Here are our Christmas opening hours for the Colne showroom and our sales line.

Sales lines:

Saturday 21st 9am – 2pm
Sunday 22nd CLOSED
Monday 23rd 8.30am – 5.30pm
Tuesday 24th 8.30am – 5.30pm
Wednesday 25th CLOSED
Thursday 26th CLOSED
Friday 27th 9am – 5pm
Saturday 28th 9am – 5pm
Sunday 29th 11am – 5pm
Monday 30th 9am – 5pm
Tuesday 31st 9am – 4pm
Wednesday 1st 11am – 5pm

Colne showroom:

Saturday 21st 10am – 5pm
Sunday 22nd CLOSED
Monday 23rd 9am – 5pm
Tuesday 24th 10am – 3pm
Wednesday 25th CLOSED
Thursday 26th CLOSED
Friday 27th 11am – 4pm
Saturday 28th 10am – 5pm
Sunday 29th CLOSED
Monday 30th 11am – 4pm
Tuesday 31st 11am – 4pm
Wednesday 1st CLOSED

We’d like to wish all our customers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all the staff at Boundary Bathrooms! Have a good one!

The post Christmas 2013 Opening Times appeared first on The Boundary Bathrooms Blog.

The haul, worth just under £744,000, was found by a maintenance crew on board a Boeing 737 that was travelling from Mumbai to Kolkata. Indian officials announced yesterday that it was made up of 24 gold bars stuffed into two bags, weighing 53 pounds in total and believed to have originated from the United Arab Emirates. The airport director said “it was quite a surprise”, and it’s probably a far better surprise than something else you could find sitting in a toilet.

Weirdly it’s not the first time this has happened, and it was as recently as October that another stash of gold bars had been discovered – and this one was a lot larger!

For the cleaning crew of Flydubai Dubai to Dhaka that’s exactly the scene they came across. Instead of having to get down and clean the toilet they called police, who promptly arrived on the scene and seized the 70-pound load. They found that it was made up of 280 gold bars, worth a whopping £1.17 million.

Customs officials were apparently aware that the gold bars were on board and that the person who had been carrying them had got spooked and dumped the bars in the toilet before leaving the plane. That doesn’t mean he did a James Bond style jump out of the aeroplane by the way – as cool as that sounds – he just sneaked off as soon as the plane had parked up.

No arrests have been made in either case, but with India being the world’s largest importer of gold it probably won’t be long before another case pops up on the radar.

The post Airplane Bathrooms are Now Giving up the Gold! appeared first on The Boundary Bathrooms Blog.

There are those in our families who always seem to make a habit of missing the bowl when they’re going for a tinkle. Similarly, everybody has come across a significant amount of the yellow liquid on the floor or around the seat when we’ve used public toilets – particularly if these toilets happen to be somewhere where alcohol is served on the premises. It’s not a nice thing to see and nobody wants to start cleaning up someone else’s pee when all they want to do is relieve themselves and be done with it. It’s something that people get very fed up with, and it looks like the Chinese city of Shenzhen, Guangdong is one of those places where they’ve finally had enough.

In an effort to improve the state of the public toilets in the city, men now face being fined for misfiring and getting it on the floor when going to the loo. They will also face fines for spitting and putting litter into urinals too, amounting to a total fine of 100 yuan (about £10) if caught. Putting aside how they intend to enforce this rule, men throughout the city must now have all their concentration on the task when going to the toilet. The slightest errant drop may land them swiftly out of pocket – until they meet the ‘Pee Trajectory Corrector’ of course!

This odd looking device can be used to ensure that you hit the mark every time your bladder needs emptying. It’s basically a long plastic funnel that you hold to your, erm, member. Pee as normal – or as normal as you can do with this weird device attached to you – and it will travel down the funnel and straight to the location where you’re pointing it – which is hopefully the urinal or toilet!

Japanese blog Rocket News 24 reports that the device has been designed to be ‘smartphone friendly’, as ‘studies’ have shown that people misfire in the first place because they’re too preoccupied with texting or tweeting. To combat this the device has a neck strap, freeing up your hands to tell the world that you’re peeing without the assistance of your hands and it thankfully isn’t going on your shoes. They also come in a choice of colours, so you can no doubt collect them all and show off to your friends that you’ve got the limited edition malachite version.

They cost 10 yuan (about £1) – which is much less than paying for that pesky pee fine!

If you’re still unsure about how these actually work, feast your eyes on the promotional video. It will make your day!

Image by Oatsy40 on Flickr. Used under a Creative Commons Licence.

