a, you're a bathroom hardware aficionado.

Collectors items in there. Which do look unbelievable. Yeah. But. You can still get good stuff at the lower end, but I think you're spot on there that coated is the word to look out for because it can start peeling off and it can discolour quite quickly especially, you know, these are things you use every day, like, so they're heavy usage items, [00:28:00] so just look out for coated.

Kate: I would say if you're going to go cheap, I would stick to chrome. If you're gonna go extra, like, 

Jenny: cheap. Just not the glossy stuff, not the shiny chrome. Well, I actually 

Kate: love a shiny chrome on all my But 

Jenny: yours wasn't cheap, yours looked incredible. 

Kate: Yeah, but chrome is chrome and it's gonna be, like, hard wearing.

And I actually think, mark my words, chrome's making a comeback. Brass in bathrooms is on the way out, guys. Unless it's, patinas or something. But I think these gold finishes are on the way out and you're gonna start to see chrome and brush deal a lot more. I think what I'm reacting 

Jenny: to is the Cheap, nineties coated chrome stuff.

Yeah. Like fake chrome that that isn't actually a metal. Yeah. 

Kate: You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. It looks like tin like foy kind 

Jenny: of thing. Yeah. Foil covered stuff. I think that's what I'm having such a strong reaction to. You're right. Every other kind of chrome is like, I think more traditional 

Kate: and Chrome goes well together, traditional shapes, 

Jenny: and that kind of chrome is, it's less crummy.

The real chrome is less crummy than the big chrome, crummy chrome, chrome . [00:29:00] But the actual metal hardware, it's not. It's not, it's not too silvery. It's not, you know, it's not fake looking. It's 

Kate: not oily looking like, not like a 

Jenny: spray paint. I think I made my point while there, didn't I? Yeah. Chromey chrome.

Kate: Chrome, chrome. Don't do chromey. Just don't get too chromey chrome. Just get chromey chrome. Yeah. So, 

Jenny: anyway, that's what we think. 

Kate: You heard it here first. Chromey chrome is on the way back in. Which is real chrome, not the fake chromey chrome. Don't get fake chromey chrome. Which I, I love, yeah, I love really high quality brassware.

I'm like, you'll see. It's a kind of uncoated brass that kind of patinas over time. You see coated brass, now it's solid brass, but it's coated like this P V D coating, which means it won't patina, it'll just stay glossy brass. Patina 

Jenny: means those little marks and scuffs over time that are just part of like you have to 

Kate: polish out on brass, you know, like an old brass doorknob.

Or you don't, cause it looks great. Or you don't, yeah, yeah, I love it. I love that kind of patina. I think. And then like another finish, if you really hate the chrome y chrome, but you like the navy silver, there's one called Nickel. And [00:30:00] that's a very traditional fitting, it's like an ever so slight, like, tinge of gold.

Yeah, I really like that look. I think that can be just a little bit step above, kind of, standard chrome, but really really nice and traditional. It's a softer 

Jenny: look, it goes with everything, so if you do have brass in other areas, it picks up on that and it's not too, it doesn't clash too much. 

Kate: I really like that.

So another big area, Baths, freestanding, built in, small baths, big baths. 

Jenny: What do you think? So my dream is a freestanding bath separate to the shower for many reasons. Now, this is not what I have because I didn't have the space for it. But if I did have the space for it, I'd have a freestanding, clawfooted bath.

Or even maybe a copper bath. I think they look unbelievable. Oh, 

Kate: amazing. Soaking tubs. Oh, and I'd have it separate to the shower. They're kind of like the shoe, what do you call the ones with the big kind of slipper back. Yeah. You can lie back and it dips down. So 

Jenny: comfortable. Because I actually prefer like a shorter, rounder bath than a long one.

Yeah, a deeper bath. Because I find, because I'm not that tall so I find I like lying out in a bath and I'm just kind of slipping. Yeah, all the time you've got my feet. You're going to sit up. Yeah, because I'm [00:31:00] reading. Pretty much, yeah. I'm reading, I'm drinking my wine, I'm eating my chocolate. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I I don't like, like, slipping down too far into the bath. I want something to kind of push my feet against and, like, have me sitting upright. So those, if you do have a really small space and you want a freestanding bath, you can get these Japanese soaking tubs. Yeah. They can be really tiny but deep.

