The Genius of... the Toilet Sink

I recently had a chocolat chaud with a friend who just bought an apartment (la rêve!).  Granted, she is just outside of Paris and therefore benefits from a bigger space (with parking!), but she still had to deal with the constraints of an apartment building and a co-propriété while re-doing the interior.

My friend loves her new apartment, but there was one thing that she was not willing to deal with in a place that she owned: she did not want a toilet room without a sink.

You see, in France, the toilet (or WC) is often separate from the bathroom (the salle de bains).  It's very convenient when someone needs to use the loo and someone else needs to shower, however the problem is that there isn't always a sink in the toilet room to wash your hands after you do your, uh, bidness.  Often you have to walk from the toilet to the salle de bains to wash your hands.  You do the toilet room door handle germ math. Guh-ross.

So, as I was saying, my friend didn't want a germy toilet room door handle and decided to take matters into her own hands!  Plumbing was already installed a certain way when they moved in and there was no reinstalling the pipes to connect a sink... so guess what my genius friend found?

That's right mes amis - a toilet with a sink on top! To top it all off, after washing your hands, the dirty waste water is used to flush the toilet! That's what I call ecological and economical... Not to mention, total. genius.