Form or function? What comes first in a renovation

I have recently bought a house, demonstrating that I can’t take my own advice. Worse, it was a house that needed some renovation, something I thought I had successfully talked myself out of.

The renovations were minor in the scheme of things – a bathroom that needed gutting (due to water damage) and a garden that was begging for even a small amount of flat space for the kids to use (it is on a hill so steep that even cars struggle).

I dreaded various elements of the renovations, most of which came true, but the element I didn’t expect was a battle between form and function; a tug of war between what it would end up looking like and how it worked.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t care what my bathroom looks like. I don’t care what colour the tiles are, as long as they are easy to clean. I don’t care which model of toilet is installed, as long as it has dual flush. I don’t care whether my towel rails have square or rounded ends, as long as they are at a height that I can reach them.

This lack of caring didn’t get me out of having to select tiles, a vanity, a toilet and a shower screen. Even with my low care-factor, I still had to make a decision between the acres of tiles in the shop. And so, the look of the new bathroom, by necessity, became important.

And, possibly because there is only so much space in my brain for things to do with renovation, function started to take a back seat. The crux came when I realised that we had nowhere to hang the hand towel (we’re talking about a very small en suite here) and that there was nowhere for my shower cap to hang. I’m the first to admit that shower caps aren’t pretty, but the truth is that I wear one for four out of five showers and they will simply not dry if not hung somewhere nice and airy.

I am now on the hunt for suction hooks to hang my shower cap on the outside of the shower screen, as well as a work-around way of hanging a handtowel. Oh, yes, and a rubbish bin that will fit under the wall-mounted vanity, because there is nowhere else for it to go. If function had taken priority over form, these important elements would have been considered much earlier in the build.

While the bathroom was still in progress, we started on the garden. I am very fond of my gardener – he has a depth of knowledge about plants that I can only dream of, and has tools that make light work out of jobs that would take me and my hubby days of backbreaking labour.

He is also easy to communicate with, which means we have had the following discussion several times. In the end, we have agreed to disagree.

The discussion is that he wants the garden to look like a magazine and I want it to be a place for the kids to play in. His nickname for a trampoline (one of the major reasons we are spending thousands of dollars to eke out some flat land) is ‘a fly catcher’ and he could hardly bring himself to leave a space without grass for it to sit on. He also doesn’t like clotheslines and feels that having such a monstrosity in a landscaped backyard is a travesty.

I’m not that fond of clotheslines either, but let’s face it, they are pretty darn useful and are probably one of the most used items in many back gardens. Though I’d like it to be different, I suspect I’ll be out there hanging out clothes more often than I’ll be lounging around, sipping a cool drink, on our astoundingly expensive flattened-out eating area.

Luckily, my gardener and I agree on having garden beds that are as low maintenance as possible, so we do share some common ground. He has put in a handball court and a space for the soon-to-arrive trampoline despite his very strong instincts to decline the job on principle.

My husband also got caught up in the pursuit of renovations worthy of a home or garden magazine. The crunch came when he tried to convince me that a small paved area for a handball court (a game my son is obsessed with) would “break the flow of the lines we are creating”. Luckily, soon after this utterance, he realised how bizarre his words sounded, and realised how little assistance “line flow” will provide us in our quest to keep our kids occupied and active.

In the end, I’ve done better with the garden than the en suite. With the bathroom, I didn’t get completely caught up in the looks, but I did lose sight of the importance of the little things, like hand towels.

Next time, if there is a next time (please may there never be a next time!), I’ll try to keep function front of mind.