So you, you know, you do, you are submerged in them. They're so beautiful. I actually looked at 

Kate: these for my last, our bathroom that I said we had the whole long toilet in, it was a small bathroom, it was like 2 by 2 meters. Yeah. So we didn't fit a lot in there. But I really wanted a freestanding bath. So I ended up, the smallest freestanding bath that I could find.

That had a decent kind of solid bottom to shower inside on, you know a nice flat bottom and it was a solid material. It wasn't like a hollow bath. It was 1550, so 1500, so 15 millimeters long. That's short! Mine is 1700 and It was lovely and like, it was traditional style. But I looked at these Japanese soaking tubs, and there were some of them that were actually a meter fully circular, like one half millimeter, but round, so it's wider, it's deeper than a standard bath, sorry, [00:32:00] wider and deeper than a standard bath, but it's shorter.

So it's kind of, it's a different space, it would kind of maybe tuck into a corner of a bathroom. But there was a brand I was looking at called Inbani, I N B A N I, yeah, you said them too before. Oh my god, so beautiful. But they were like, Yeah. And that was the only thing I could find at the time that was any way kind of close to the size I needed.

But now there seems to be a lot more out there. There's loads of them. And even built in versions of them. I've seen a lot of 1200 pads. Yeah. So there's lots of options for small little baths. Yeah. And a lot of the time people wanna put in a bath 'cause probably, you know, they use it maybe a couple of times a year or like you, they don't want so times a week

But, but like, like you, they want kind of maybe shorter, deeper one. They don't need the kind of huge bath taken over the space. Or people want, 'cause they've kids and they just want a bath Kids. Yeah. And they think, you know, I don't use the shower or I don't use the bath myself, but like, can't not have one in the house, you know, because they're 

Jenny: so handy.

Like, I love it. I, so I have a shower over my bath in the upstairs bathroom because it's so [00:33:00] tiny that's the only way I could configure the space and still get a bath because I really wanted a bath. And I have no issue with that, like I love it that way, it works out for me, that's perfect. My, the reason I, I would have a freestanding bath with a separate shower is more for kind of longevity.

If I was living in this house. You know into my twilight years and mobility was becoming a bit of an issue or something like that For whatever reason then stepping in and out of the bath every day isn't it's not ideal That's actually the sole reason other than that a shower worker bath is perfect.

Yeah 

Kate: But like I was saying in my old bath We were trying to get something that had a nice flat bottom that it didn't roll up the sides We weren't slipping on the sides. So try and get one that has a nice flat bottom. Look at the actual flat area in the bath, rather than the overall length. 

Jenny: And also for the back part that you'll be, you know, leaning against, make sure that you've got a nice angle on that.

Yeah. Because some of them can just be a bit too upright and it's not that comfortable, like you want a nice sloping angle, and a lot of baths you can get these days, they'll have that sloping angle just on one end, which is really nice, really comfortable to be sitting in. 

Kate: [00:34:00] So, probably the last bit of ceramic is your sinks or your basins.

Jenny: I feel really strongly about basins. Yeah. You have countertop, right? Yeah, I have countertop. So this is basins that basically, they don't, they're not sunk into the countertop. They're sitting on top. And I was, I loved the basins from the London Basin Company. They are these, I mean, they would be the focal point of your bathroom.

They're these most beautifully designed. Basin sinks. They look absolutely stunning. I mean, if you had nothing else in your bathroom, one of those would be unreal. They're incredibly expensive, but there's lots of similar styles available on Etsy. You'll find loads of handmade sinks on Etsy. So I got, my downstairs sink is a pink concrete, big basin sink that I got made on Etsy by a guy called Roberto Taranti.

And it was, it wasn't cheap, but it wasn't too expensive. I think it was maybe in the low 300 euro range, which is not a cheap sink, but it's not a really expensive sink. And then my [00:35:00] upstairs sink is a bowl. It's a little shaped marble thing that I also got on Etsy from a company called McCarran Marble for a song.

