Building a Disabled Bathroom: Phase 2

I’ve just had my first invoice for the building work to date, so I figured it made sense to update about how the building’s going.

I now have a roof! It took a bit longer than expected because the joiner got covid so that wiped him out for a week. Plus I live in Cumbria where it rains *a lot* and another week was entirely written off because it was so grotty. And then all the other random days where rain stopped building.

I’ve watched enough DIY programmes and Grand Designs to know that unexpected things always happen and you kind of just have to roll with it. What I didn’t take into account, was how much waiting there is in between things happening. There’s the obvious waiting, like when contractors are relying on another contractor doing something first, but there’s also a lot of waiting for things to dry or settle. You can’t just stick a roof on top of the blocks if they haven’t had a chance to air (or something). And there’s a lot more signing off on things by council people than I realised. I just got to the stage where any random person could’ve come into our house if they knocked on the door and said they were here from the council!

Plus there were some logistics unique to our house. We live on a single track road with no parking for construction vans (a car can fit, vans can’t). Whenever anyone came, they had to drive up the lane, unload and then park at the end of the lane and walk back up. Which is fine, except whenever anyone else wanted to get past or another contractor turned up, they had to move their van. There’s no way a skip could fit down our lane, but we couldn’t get permission for a skip to be left on the grass verge at the end of our lane, so our builder had to wheelbarrow every bit of dirt/skip worthy stuff down the lane to where he parked his van, load it into a trailer and then drive it to wherever he took it to dispose of it when it got full. Which could be multiple times per day. And takes a long time!

I also didn’t realise how much back and forth there was with contractors either. I knew the plumber had to wait for the electrician to come before he could install the shower, but not that that could only be done after the plastering had been done and X, Y and Z happened. Living rurally, means a lot of stuff is done by “I’ll just pop in on my way back from…” way of doing things and I imagine it’s less ad hoc in cities. And everyone knows everyone somehow which helps with the whole “you need a joiner” conversation. Thankfully builder Peter seems to have taken on the role of project manager so if he says something has to happen, we just take his word for it! My most regularly said phrase at the moment is “tell me exactly what I need to type into google and I’ll look it up”.

Some things I’ve learnt in general about building a bathroom extension:

⁃ you don’t have to choose your toilet and sink etc before building starts, but you need to know roughly the dimensions pretty soon into the building process because it’s needed for the location of the waste pipes. Which go in before the floor gets laid

⁃ Said waste pipes can either go out the wall or through the floor. This matters apparently!

⁃ If you want underfloor heating, you need to decide this early on too. I didn’t want it though.

⁃ If you don’t have central heating (which uses water to heat pipes) it gets more tricky heating a bathroom, because most electric heating isn’t bathroom safe. You can have infrared heating panels or a heated towel rail, but they need to be bathroom safe

⁃ You don’t have to have chosen the exact electric shower but the showers have a preference as to which way they get wired up. Even if they say they’re dual piped (check my lack of technical terms!), they’re not really. Showers have a preference, apparently! And we don’t want a stroppy shower…

⁃ There are a few different ways of having a shower space. You can have a full on wet room, but this will mean you have to have a drain in the floor and the floor will have to be angled for water to go down the drain. And everything will get wet. It’s hard to change to this once your builder has poured concrete for the floor though. You can have a shower cubicle where you step up onto it or you can have a shower tray reasonably flush with the floor, but there will still be a slight lip into it, otherwise all the water would come out onto your (non wet room) floor.

⁃ All flooring comes with an R rating, which basically means it’s a scale of slippy to non slippy. Bathroom flooring obviously wants to be non slippy. But just because it has a high R rating doesn’t mean it’s bathroom proof

⁃ If you’re putting in new electrics, you need to make sure you’ve got enough power coming from the consumer board. We had to get a new consumer board put in because our current one is old and wouldn’t be able to hack it if I wanted to have my shower running at the same time as my parents wanted to watch tv (for example). We had to find somewhere for the new consumer board to go, but also there are a bunch of new regulations that we had to make any new electrics comply with. Eg plug sockets had to be within certain dimensions of the wall, even though the rest of the house aren’t. We also had to think of future proofing it and planned ahead to get extra plug sockets and lights put in my new room, even though we’re not at that stage yet, but we had to think about what this consumer unit might need.

My uncle built a house in France and I remember him saying about how stupid it was they made you choose every detail down to the type of light switch you wanted before they started building. I can see why! I like being organised so I’d done research before and could give info when it came to it, but I was still caught off guard a couple of times.

Here are some things I’ve learnt about building a disabled bathroom:

⁃ Check out what local funding is available and ask someone about it. I did my research before and couldn’t find any funding but then my psychologist referred me to occupational therapy for help with living in general, who then told us about funding we could get when she came to do an assessment and saw the building work. Unfortunately, because we’d already started building it, I can’t get funding for that aspect, but I can get funding for things that go into it eg a comfort heigh toilet

⁃ Because I’m disabled and the bathroom is being built purposefully for disability, I get VAT relief on things that mitigate my disability. This saves a hell of a lot.

⁃ The options we had were convert our current bathroom or build a new one. But because of my dad’s medical conditions, he needs the bathroom the way it is, and I can’t use it safely because of my disabilities. Plus if you convert a current bathroom, you don’t get VAT relief or funding because they would argue that it wasn’t being done with the disabled person in mind and it was “optional” as other people would benefit from it (don’t get me started). By building an entirely new one, it means absolutely everything in there has been designed that way with my specific disability and needs in mind.

