Me? Indecisive? Never!

I had a sudden realisation this week that even though we've progressed with our downstairs renovation as far as kind of getting some walls up (see here), I need to start thinking more seriously about the eventual design of the rooms before we go much further, or it will be too late.

 
As in... if I want little storage niches for toiletries in the bathroom, they have to be built into the frame! If I want any extra little walls (like one to hide the side of the fridge), it needs to be built into the frame! If I want bulkheads in the ceiling anywhere, they should be built into the frame!

So I had to start thinking seriously about what I want the rooms to look like in the end, most specifically the bathroom (and next on my list is the kitchen). Here's what the little bathroom plan looks like.

Because the plumbing for the various bits and pieces has already been concreted into the slab, I don't have the ability to move any major items around without serious hassle, so the bath definitely has to go along the left wall, with the vanity and then the toilet along the right.



But there are a whole heap of other design-ey issues that need to be sorted out before we do the rest of the plumbing, like what kind of vanity cabinet I will get (and therefore where the taps need to go). I'll get to those shortly. The layout of the bathroom will actually feel a lot like this one below, if you pretend that door at the end doesn't exist, and that the entrance of the room is actually right up near the vanity cabinet.

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What's concerning me most today is the bath area. I would like to make a bit of a feature of the big wall above the bath. I've got a couple of options on my shortlist at the moment, one of which is tiling it in a small subway-ish tile, a lot like this:

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Or like this, but with less green and no marble. I'm thinking only the long wall would be in the subway tile, the other walls at either end of the bath would be in a plainer, different tile. Probably the same one that we've used in the upstairs bathroom on the floor and walls.

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I could even flip the tile and have it run vertically like this!

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My second option is much more wacky. I love it, and I think it would look fabulous, but I have to keep reminding myself that we probably won't even use this bathroom ourselves since we're aiming to sub-let the downstairs area (when it's finally built). So I guess I need to reign in the outlandishness a bit. Therefore, I am yet again indecisive. What a surprise!

My idea involves a bit of this...

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Black and white stripes! Not painted ones though... tiled ones!

Sort of like this.

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Or this.

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Although I think neither of those inspiration images actually have the stripes done in tiles (more like paint or wallpaper), you get the idea, right? Wouldn't it be super cool, just on that one wall above the bath? It probably wouldn't have to be too expensive either, since I might be able to find ordinary wall or floor tiles in the right sizes that are priced by the square metre rather than per sheet like feature tiles usually are.

And as an added bonus, it would reference my black pinstripe tile wall in the upstairs bathroom, which would tie the upstairs bathroom in with the downstairs a bit.

Then there's the other dilemma.

Most modern Australian bathrooms have frameless glass shower screens. Shower curtains are not particularly cool anymore. So whenever I've thought about this little downstairs bathroom (which clearly hasn't been enough), I've always thought we'd put in a fixed panel of glass about 1-metre wide or so to run from the top of the bath to the ceiling, on the end that has the shower rose. That way we protect the rest of the bathroom from being covered in water, but still leave the rest of the length of the bath open for access getting in and out.

Like this, but running all the way to the ceiling.

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Although the little bathroom plan shows the shower head coming off the back wall of the bathroom, I'd be inclined to switch it and have it on your left as you enter the room, so it's not the first thing you see. What makes that idea even better is that whenever the bathroom door is open, it would butt up against the glass. If the glass was up the other end, the entire bath area would be shut off from the rest of the room whenever the door was open.

But when are things ever simple when I'm involved?

That's right, never. Because it occurred to me that having a pane of glass basically dividing the room in half the minute you walk in could be not so nice, and make the small room feel smaller.

So... I introduce my next point of indecision. Glass shower screen or shower curtain?

There are so many beautiful bathrooms out there with shower curtains, and shower curtains themselves can be so pretty these days (if you don't buy them from Crazy Clarks like I did - see the bathroom section of our original house tour for that vision in pink and yellow). It seems like a shame to close the room in with an extra division, even if it is see-through (and pay a fortune to do it... glass is expensive!), when you can have it completely open just by drawing the shower curtain to one side.

Like this...

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Or like this!

Plus, a shower curtain would be a lovely way to add some colour and personality that can easily (and fairly cheaply) be changed. Love this one.

But since I'm not the one going to be using this bathroom, I don't want to make a decision because I think it would be lovely but that others won't like. Plus, I have a logical argument too! I worry that having a panel of glass directly behind you when you're trying to get ready in the mirror in the morning would make the bathroom feel much more constricted than if that were empty space and there was a shower curtain instead.

I think there might be a clincher, though, and that's the door. When the bathroom door is open, it will form a barrier along the bath anyway! And chances are, unless someone's sitting on the toilet or having a shower, that door will be open. So the glass option would work nicely, I guess. It does make the room a lot more modern than our upstairs bathroom though...

Arghh. I can't make up my mind!

Help me! What should I do? Little subway tiles or funky vertical stripes? Glass or shower curtain?

Cable Wrangling Part Two

Just in case the first instalment of my office electrical cable-wrangling extravaganza wasn't thrilling enough for you, I've got part two!

This was the sneak peek I gave you of the cord mess going on under my desk:

Well it wasn't nearly accurate enough. It's actually more like this.

That black thing in the right there is my laptop, perched on a little footstool. And if I shove it out of the way for a bit, this is what I'm left with. Mess mess mess mess!

So I decided that I wanted to get all of that junk off the ground and...not mount it on the wall, but under the desk. So I took that poor overworked power board...