I think I paid 169 for it and it's pure marble because it had a tiny, tiny chip in the upper rim of it and they sent me a repair kit with it. Like it's just, literally it's invisible. You can't see it. It's a tiny, tiny little chip. But it was buns. So it's worth trawling. Absolutely. Etsy for And Etsy is great for 

Kate: stuff like that.

Jenny: Yeah, so what you do is you get a vanity and you, you'll, hopefully your plumber will do this, but they'll need a saw to, to drill a hole in the top of your vanity and then you stick your But some of them you don't need a vanity. Yeah, at all, or anything underneath them. You just have a bottle cap underneath, and that's it.

And this is where you're back to if you have a nice hardware. That's great for a small bathroom, right? Yeah, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. Because for it, we'll come back to vanities. Strong feelings on vanities. 

Kate: Hang on for 

Jenny: vanities. But, because you don't necessarily need one. If you've got storage in another part of your bathroom, you know, maybe you have it built into the wall, or you've got a nice cabinet in the corner, or something like that, if you don't need a bathroom vanity underneath.[00:36:00] 

Then I think that bolts straight on to the wall and if you have that really nice hardware and pipe work coming out underneath it, I think that looks stunning. 

Kate: So beautiful. Yeah, all you might need is a small little shelf underneath or maybe toilet rolls or whatever. If it's a, you know, a downstairs WC or understairs toilet that you don't even have the space.

But yeah, I love them, love them. I had some countertop basins as well, but I've also put in a few for client homes recently, undermount. And I actually think they can look quite tidy. Yeah, they do look Quite nice for traditional kind of. Look vanities. Do you know that you don't see it? So under mount is where it's kind of bolted in underneath the vanity.

. But I do love a countertop basin, and we did it on our last vanity as well. I love them. I think they look so great. Yeah, they're nice and they're easy to plumb.

Kate: Yeah. And they're tidy. Easy to clean around. Yeah. But I, I do think you can go like with, mounted taps, like so they're mounted on your vanity, but I think wall mounted taps go great. Yeah, 

Jenny: they do. With those as well. Agreed. Yeah, and my, all my taps are wall mounted and I just think it's, they just come out over the basin.

And 

Kate: your [00:37:00] heights right. Yeah. You know, make sure you leave the right amount of space in between your countertop basin and your kind of wall mounted tap, and it's high enough that you're not kind of bending down to wash your 

Jenny: hands or whatever. And if you're redoing your bathroom, you, so one thing that I had downstairs.

Was, I wanted wall mounted taps, but there wasn't quite enough depth in the wall space to, to put them in, so I have a little bit extra, I kind of have a dummy wall on the bottom half of my downstairs, on that wall, you know, where the, where the sink is along, to accommodate the, the wall mounted tap and the plumbing that goes in behind that.

But only halfway up, and then it gives me a nice little shelf. A ledge. Oh, nice. Little ledge. It's only, is it about five? To seven meters deep, maybe, or meters, centimeters deep, something like that. And that's a really nice break, because I've tiled up that far, and then I have a separate colour, and, and, And no tile trim.

And no tile trim! Even better, see, two words. 

Kate: Exactly. Avoid the tile trims, at all costs. Well, no, if you can, if you can. It's not the end of the world. But, you know, if you can, why not? So, yeah, let's say some [00:38:00] basins. One thing we haven't spoken about, and you know we've done an episode on lighting, but I just think Bathroom lighting is a little bit of a con sometimes as well.

Now I know it needs to be a certain IP rating, so that's the kind of splash proofness or whatever. But what I found a great hack, because I found bathroom lights so expensive, is I actually search for outdoor lights. 

Jenny: Because they are IP rated for rain. Yeah, they're the same IP rating. Great idea. 

Kate: And way cheaper.

Great idea. So my wall lanterns in my last bathroom were actually outdoor lanterns. 

Jenny: Wow, that's so clever. Yeah And then lighting I would say you're you know Your contractor is gonna want to stick in a lot of spotlights and that's fine You can put them in but you need wall lights on either side of your bathroom mirror Like you 

Kate: just you have to yeah Oh, and also one thing that I wired to my wall lights last time was a 

Jenny: heat 

Kate: pad for my hair So you can get heated mirrors, but I think these heated mirrors for the lights will dinner They are not for me.

