Starting in a couple of weeks we will be putting up with having no bathroom for six weeks while workmen make a completely unnecessary re-fit that is costing us several thousand dollars.

Are we mad ?

No, the answer lies in the Finnish system of house ownership. (There follows a very rough idea of how this is)

For tax and other reasons houses are often part of a "company". You buy a house and this gives you the equivalent number of shares in the company. The board of the company is other house owners almost always serving for free and for limited periods. The board then (with votes from the houseowners) decides on actions that need to be taken for the good of the entire house stock.

Positive is that if they decide that all houses are to be painted (for instance) the price per house is way less than you would pay yourself and they organise it all.

Negative is when you - but not many other householders - have already renewed your bathroom and then they decide all bathrooms are to be renewed.

You can of course say that you don't want your bathroom done. You still have to pay your share of all the other bathroom renewals so (we have ca 40 houses) everyone (including you) pays 2.5% less and you are the only people without a new bathroom.

So you pay the full amount and put up with having the builders in for six weeks and no showers in that time.

Luckily my wife made a deal with the neighbour who had her showers in our bathroom during the week while I was at work and will now offer the same thing to my wife, while I have showers available (somewhere) at work.

But still, during those six weeks I will be muttering to myself about how crazy that Finnish system sometimes is and wishing I still had that money to do something more useful with.

Just about anything would be more useful.

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P.S. In April 2006. The latest plan is to do nothing to all houses in 2006 but in 2007 to do something about the window frames. We are lucky as the original idea of the (house) board was to replace all the windows as well (which in the case of a friend of my wife's meant almost 12 months with covered windows and a massive bill) but the consultant they (in typical Finnish style) asked to look at their proposal said this wasn't necessary. Good for him. Not of course that I have a clue how much the whole thing will anyway cost next year but I doubt if it will be as much as that bathroom renewal and at least it's *next* year and a genuine improvement. Meanwhile what we really need is a new kitchen but what we've seen is that the first thing people do when they buy a house is to re-do the kitchen (in one case right after the previous owners had just re-done the kitchen prior to selling it!), so that decision really depends on how long we plan to stay here and enjoy that new kitchen. I'm beginning to wonder if all we need to do is change all the cupboard doors.