And cut a little piece of paper to the same size as it. Then, I marked on that piece of paper where the two screw holes in the back of the board sit.

But before using my little paper template, I first tried holding up the power board in its spot under the desk. And with the prongs facing up the right way, the cord was on the wrong side! I didn't want the cord running down my pretty little turned desk leg.

So I decided to hang it upside down and see what happened. I held up my little piece of template paper under the desk and popped in some screws in line with the holes I'd marked...

And put in the power board.

And then I tried my first plug in the board (and tied up all of the extra cable with a freezer bag tie). That worked ok, but the second plug was too much. Because I'd hung the board upside down, the screws couldn't slot into the little narrow section of the holes on the back of the board, so it simply fell off the screws with the weight of the extra plugs hanging off it.

I cursed myself for not having just paid attention to the little voice in my head that had first known that hanging the power board upside down wasn't going to work. I searched the rest of the house for power boards that might be oriented the other way so that the cord would face the wall, and all we had were the same style of board. So I called it a night.

A trip to Bunnings later, and I had a righty instead of a lefty for a grand total of $10 (with child safety protection cover thingies as well, yay)!

And phase two of Cable Wrangling Part 2 began. I repeated the paper templating process...

And held it up against the underside of the desk.

 

And then slotted the board in place. Right way up works well, go figure!

Adding in the plugs makes it look slightly less neat...

But this is the important part... I could still afford to pin the cable neatly along the skirting board and up the wall to tidy it up more, but it's still a dramatic improvement!

I wasn't quite finished yet, though. Don't forget my laptop on its little stool! I had grand ideas to make it a little under-desk shelf of its own. this was the spot.

I found these metal brackets at Bunnings...

And scavenged a white melamine shelf from the shed. No idea where it came from. Much contorting under the desk with my drill and a packet of screws later...

You can just see my laptop peeking out from its little spot there.

So now... I am so proud to announce that this is what the underneath of my desk looks like. Improvement or what?

I do have some concerns about whether the laptop has enough space around it to not overheat on its little shelf, so I might consider switching the melamine board out for something that allows some more airflow through. I'll keep my eyes peeled for the right option.

In the meantime, Allie is very much enjoying her much clearer space while I work each day!

Cable Wrangling Part One

I realised yesterday that I've been working from home for nearly four months, and my office is still in a shameful state of disarray!

My frame wall still has at least three empty frames, and an ever-yellowing piece of newspaper place-holding for a fourth. Oh the shame!

Well amazingly enough, this post isn't about mounting things on the wall. It's this situation. The two cables for my recently wall-mounted computer monitor that hang in unseemly fashion from beneath its frame, and then sprawl across my desk.

Not very attractive, right?

Right. So I decided it was high time to remedy that a little. I found this little piece of timber conduit that we clearly scavenged from elsewhere in the house...

And discovered that the two monitor cables fitted very nicely into it.

I popped it in position underneath the monitor frame, resting on the desk. Looks good!

And then I traced around the base of it to get the outline of the area it would cover up on the desk.

And then, with much trepidation, I drilled into my lovely painted desk. Aaah!

And then, like magic, I had this result!

Actually, I lie. Don't let the wonder of before and after photos fool you. It was nothing like magic. It was at least an hour and a half of me drilling through the top of the desk trying desperately not to go outside my lines or let the drill slip and damage the desk (and the wall). I wasn't entirely successful with either of those things.

But wait, there's more. It wasn't just drilling down from the top. When we prepared this desk (which used to be a dining table, that we chopped in half) to be mounted on the wall, we added this piece of timber along the back to support the desk top, which we then screwed into the wall.

That meant that my monitor cables didn't just have to make it through the 20mm desk top, they had to make it through that mass of timber beneath the desk as well. Which in turn meant that I had to gouge a hole in that timber big enough to fit them through.

After using practically every drill bit and spade bit in Tom's collection (by the way, I think they might all have been hand-me-downs from his grandfather, they couldn't have been blunter) and cursing myself for ever starting out on this ridiculous quest, I finally had this horrible-looking hole to show for my work.

Fortunately unless visitors to my office insist on enjoying it from their backs on the floor, this mess won't be visible. And it did eventually perform its role of getting the heads of each of the cables through to the top of the desk admirably.

Which unfortunately wasn't in much better condition. Before you judge my terrible drill skills, please remember that everything was blunt, and I was struggling with the angle of the drill, since I couldn't actually manage to get the monitor (or its frame) off the wall to give me a bit more manouvreability. So my poor desk is now a bit mutilated and scratched. And that damage is much more obvious that the under-desk masacre. I'll have to see what a bit of sanding and touch-up paint can do in the future.

Anyway, I decided not to dwell on my frustration on that point (a short reprieve, since now I spend all day every day gazing at it in sadness as I work) , and plugged the monitor plugs back in...

Resulting in this much neater cord situation, at least.

I then realised that my pilfered timber conduit had actually come from beneath a powerpoint on another wall of the office, so I had to return it to its proper spot, to make sure there weren't any exposed electrical wires. Thankfully I managed to find another piece that obviously hadn't come from the office, since it wasn't painted the same grey as the wall.

Clearly I need to remedy that, since the test-run I did with the grey-painted one (further above) looked a lot better, meaning there's some grey-painting in my future.

So! Despite my less-than-perfect technique and after much struggle, I finally ended up with the result I was after! Those black and grey monitor cables are now invisible. Thank goodness.

Next on the agenda? This mess of cables on the floor under the desk. In fact, this picture doesn't even come close to accurately representing the mess I've got going on down there.