They never really look great. You can buy the heat pads, I bought [00:39:00] mine on Amazon. And they just wire it straight to your wall lights and when you turn on your wall light your heat pad comes on and then it's a de mystery. So you never get a fogged mirror. That is brilliant. I would love 

Jenny: to 

Kate: go back and do that.

Yeah, well it's, it's something that's so easily done if you're wiring lights anyway. Yeah. But I would 100 percent recommend it. 

Jenny: Speaking of those heat pads.

One thing you can do in a bathroom that is really handy is you can buy electric heat mats for under your floor. So if you're getting your tiling redone, for example, and this is a great idea for a couple of reasons. One is that you have a lovely heated floor, you know, it's really nice walking on a heated floor after getting out of your shower.

Two is that it dries your floor very effectively, so if you do have a bit of an extra splash area or something like that, this is really effective for drying it. So it's basically just this mesh kind of electric mat that obviously you need to get wired in. It'll go under your tiles. You need a thin kind of layer of screed underneath that.

And then you've heated flooring in your bathroom. And it's a really handy one to put into such a small area. If the floor is coming up anyway, the tiles are coming up anyway. [00:40:00] You don't necessarily need it for the heat because you do need a radiator in your bathroom. And there's no reason for that not to be a heated tile rack.

I mean, it's just, that's just a no brainer. There's no, you know, it should be. Or I think you had a lovely, you did, you did look for your books. Towel rail that came out over the existing radiator, wasn't it? No, it was 

Kate: all one actually. It was a towel radiator, but it was a column radiator. Yeah. That had the kind of heated pipe that ran around the column radiator.

So quite our traditional style, but but it basically heated towel, we needed it. Yeah. Rather than just a heated towel rail. Just for the bt use for the size of our room. The ceiling height up there was three meters, so like it would've been freezing with just a tail rail. Unless we have like an absolute whopper tail rail or something.

Or two. You could put in two wouldn't. Yeah, but I would've. I would 100 percent do the heated mats on the floor this time. Yeah, 

Jenny: it's such a lovely 

Kate: feeling to be out here. Just a bit of comfort, and like you said, drying off the floor very quickly. It's ideal. 

But yeah, so, hmm. I don't know, I'm afraid to even mention this, but like The last topic of the day [00:41:00] 

Jenny: Vanities Oh, fucking vanities Bathroom vanities Excuse me, 

Kate: we'll beat that out We said this before, but the greatest racket of all time An absolute 

Jenny: racket Why are they so expensive?

They're basically just chipboard pieces of crap that cost 600 quid plus Oh, I mean Why? At a minimum, 

Kate: at a minimum I've seen like bathroom vanities be like 1500, 2000 I actually saw one in a big bathroom shop recently, 

Jenny: six grand and they're no different to like an Ikea kitchen 

Kate: unit It was like a flat pack.

Why? It's outrageous. It was a flat pack with quartz on top. It was a flat pack. I just don't understand the extent that they are. I understand that they need to have like, you know a bit of waterproofness. But once that waterproof edge peels or it gets damaged, that's still chipboard underneath there. It's swelling like anything else.

So I just don't understand the cost. It's just like a price fixing in my mind. 

Jenny: So we both, we approached this from two different angles. You bought a beautiful 

Kate: Wash stand. I bought an antique wash stand for 150 Euros [00:42:00] on adverts. 

Jenny: Not intended to be a bathroom 

Kate: vanity at all. No, I, but I just stand at the top 'cause it had a French polish, which wouldn't be great for water splashing obviously.

So we just signed it back to bare wood on the top and we just put a worktop oil. Yeah. And matched worktop oil and that was waterproof. That's perfect. And then, like you said earlier, we got, you know, the plumber to just drill down for the waste pipe work was inside it. And then we just out to the wall.

Yeah. And through the wall. That was it. 

Jenny: Jacked on. That is the most you might need to do on something like that. Is just get, drill a hole in the top and maybe, you know, through the drawers in the back or something. Yeah. Get the pipes out and 

Kate: then you're done. Yeah. You will have to do maybe a countertop basin as opposed to an undermount.

Unless you've got a lot of kind of jimmy around, but like, yeah. 