I’m lucky I’ve got a good builder and electrician who have been asking me questions and coming up with really sensible ways to future proof it if my health gets worse. Eg can I get a wheelchair in. Although I’dve been happier if they hadn’t been stood around a clothes airer with my underwear drying on it while we were having this conversation, because they’d just “popped in” and my mum had just done washing! Not that either seemed to notice…

Now that I’ve got a doorway and a room with 3 walls, my next post will be about the exciting things that actually go inside! Who knew toilets were so exciting?! And I’ll write about how it helps my disability too.

Actually, I do live “there”

I’m pretty good at appreciating the things I can do rather than complaining about all the things I can’t. But when I’m having a fed up day, one thing that does get me down is the fact that I can’t travel and see things. I’m extremely fortunate in that I got the chance to live abroad in France for a year, and I spent every school holiday travelling bits of Europe. I didn’t take it for granted though. I knew that I was very privileged to be able to do it, which is why I didn’t waste any of the time I was there.

I watch a lot of tv and Netflix, so I’m constantly being shown images of stunning landscapes, exciting cultures and amazing food. Obviously they show you the best bits and it’s carefully edited that way, but I regularly find myself looking at beautiful views and mountains and thinking “I want to live there. If I wasn’t sick, I could just move there”. Which isn’t strictly true, because if I wasn’t sick, I’d still be married and there’d be no way my ex-husband would’ve moved abroad. Once I’ve reminded myself of this, I then think “well, if I lived there, I’d be making the most of being there, and I’d appreciate it in the same way I did when I lived in France”. Which is also not strictly true.

Actually, I do live “there”. I currently live in Cumbria, on the outskirts of the Lake District National Park, and 2 things happened recently that made me realise that I do actually live in one of those places that I’ve been jealously eyeing on Netflix.

The first one was when I was watching a Netflix show called Snowflake Mountain. Gist is, a bunch of young people who are seen as “snowflake” millennials are dropped in the middle of nowhere and have to complete challenges alongside each other and live with very few home comforts. I was doing my “I want to live there” thing, admiring the beautiful scenery and wishing I was doing the challenges. I didn’t have a clue where it was, but I assumed it was based in America because the hosts and the majority of contestants were American. But a couple of things made me rethink this. It was raining a lot, which I found a bit odd for America and then one of them got injured and the medic had a British accent. The final challenge was on a mountain I thought I recognised and a quick Google search told me that the place that I’d been watching and wanting to go to was actually the Lake District. In a place really near to where I live now. Go figure.



The second thing to make me reevaluate my outlook was when some people I know came on holiday here. (side note: A few people have come here and not visited me because it doesn’t fit in with their plans, which is totally fine, but they at least mentioned that that’s what they were doing first. It’s a bit weird otherwise, especially if it’s all on social media) Anyway, because it was on social media and I was being particularly nosey because they hadn’t mentioned it, I was interested to see the places they visited. That’s when I started realising that the places they were proclaiming as “beautiful” and “stunning” and lots of superlatives, were places that were normal to me. I found myself thinking “they went to X today, that’s where I go for physio” or “they had a whole day out in X place, that’s where the dentist is” and “we go to that lake all the time for something to do on a Sunday afternoon” or, my favourite, “that’s where Aldi and the pet shop is”.

Actually, I do live “there”. Which, after a bit more thought, made me realise something else. I appreciated living abroad and travelling then because it was temporary. I knew it wasn’t my everyday life, so I was determined to make the most of it. I didn’t start appreciating living in the Lake District until I got sick. Before that, I was aware of the pretty views and I enjoyed taking them in when I was out and about, but I wouldn’t be as active in seeking them out as I was when I lived abroad.

We live in the shadow of Skiddaw, one of the highest peaks in England. It’s got a really distinctive shape. You can see it if you walk to the bottom of our lane and pretty much wherever you drive locally, you can see it. In the other direction, you can see more mountains which are in Scotland, across the Solway. If you can’t see skiddaw, you can see them. It’s not that I didn’t realise how pretty this place is before, because I remember driving home from being a waitress in a cafe and always making a point at looking across at the Scottish mountains. I just didn’t fully appreciate it until it became more difficult for me to access.

And it doesn’t stop at pretty scenery- I’ve seen the northern lights a couple of times. We basically live in a dark zone so all of the Milky Way, any planets and/or comets that come past and shooting stars are clearly visible. We get amazing sunrises and sunsets. I’ve seen endangered animals and birds, and animals giving birth. All of these are experiences other people have to travel and pay for, and I’ve had all of these within a few minutes of my house.

Like I said, if I hadn’t got sick, I’d probably still be married. I’d be working full time, in a city. I’d have more money so in theory I’d be able to go out and do more things, see more places. But would I? I don’t think I would. Even if I was part of an organisation which meant I got to travel a lot, it wouldn’t be fulfilling travel if I mostly spent the time in hotel conference rooms. It would all be normal, everyday life, so I’d just assume it would always be like that. Having my health limit my activities has meant increasing my enjoyment of the ones I do manage more. Ideally, I’d rather not be disabled, but I’m glad of the lesson it’s taught me. I do live somewhere pretty cool, and it’s nice to see it properly for the first time.

I guess the point I’m making is holidays and trips can be amazing experiences. However, there are lots of more subtle things that happen every day, which you wouldn’t put on social media, make a Netflix show or send a postcard about but which actually make up your life.