The post The ‘Pee Trajectory Corrector’ Ensures You Never Miss Your Target appeared first on The Boundary Bathrooms Blog.

I won’t blame you, it’s not like the history of household cleaning product is going to be at the forefront of everyone’s minds. For history buffs though, like me, learning about the history of anything can be a fascinating journey through the many exciting and fascinating events that make up the entirety of human history. When it comes to bleach the most exciting thing to have ever happened is that someone accidentally uses it a coloured t-shirt, thus leaving it ruined with those white spots. Sorry to disappoint you there.

On the other hand, if love a quick run-down of the history of bleach presented in an entertaining style – or you’re doing your GCSE’s and your teacher has told you to look it up, sorry about that – then please read on and become informed about how we got to the point where your mum has just accidentally ruined your favourite t-shirt.

It Begins In Ancient Times

Bleach was first discovered by an elephant who wanted to turn the costume he’d bought for the party that night to a lovely white…

…this isn’t actually the truth but at least it made for a more interesting opening sentence. Instead it was the good old Egyptians – who tended to be pretty clever at coming up with new things – who discovered that washing and sun-drying their garments would eventually turn them white. It must have been quite a shock when little Nakhti’s mother accidentally dyed his favourite shorts white! This process was being used as early as 5000 B.C, and by 3000 B.C bleaches were being made with wood ashes that formed lye solutions when mixed with water. People would soak their clothes in these lye solutions for a short time, before leaving them out in the sun to dry. It was important that these garments were not left in the solution for too long, as they had a tendency to disintegrate.

A long time passed, and far too many damaged clothes no doubt, before any more advancements were made in the field of bleaching. Between 1000-1200 A.D. the Dutch were becoming known as the laundry experts of Europe. They understood that the lye solution could have harsh effects on the garments being dyed. To soften these effects they added sour milk to the solution, although they were keen to keep it a secret so that they could capitalise on the dyeing trade for themselves. The new method meant that soaking and sun-drying could be repeated more than with lye, as the more clothes were washed using lye alone the more the clothes would deteriorate over time. Unfortunately it took up to eight weeks and a lot of space to allow any fabrics to dry, so bear that in mind next time your local laundry takes a day longer than usual to have your garments ready.

Bleach Becomes, Erm, Bleach!

It was until 1200 A.D. that the first reference to the word ‘bleach’ was actually made, and it would be another few hundred years until more advancement was made. One of the major problems was, as improved as the results were, that the Dutch method took far too long. In 1756 Francis Home, a scientist from Edinburgh, finally cracked it and discovered that adding a weak sulphuric acid instead of sour milk could reduce the bleaching time to just 12 hours.

By 1772 the German/Swedish chemist Karl Wilhelm Scheele had discovered chlorine, a chemical element that would go on to become an essential component in modern bleaches. Despite his discovery it wasn’t actually named ‘chlorine’ until 40 years later, when English chemist Sir Humphrey Davy decided it was best someone finally named this curious gas.

Bleaching advancements were on a roll now, and in 1792 the French scientist Claude Louis Berthollet discovered that adding chlorine to potash created a more powerful bleach. The problem was that getting the exact amounts need for the solution was quite hard, and potash was too expensive for it to be a viable option for long anyway.

A few years later, in 1799, the Scottish chemist Charles Tennant decided to use limestone instead of potash, creating a bleaching powder known as calcium hypochlorite. This become popular in Europe, being used in other products alongside clothes, such as a paper. However, it was still a pricey form of bleach. Making anything using chlorine also remained a risky prospect given the health risks it posed.

A Risky Prospect

As chlorine based dye remained expensive and risky to produce, other components like ammonia, borax and lye would remain more popularly used until 1913. The Electro-Alkaline Co. based in Oakland, California started to make a sodium hypochlorite bleach by chlorinating a solution of caustic soda. While this process had been developed the century before it was too expensive to carry out until electricity became cheaper and it was economically viable to electrolyze salt brine derived from salt ponds. It was sold as a disinfectant to laundries and water companies to treat water.

It wasn’t until 1922, with the company now renamed to Clorox Chemical, that it would start giving it to customers through a local retail store, before going on to distribute it through California, Oregon and Washington. The Literary Digest would extoll the virtues of household bleaching two years later in “The Sanitary Value of Bleach”, before Clorox began advertising the bleach a year later.

During World War II, the chlorine bleach was used to purify water in military camps and in the paper industry. After the war it was accepted into The Good Housekeeping Book, further solidifying its status as now also being used by the common citizen for various household chores.