Jenny: You can also add your own countertop. Like you could have removed the top. Parts of that if you didn't want to sand it down and put on like a cut piece of quartz like for example We were talking in our kitchen episode about usually when you buy a stone countertop you have to buy the whole sheet So if there's parts of it that are left over Maybe that could be the right size for your bathroom vanity.

That could be a nice use it up. Yeah 

Kate: Yeah, we were just short. I remember what we used 

Jenny: [00:43:00] every the sheet 

Kate: But yeah, it's an ideal use of it. Yeah, do the top of a standard vanity or whatever. Yeah, but you did another 

Jenny: I got my bathroom vanities, I got the plainest ones I could find in Ikea, but then I bought, so I put on countertop basins on top, and then I bought handles and legs from superfront.

com, they've loads of lovely stuff and then I installed those and so that just I think the whole thing cost less than 200 quid. Yeah, 

Kate: grand then, a thousand euros. You probably would have paid for it if you were buying it somewhere else. Why though? Why are you paying for it? It's absolutely wild, I just think it's the ease of like, everything is done, it's boxed out for plumbers.

But like, the quality is not there for me for the price. No, absolutely not. Obviously, you can go down the kind of custom vanity and then it's gonna be, I would say if you're gonna go custom vanity, make it the centrepiece of your room. Yeah. Like, like really go all out if you're gonna pay for a custom vanity.

Jenny: I'd be going like marble, I'd have a quartz vanity, I'd have a whole natural stone with like gold handles. 

Kate: Solid fluted wood, [00:44:00] whatever. Yeah, that looks great. Go of it. Like, you know, OTT if you go in and go and pay for 

Jenny: a custom vanity. You defined a custom vanity recently for a client, didn't 

Kate: you? With like I did.

Yeah. With Savvy, actually the kitchen place we were talking about. We both have our kitchens from there, but they do vanities as well. Yeah. But we did a fluted oak, solid fluted oak vanity and it's absolutely beautiful. Yeah. 

Jenny: Yeah. None of them look great. Yeah. One thing just. on the topic of things that are expensive and I don't know why they're so expensive and that I found hard to find is the shower door or even just the pane like the window pane Oh, the wet room panel The wet room panel Yeah So Obviously, what I ended up doing was just getting my cheap, my one in, for upstairs in like B& Q or whatever like, I think it was Woody's actually.

And it's just a plain white plastic one and then painted over the white plastic just to match the wall. Because it, I don't like that plastic y look. But, and then I just had his little, you know, the rest of it's all glass, like it's not framed. It's, it's just pure glass. But I just found [00:45:00] it really difficult to find any, like I was looking for a nice brass one, I was looking for a nice, like, Black one, which I did find in the end, but God, they 

Kate: were very cheap.

Yeah, they were very, they were very expensive and very hard to come by, I found, and I found sometimes, unless you're paying absolute top dollar for them, the frames are very chunky, which is not nice. But I think they're becoming more available. I think there's different finishes and stuff. 

Jenny: Yeah, it's a lot. I just, I'm a big advocate for it, because it's, it's, there's not much surface area on it. So I'm a big advocate, because there's no quality difference, really, between the expensive ones and the cheap ones.

Unless you're splashing out for like a solid brass or whatever. I would just buy ones that have the least amount of framing possible, so as much glass. And I would paint that or cover it in some kind of vinyl wrap, for example, if you wanted to get that brassy finish or chrome finish or whatever you wanted.

And then I would if you want to add on that reed to glass, you can buy rolls of that and 

you apply it and it looks 

Kate: beautiful. We did something slightly different in our last place, I really didn't want the frame. So, we actually got our [00:46:00] builder, because the wall was being built out for pipe work, to do a recessed slot, and the glass comes straight out of the wall.

So there's no frame at 

Jenny: all? No. Like pure glass? 

Kate: There's an arm on the top to the wall, the far wall, but you can't see that because it's up at seven meter, seven meters, seven feet high, yeah, what kind of height is that? The arm just goes, holds on and brackets to the far side of the shower wall. But yeah, so it was just essentially a glass sheet coming out of our wall.

Jenny: Lovely. Because you can get a glass sheet just cut to any size 

Kate: then, can't you? You will need a bracket of sorts or a good slot to hold it and you don't want it to shake inside there. Yeah. So we actually used the same bracket that came with it but we recessed it into that void in the wall. Very clever.

