When it comes to interiors my heart always rules my head. You will often find me standing in a shop, holding something impractical and trying to convince my husband that we need it in our home. If I had a pound for every time I have heard the words “Chynna we have enough cushions on the bed” I would be writing this from my sun lounger in the Maldives. Unlike myself, my husband looks to purchase useful and functional items, I am all about the look and style. In this blog post I will be delving into the good and bad of the ultimate style vs practicality item in my home. Ladies and gentlemen I present to you my most treasured possession, the bain of my husbands existence and the truth about…..

A roll top shower bath

It’s the most blindingly obvious style vs practicality example in our home, (although I am sure I could name a few). I get a lot of questions on my Instagram about the roll top shower bath and I am always sure to be honest, but I do feel that what I try to explain, may come across as confusing, so I will have a better go here. I can’t tell you the fight I had to put up to get Mr J to agree this beauty. I had always dreamt of having a roll top bath and until we knocked the toilet and bathroom together and saw what space we had, it still wasn’t a guarantee. When we were planning the bathroom we spent hours drawing out different positions and although we did eventually find a way to make a separate shower and bath fit, it just was not what either of us had envisaged and felt like it had very little floor space. Shower baths are really commonly used in bathrooms as a great way to save space so this seemed like the perfect solution to keep the bathroom feeling spacious, but I just could not let go of my roll top bath dreams. I scoured Pinterest constantly and this is when I noticed a few roll top shower baths… I was off! I gathered my evidence together in the form of the three Pinterest images I had found and a mock Victorian plumbing order and excitedly presented it to my husband. He seemed on board, he loved the look and got to work drawing a scale drawing, it looked to be the perfect solution, then in true Mr J style, he came at me with questions over functionality! “If it stands away from the wall will it not leak water down the back?” “Don’t shower curtains cling to your body and feel horrid” “what if standing in the bath causes it to become weaker” I knew I had some convincing to do…

Luckily in most cases my husband lives by the mantra ‘happy wife happy life’ and as I am sure you are all aware, I convinced him a roll top shower bath was a great idea. We have now had the bathroom completed for around 6 months so I can finally give my true verdict on whether it was a good idea or not.

The Good

• We love the look- I don’t think I expected how much I would love the look of the over bath shower rail, the way the curtains fall and how well it would work with the rest of the bathroom. I could not be more happy with how the bathroom looks.
• Because we saved space we got to go for a huge bath- The bath is my absolute pride and joy, it doesn’t look it in photos but the bath is a great size, even my husband who is 6ft is really comfortable in it, it is much longer than a standard bath also meaning that all 3 kiddies fit in comfortably and with it being double ended they don’t seem to flood the bathroom while playing like they used to.
• No glass enclosure to clean- Lets face it glass shower enclosures are a pig to clean and with three sets of little mucky hands, I think a glass enclosure would have had sticky prints on it more often than not.

The bad

• During showering water gets everywhere- Spoiler alert, Aaron was right! Water does go everywhere IF you don’t take precautions. If you clip the shower curtains at the back with a hair clip and make sure you angle the curtains correctly and don’t fling your arms about too much then its absolutely fine- my husband does not have the patience for this!
• There is nowhere to place your products apart from near your feet.
• Aaron is tall so when he steps into the bath it makes him even taller, meaning his head is very close to the fixed shower head
• Because our shower and bath are together they are always in use, so I clean it all constantly.

So there you have it, the good, the bad and the ugly. We are fortunate that we will be planning a downstairs shower room into our extension, somewhere my husband can fulfil his shower of dreams, so this room will be used a lot less in a couple of years time. While I can totally agree with my husband that it is not the best shower I have ever been in and it’s most certainly a style over practicality purchase…. I have no regrets! I love our bathroom, it is everything I had imagined it to be and I am so glad that I went with my gut. I am learning along the way that in order to create a home you love, you have to go with the things you love, practical or not!

Chynna xxx