My hometown. Moved here in 1970 (when I was 3) and stayed until I left for University in 1985. Moved back here - to the house I was brought up in - in December 2015. Have to say, I rather like it here. Central London is 40 mins from my front door, yet Carshalton still feels villagey, despite its Greater London postcode. And there are a LOT of pubs :-)
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Another house update. Seeing as how we live in a permanent state of building site, it seems only fair to share the occasional milestone, each incremental step we take towards an Ideal Home...

When we moved into this house, the bathroom was high on the list of 'must gos': A 40-year-old avocado bathroom suite, cracking floral tiles floor-to ceiling, ceiling paper hanging down in fronds, the ceiling barely able to support the downlighters I'd had installed during initial rewire. Most vile of all, the toilet waste was encrusted with limescale which meant it blocked on a weekly basis. Experience has taught me that the only equipment that would help unblock it was a pair of rubber gloves and, also, that manual evacuation of the toilet is, exclusively, a 'man's job'. Or so it seems.

But it wasn't worth doing anything about it until we had a spare bathroom, which was on the cards too. So we've only just done something about it.

Before. Really, quite ghastly. Even the panels on the side of the bath were missing, because I accidentally threw them out:

So I did some planning and design. Because I always do some planning and design:

And then I let Greg, Jacek and Maciej of Octopus Plumbing start ripping stuff out:

On the whole, this didn't improve the look of the room. Fortunately, it gave Maciej and Jacek lots to moan about (I now know Polish for 'right-angle', 'perpendicular' and 'wall of dogshit'). I don't know the Polish for 'bodge-job' because it's not in these guys' vocabularies. If they do anything, they do it properly, professionally and effectively. And curse about it, in Polish, you don't actually need to know the words. Can't rate them highly enough.

Jacek is the Lublin Bathroom King. Started with a dust-ridden, wonky husk of a room, squared it all up, plastered, raised the floor, boarded the ceiling, wired in underfloor heating, installed extractor...

Then tiled it, beautifully, as only a perfectionist can. Must drive Greg up the wall...

Finally, put a bathroom in it. Short of LED mirror at time of writing, as it was chipped - new one coming this week.

We are very happy. We now have two open-plan bathrooms. Doors next week, fingers crossed...