These days, chlorine-based bleaches are used in everything from clothes to putting down your toilet, with many of them containing sodium hypochlorite. Peroxide bleaches are also used to, initially discovered in 1818 but not becoming commercially important until after 1930. Sodium perborate is also used as laundry bleach too, spreading from Europe to North America in the 1980’s.

I could delve deeper, but that’s covering the basic history of bleach and gives you a story to ponder next time you’re washing clothes or toilets. I hope you had fun!

The post The History of Bleach appeared first on The Boundary Bathrooms Blog.

Tiling a bathroom wall can seem like a long complicated process upon first glance, but with a little patience and the right equipment it’s a job that can be done by pretty much anyone. Here we talk you through what you need to do the job, and then the steps you need to take to make sure it’s done properly.

The materials that you will need for the tiling process:

• Tile Grout
• Tile Adhesive
• Tile Spacers
• Rubber Float
• Tiles
• Level
• Measurement Tape
• Sponge
• Notched Trowel

The Steps:

1.Selecting the Tiles

Choose the tiles such that they complement the bathroom interior. There is:

• Ceramic Tiles: These are the most popular bathroom wall tiles. They come in several patterns and colors and therefore are the most favored bathroom tiles.
• Mosaic Tiles: These tiles can give your bathroom a new look.
• Glass Tiles: These tiles are an excellent option when you want a design on the bathroom wall. But, working with glass tiles involves skills and is challenging. They come in several shapes, sizes and colors.
• Stone Tiles: These tiles are naturally resistant to water and give your bathroom a beautiful natural look. They are expensive and heavy and are difficult to work with. Granite tiles, marble tiles, and travertine tiles are several types of popular stone tiles.

2. Preparation

Measure the wall area that is to be covered with tiles. Check an interior decoration store, so that they can tell you the number of tiles and the size of the backer board you will require. Look for any holes in the wall and patch them up and use a cement backer board, installing it by using a drilling machine and screws.

3. Working on the Layout

Find out where the center of the wall is with the help of the measurements taken before. Begin at the center of the wall and end at the edges because walls are never perfectly square. Starting from the center of the wall, chalk the outlines of the tiles to form a layout of all the tiles to be installed. Mark the areas for any plumbing fixtures and adjust the layout accordingly.

4. Installation of Tiles
Start from the center line and apply coat of adhesive with the help of the smooth side of a notched trowel. To spread the adhesive, use the notched side of the trowel. Work in sectors while applying the adhesive to the backer board. Put the first tile at the center of the layout in a twisted motion to ensure that it has adhered correctly. Similarly place remaining tiles on the backer board.

After installing each tile, put the tile spacers so that the width of the grout line between the tiles will be constant. When you reach the edge of the walls when two walls connect at a corner, you may have to cut the tiles so that they fit into the layout with a tile cutter and higher grit sandpaper to smooth the edges that may be sharp. Leave the adhesive for an overnight so that it can dry.

5. Grouting

Once you are done with installation of bathroom tiles, start with the grouting. Select a grout that is suitable for the grout width of the tiles. Prepare the grout according to the direction and take out all the tile spacers. Make sure that the grout is waterproof. Apply the grout between the tiles using a diagonal motion to the grout lines with the help of a rubber float. See that you apply the grout so that it has reached the base of the spaces. Get your cleaning equipment out and rub out the excess grout with a wet sponge. Let the grout dry and clean the surface with a wet cloth gently, to remove any grout that remains on the tile. You can also apply a grout sealer if you want to about seven days after installation.

Your tiling should now look at the top of its game and your bathroom should now really stand out as a truly attractive room.

Guest contributor: Cormac Reynolds is a lover of great bathroom design and has written about if for a number of years. He loves working on his home.

The post Tiling a Bathroom Wall – A Guide appeared first on The Boundary Bathrooms Blog.

£150,000 seems cheap for a house these days, right? Well, what would you say if I told you that £150,000 will only get you part of the house on Kensington High Street in London? Specifically, what would you say if you could only buy a toilet for £150,000? That’s the reality for this absurdly expensive London toilet that works out more than half the price of an average house in the UK.

The tiny bathroom is wedged between shops along the high street and is accessed through a staircase leading up from the shop below, nestled on a landing between the first and second floors. Rather than being put on the market as ‘Bathroom for £150,000 and.. erm, actually that’s it’ it’s being labelled as a ‘store room with WC and wash basin’. So basically that’s just a fancy way of saying it’s a toilet. You could strip out all the stuff that makes it a toilet, but you’d just be left with a small empty room with one window. I don’t even think you’d be able to fit a child’s bed in there.

