The Shower Wasn't Broken. I Was.

Do you have jobs around the house that slowly become part of the furniture?

Not literally, obviously. Although in this case it was attached to the wall.

We had one of those shower rails where the shower head sits in a little holder that can slide up and down. The adjustment mechanism on ours broke about a year ago. It wasn't a major problem because it happened to break at exactly the right height for everyone in the house.

As long as nobody touched it, everything was fine.

Which is how it survived for a year.

Every now and then someone would try to adjust it, remember it was broken, and one of us would say, "We should sort that this weekend."

We never sorted it that weekend.

Or the next one.

Or any of the weekends after that.

Eventually the shower made the decision for us. One of the kids was in there when we heard a huge crash from downstairs. For a brief moment we thought somebody had fallen over.

Nope.

The shower rail had finally given up.

At that point it wasn't really optional anymore, so I did what any responsible adult would do and immediately drove to B&Q without doing any research whatsoever.

In my head I only needed the little holder part. The bit the shower sits in. Surely they sell those separately.

They do not.

Apparently if one small plastic piece breaks, the solution is to buy an entirely new rail.

Fortunately it was only about twenty quid, which was considerably less than I'd convinced myself it was going to cost. For some reason I'd built this job up into some massive expensive repair when in reality it was cheaper than a takeaway.

I bought the rail, took it home, made a coffee, had a snack, wandered around for a bit, made another coffee and eventually accepted that the shower wasn't going to fix itself.

I hate DIY.

Some people find it satisfying. I find it annoying.

Anyway, I climbed into the bath and started taking the old rail apart. That's when I discovered the first problem.

The new holder couldn't simply be attached to the old rail.

To fit it properly, I'd have to remove the entire thing from the wall.

Fine.

Except once I removed it, I discovered whoever fitted the original shower had made a right mess of it. The fittings were loose, some of the holes weren't in great shape and the whole thing had apparently been surviving through optimism alone.

At that point I decided I might as well fit the entire new rail.

An hour and a half later, after considerably more effort than I was expecting, the new rail was finally on the wall.

Job done.

Or so I thought.

I picked up the shower head, went to place it in the holder and it didn't fit.

Too big.

I stared at it for a while hoping it would somehow become smaller.

It didn't.

Back downstairs I went.

Coffee.

Snack.

Mild irritation.

Then I started searching online. Eventually I found that B&Q sold a shower head and hose designed specifically for the rail I'd just bought. Problem solved.

Back to B&Q.

The same guy who'd served me earlier was on the till.

"That'll fit the rail you bought before," he said.

Which caught me completely off guard because I barely remember what I had for breakfast, never mind customers from several hours ago.

I asked whether the fittings would work with my shower.

He assured me they would.

Perfect.

I got home, fitted the new hose, attached the shower head, stood back to admire my work and then discovered it still didn't fit.

At this point I was convinced somebody was winding me up.

The rail was right.

The shower head was right.

The hose was right.

The internet said they all worked together.

The guy in B&Q said they all worked together.

Yet somehow they still didn't fit.

I spent far longer than I care to admit trying to work out what was happening.

Measuring things.

Checking things.

Looking at product pages.

Staring at the shower.

Then it hit me.

I walked upstairs, picked up the holder and turned it over.

That was it.

That was the problem.

The holder was tapered.

One end was wider than the other.

I'd installed it upside down.

The original shower fit perfectly.

The replacement shower fit perfectly.

Everything fit perfectly.

I'd just spent the best part of an afternoon solving a problem that didn't exist.

The shower wasn't broken.

I was.