I've just moved into an apartment that features this oddity in the bathroom. The brass tap cuts off the cold water to the bathroom and is located inside the shower/bath recess, which is really inconvenient. It's ugly and the gap around it means water can get into the wall pretty easily.
My original hope was to replace it with a chrome tap handle and get it looking more in-line with the rest of the bathroom, but I had a plumber in today and he said it couldn't be done as the fitting was the wrong size (plus the water to the building would need to be cut off in order to replace it). He then looked into trying to get a chrome handle that would fit, but nothing seems to exist so he suggested spraypainting it silver, which doesn't really solve anything.
What I'm thinking of doing now is to fill in the hole around the tap using either white silicone or Knead It (probably Knead It would be better - hole seems too big to easily gum up with silicone but I'm unsure) and then mounting a corner shower caddy above it to make it less noticeable. Ideally I'd like to cover it with entirely some sort of 60mm x 60mm box but I can't find anything suitable in my searches.
Does anyone have any better ideas on the best way to tackle this? The big restriction being that I can't remove it, even temporarily.