Kensington isn’t exactly known for selling cheap properties, so it’s not like this is all that surprising for anyone who even slightly knows the area. After all, Kensington Palace isn’t far away, where the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge currently reside. Maybe William and Kate could snap it up so they have somewhere to change Prince George when they’re on one of their walks to feed the ducks in Hyde Park?*

London is an expensive city these days, and given that two similar properties have sold for around the same price in previous years it probably won’t be long before someone decides to ‘take advantage’ of this ‘bargain’ deal. At least it’s easy just to pop to the shop for some milk given the amount of shops in the area, although you might have to get used to sleeping standing up. You can completely forget having a sofa; it’s a deck chair for you instead (albeit a very fancy one from Harrods, of course).

If you do end up buying it and you’re struggling for storage; check out our ‘storage ideas for small bathrooms‘ guide.

*Which obviously never happens.

The post You’d Have to Be Loo-ny to Buy this London Toilet for £150,000 appeared first on The Boundary Bathrooms Blog.

The 5 Tricks to a Standout Room

1. Shower Area

A classic never goes out of style and for the Roman style bathtub this is a truism. These beautiful pristine beauties tend to really catch the eye in the bathroom, standing proudly in the centre of the room. However, what they add in style they can often lack in function and a lot of people tend not to use theirs, though they’ve spent a pretty penny on it.

As an alternative, a beautiful roomy shower can be a fantastic one. If you’ve got the room for a bathtub, then you certainly have the space for a truly magnificent shower. Nowadays luxury showers come with everything from body massage spray heads, to his and her shower heads and a whole raft of sumptuous extras.

The ultimate luxury in showers is a large one and we’ve seen sizes reach the 6 foot square mark at times – this of course means that there’s no need for even a shower door as it’s possible to position the spray to stay inside the large shower area. This can look absolutely fantastic and really create a talking point.

2. Lighting

The modern bathroom is really and truly making the most of lighting and it’s not uncommon for homeowners to have all sorts of fantastic bespoke lighting made for bathrooms nowadays. Trim-less down lights are becoming increasingly common, as are curved wall lights as they really create that mood driven feeling in a bathroom – perfect for those long soaks. Of course, illuminated infinity mirrors are also very popular and have been increasingly common in bathrooms in recent years and look like they will do so for time to come also.

Automation of lighting can also do wonders for the bathroom area. Proximity sensors and timers allow you to add a whole new dimension to your bathroom’s illumination. Imagine an infinity mirror that illuminates when someone enters the bathroom at night – yes it’s possible. Or, how about lighting that can be altered in colour and tone, dimmed or turned on and off via your smartphone? Yes, it all exists and it certainly creates an impact and helps make the bathroom a stand out room.

3. Counter Space

In recent times people have went for two things – a roman bath and a double faucet. However, even though it sounds sumptuous and alluring – it’s not that often a necessity. Think of the storage space in a bathroom area – generally it’s not that much. Omitting the second sink for more counter space and using a beautiful piece of stone for the counter can really add to your bathroom’s appeal. It doesn’t even have to be granite – the likes of quartz can be fantastic additions and work wonderfully with the damp atmosphere of the bathroom and also the lighting.

4. Tiling

Of course, there’s no real way that you can overlook bathroom tiling as a manner in which to create a standout feature. If a bathroom is tiled creatively and in a manner that shows attention to detail then there is no end to the wonders it can add to a bathroom. Mosaic tiles for one offer a fantastic finish to a bathroom.

It’s often a case of convention against modernism when choosing but whether you go for traditional aqua mosaic tiles or something a little more modern and quirky – a well laid mosaic tile will add something to your bathroom. Of course, if you’re willing to invest in mosaic tiles then purchase quality tiles and make sure they are installed by a skilled tradesperson – if you don’t they may lack a little and not do your investment justice.

5. Accessories

The bathroom is the place in the home that allows you to be overt and showcase your more quirky side. Whether it is books filled with toilet jokes, classic cartoons, interesting wallpaper, or crazy furniture – the bathroom is the place to try it and can really leave a positive and lasting impression when it’s added.

Guest contributor: Cormac Reynolds is a lover of great design and beautiful bathrooms. He enjoys writing for interior design blogs and loves experimenting with colours and tones in the home.

The post 5 Great Ways to Turn your Bathroom into a Standout Room appeared first on The Boundary Bathrooms Blog.

