English Rose Kitchen

An “I scream luxury” shower head

January 7, 2009 was the official start date of our renovation. We’d been planning it for a year or so before then, but Jan 7 was when the contractors moved in and started ripping out the kitchen cabinets without regard for the fact that I was still empting them.

This was immediately followed by the gutting of the shower/steam room. Our guys assured us that the whole job should take less than 2 months, hence my somewhat dubious hygiene of the past year. Luckily we have a second bathroom, but it is just that, a room with a toilet, sink and bath. I’m more of a shower man and while the bath has a shower attachment, squatting down, waving a shower head in and out of the important regions is neither as enticing nor as satisfactory as standing up in a proper shower. My apologies to all those whose path I have crossed on days where I couldn’t face it.

Two days ago the caulking man (a specialist in the field apparently) turned up to seal everything. He said it would be OK to use the shower by the morning, but in deference to the freezing weather I decided to wait and take my first proper shower in over a year today.

Oh the joy! First I switched on the steamer (takes a good 5 or 6 minutes to get up a fully choking head of steam) and stood there baking gently for 10 minutes. Then the shower. We have one of those new fangled big, flat shower heads that just screams “luxury”, as well as a handheld attachment in case I miss my bath squatting days.

A Shaolin monk, presumably being taught to do what it took me about 5 seconds to learn

Then I remembered that despite the new radiator being attached to the wall, it’s not actually hooked up to the plumbing yet and the temperature in that room is about the same as outside, currently sub zero.

I stepped out of the pizza over like confines of the shower/steamer into the (excuse the colourful turn of phrase) nut-crunching cold, enhanced by the fact that we’ve had a lovely new Jerusalem stone floor laid. In under 5 seconds I believe I achieved a retracting manoeuvre ordinarily the provenance of Shaolin monks after many years of study and dedication.