Well, here we are then – already a month into 2018! Can you believe it?

It’s been a while since I posted something on here, I know. Never having even succumbed to a head cold in 40 odd years I’d always prided myself on being immune to winter bugs, but a dose of flu laid me low for a couple of weeks in December,  followed by Christmas, New Year and birthday celebrations and a couple of weeks spent  in the UK for work.  So, have we managed to make any progress on the mill this winter? Well, actually, yes – a bit.

After finishing the upstairs bathroom, it was always our intention to get going on the downstairs bathroom straightaway. But because the cost of buying stuff in France is pretty high compared with the UK (even buying  online incurs massive delivery charges in France) we left it until our next visit to Bristol to get what we needed for our next project.

So instead of starting the downstairs bathroom we decided to do the separate toilet upstairs.

I have to admit that it was a bit of a no-brainer because we already had practically everything we needed – and at no extra cost! For those of you who read this from non-Anglophone countries and who are wondering about the title of this post, BOG OFF (or Buy One, Get One For Free) is a common marketing ploy in supermarkets, to encourage consumers to purchase in bulk. (‘bog’ being  a slang term for ‘toilet’ is a totally unintentional pun , of course!)

With the prospect of a new bathroom and toilet downstairs, I had spent several months trawling internet sites to find the fittings that we would need for the project. One of the items needed was a new loo, as the hard water here had ruined the cistern on the existing toilet. We had already fallen foul of the metered water system in  France at our last house, when we had returned to the UK after a lovely holiday, unaware that our last visit to the bathroom had left the toilet cistern jammed open with limescale.  The constant trickle over the ensuing months until our return had resulted in an astronomical water bill – something we were not keen to repeat!

I managed to find a lovely toilet (that sounds really strange, but there are some lovely designs out there) at a fantastic price, and better still, there was a ‘buy one, get one free’ offer on. So, of course, I bought two.

The disastrous delivery of broken tiles for the original bathroom had left us with a lot of half-tiles for the walls and as I always over-order a wee bit anyway, we also had some spare floor tiles.

Et voilà!

Wall tiles, floor tiles and a free loo. Just what I needed to complete the toilet next the bathroom we had just completed.

During our last visit to Bristol I found these lovely alabaster, hand-blown glass vases in an outlet store – one to hide the bottle of toilet cleaner and one for the spare toilet roll. And the framed print was a birthday present. Result!

A new toilet – almost for free!

The more observant amongst you will have noticed the the masking tape and new paint around the door – yes, we’re also doing the corridor upstairs. Watch this space!

Have you had similar cost-saving, lucky finds? Please do share!