So that was just a kind of a way of making it look as minimal as possible. Yeah. Because I'm like you, I kind of hate the amount of hardware. I want it to look like There's no glass almost. Yeah. Someone might even walk into it. Yeah. , 

Jenny: I just smash your face into my shower wall. 

Kate: Yeah. As minimal as possible for me anyway. When it comes to when it comes to shower 

Jenny: screens, there's one [00:47:00] final topic that I'd like to touch on before we close out this peeing and pooping and sharing episode, and that is the B day. Oh, . First of all, where did they go? I feel like we used to have loads of B Days.

Every bathroom in Ireland had a B Day until what, like 1990 and then it just disappeared? It feels very European or something. Well, what I always think is that any time I go to a country where toilet paper is not the primary method of Cleaning up after you go to the toilet. I come home and I'm like toilet paper is disgusting.

It's dry wipe. Dry wipe? 

Kate: Ugh! Even our children use wet wipes. Why 

Jenny: are we not holding ourselves down like civilized human beings? Yeah. I have no space for a bidet, but I probably would put one in if I did have space for it because it would be really clever. But do you know what I've seen a lot of? And I've bought one recently, I've not installed it yet.

I'm happy to come back and update you all on a later episode. But, is a 

Kate: Japanese toilet. 

Jenny: No. No? Okay. [00:48:00] Is one with like goldfish jumping out and like playing relaxing music. Chew, chew. 

Kate: It's bad for your bum. No, it's a bidet hose.

I didn't know what these were called. 

Jenny: I don't know if that's the official name. But do you all know what I'm talking about? This is you know, it's a hose that's attached into your, like, into the plumbing of your toilet, into the plumbing of your cistern. And you just, a very discreet little thing, and you hang it on the wall beside you.

And you use it to wash up after 

Kate: you've gone to the bathroom. Like a little garden hose. Yes. Outside your toilet. Fancier looking. Yeah. Actually a very funny story about one. So when we were traveling, my friends are going to kill me, I'm not going to say her name. But we were in Cambodia and we got to this hostel and it was one of the fancier hostels we had stayed in on our travels.

And all the showers were always cold and like, I know it's nice to have cold showers and hot climates, but like sometimes you just want to wash your hair, wash your face and whatever. We were off a disgusting bus trip, so we all got to this hostel and it was hot showers. So one by one we had our shower and [00:49:00] trickled out of the room and we went down to the kind of common areas to have a drink or whatever.

And then the last of our friends came out and we were like, Oh my God, this shower was amazing. It was like the nicest shower we'd had in weeks. And I was like, it's so powerful. And it was actually warm for once. And she was like, yeah, like it was nice, but did you not find the hose was really short? And we were like, I was kind of crouching down.

And our faces, all of us just looked at her and went, 

Jenny: Did you use the pool or 

Kate: the shower? And she literally screamed. What happened? Did she just not see the shower? I don't know, the bathroom must have just been very kind of compact. And she saw that's the side of the shower area. She screamed, ran from the table.

We were all just like, We couldn't stop laughing for five or ten minutes. Like, oh my god, she showered with pools. She obviously went and immediately showered again. So, not to be confused with your shower head. The BJ Sprayer, or the Pooh Hose, as we used to name it. That's 

Jenny: probably what it is called, the Pooh Hose, yeah.

That's good. 

If we could leave you [00:50:00] with one nugget from this whole episode, I would say don't shower 

Kate: yourself with Pooh Hose. Yeah. 

Jenny: Use the shower. But yeah, I'm a big fan of these. I bought one recently from a company called Tushy, which is a more acute name than anything else.

They're probably available in loads of different places, and it just plums right into your toilet cistern, and I can't wait. 

Kate: On that note, we'll leave it there for today. Thank you for listening. We hope we have imparted some knowledge about bathrooms and everything pee poo and showering related. 

Jenny: And we hope you'll come back after 

Kate: all of that knowledge.

We hope we didn't disgust you so much that you'll be back to see episode nine. 

Jenny: Episode nine, which will be in two weeks time. 

Kate: Thanks all for listening. If you found that episode useful, please do us a huge favor by giving us a like, and a few stars and especially click that subscribe button. Thank you.