This officially-licensed Star Trek merchandise is from the original Star Trek Series – meaning that you get the retro look of what they thought the future would look like back in the 1960’s. The shower curtain is printed with the image of the transporter room from the series, while the included red bath mat takes the shape of the area that the crew would stand before being transported down to whatever adventures awaited them on the planet below. Fortunately they’re made from polyester and not some space age type material that was discovered on the planet Vorg IV. Still, if you switch on the shower at least it will half look like you’re dematerialising and your millions of atoms are flung 40,000 kilometres. Either that or you’ll just look a bit wet.

If you want a bit of Star Trek action in your bathroom then it’s yours for the sum of $49.99 (£31.17 at the current exchange rate). Personally I think the bigger question here is; where were the toilets on the Starship Enterprise? We never really see them in the original series, although I will admit that a plot revolving around Kirk’s bowel problems probably wouldn’t make for the most enticing viewing on television.

The post Get Beamed Up With The Star Trek Shower Curtain appeared first on The Boundary Bathrooms Blog.

This delightfully entertaining book (I’m guessing, it’s probably not. In fact, I’m pretty positive that it isn’t entertaining in the slightest) is penned by Professor Philip M. Parker, Ph.D. It deals with the economics around wooden toilet seat demand across China, and goes into the kind of detail that nobody outside of a Ph.D. in economics can really make any sense of – and that’s just the excerpt over on Amazon! For the sum of $495.00 you too can be privy to the sum of all wooden toilet seat related knowledge, as long as you don’t mind that such knowledge is also constricted to Greater China. At least that means they have a whole market open for the other 194 countries in the world; I want to see A Detailed Look at Toilet Seats in Liechtenstein: Plus a Bonus 100 Page Look at Toilet Brushes.

Speaking of Amazon, the reviews for the book are the most entertaining read here, although that’s not exactly hard given the subject title. George Takei, the one of Star Trek fame, even gets in on the fun with his own review where he comments that “right around page 375, the OFWTSIGC (2009-14) becomes a white-knuckled, roller coaster of emotions – the sort we expect from world class thrillers”. Another reviewer going by the name Lance Kates said “All I did was look at the cover, but I already knew from the start. This is, without a doubt, still a better story than twilight.” But another complained that it wasn’t as exciting as “The 2002-2009 Outlook for Wood Toilet Seats in Greater China”.

Still, it’s not as good as a read as How to Good-bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 times Everyday. Malarkey? Or Effective Way? By Hiroyuki Nishigaki. This one has been on the New York Times bestseller list for the better part of the year* and is described as a “rip-roaring helter-skelter ride through the world of constricting ones anus” and “a book that will surely make every ‘100 books you must read before you die’ imaginable”.
So, ladies, if you want to get your man off the toilet then just give him this book. By the time he’s got through half a page he’ll be rushing to get off the loo out of sheer boredom. Well, that or he’s fallen asleep on the loo; which will require a loud knocking on the door followed by “GET OFF THE TOILET NOW!!!”. $495.00 is but a small price to pay.

*Not really.

The post The 2009-2014 Outlook for Wood Toilet Seats in Greater China = Best Toilet Read Book of the Year! appeared first on The Boundary Bathrooms Blog.

This slice of extravagance taken to the extreme is made by the Australian company Toilet Paper Man and costs an eye-popping $1,376,900.00 (around £825, 839 of the Queen’s money). If the act of wiping yourself with gold sounds uncomfortable, don’t worry, as your money is also buying you three-play comfort. As for the wiping itself, the company says that “as you use the toilet paper 22-carat gold flakes will fall onto the floor and your behind, taking you to another level of sophistication”. I suppose we’ll have to take their word for it, as it’s not every day we get the trance to wipe ourselves with actual gold.

It beats the previous most expensive toilet paper that is made in Japan, which now seems a bit shoddy in comparison. This gold version is gift wrapped too, is delivered personally and comes with a free bottle of champagne. Let’s hope it’s decent champagne too and not just one of those cheap bottles from your local supermarket that simply masquerading as champagne.

Unsurprisingly, nobody has splashed out any cash to buy a roll yet, although there’s only one up for grabs at the moment. That’s if it’s entirely real and not just a publicity stunt, as we have no proper photographic proof of it at the moment (the picture above looks computer generated). However, if you can’t afford the gold toilet roll you could always try 24kt gold pills that will leave flakes of pure gold in your poo. What a world we live in!

So, if you have enough wealth to buy a roll of gold toilet paper then you can put it alongside your solid gold toilet. Why not eh? If you’ve got everything else you want in the world then you might as well apply the same standards to your toilet habits too.

The post Wipe A Million Dollars away With the 22-Carat Gold Toilet Roll appeared first on The Boundary Bathrooms Blog.