A View From the Shower

Standing in the shower, this is what you see. I was going to strip the door (which is the original one from the old bathroom) but I got half way through before realizing that its condition was extremely poor with lots of holes full of Polyfilla, so I filled, smoothed and painted it thus. A splash of colour is just the job. This room is now a whisker away from being finished, although I will have to refinish the top of the wash stand once the other bathroom is back in commission.

Backwards and Forwards

Having now finished the wardrobes, my priorities suddenly switched back to the en-suite (having originally planned to do the floor in the undressing room).

The reason for this was that I discovered a pesky leak in the corner of the shower. This shower door cost a fortune and has been nothing but trouble. Its design is so unnecessarily complex that no matter how hard I try, water always seems to manage to find a way through eventually. Here, it was getting behind the door pivot and leaking through a crack in the grout behind, so I had to rip out the whole side. That's the second time I've had to do that, and I bally well intend not to have to bally well do it again. I also scraped out all the grout all the way around the bottom and started again with the best quality sanitary silicone money can buy.

I also got on with finishing all the skirting, one of those jobs which I always seem to take forever to get around to. That results in a particularly warm glow of satisfaction when I finally do. I had to pull the khazi out to get at it, and I've thoughtfully blotted out the end of the soil pipe in case you are just having your breakfast.

The end piece was carefully cut by hand and glued together.

I cut a small piece of stone tile to fit between the skirting and the shower tray. When all the gaps were variously siliconed, grouted and caulked, it looked pretty tidy. I also had a small fillet to do on the other side to finish off that corner. Every possible gap is now permanently sealed. Now there's a bold statement if ever there was one.

En-suite Progress

A couple of recent shots to start the day of the en-suite which has taken some steps forward.

I got this corner cabinet in Homebase for half price when I went in for some insulation which they didn't have. It's 45 degree angle means you can have lots of fun peering into all corners of the room simultaneously while sitting on the loo.

Got a shelf, towel rail and soap/cupholders up too.

Shower room latest

A couple of shots of the latest from the shower room.

After I fixed the disaster which was the vertically inadequate tiles, I got on with installing the shower taps, hand set and other accessories. Looks fantastic, water pressure still too low even with a pump, shower tray leaks in the corner. Still some work to be done then....

At least I won some battles with the wash stand. Sink waste leaked persistently, took some time to work out that there were two leaks, not just one. Now there are none. Door frame, skirting and low energy illuminated mirror all fixed and doing what they are supposed to.

Radiator is up too, although not yet connected. You may place your bets on whether there will be any leaks. What are the odds?

Making Repairs

Well here I am, back at almost exactly the same stage (bathroomically speaking) that I was at this time last week, specifically being ready or thereabouts to start installing the shower door. Here's how I achieved this epic feat:

I cut out the damaged sections of plasterboard which had come away with the tiles, and bashed in some noggins which aren't in this picture, but trust me, I did. (Noggins are bits of wood that go horizontally between the vertical struts where you join bits of plasterboard so the joins can't move.)

Then I cut some bits of plasterboard to fill the holes, and fixed the damaged insulated boards at the back with some drywall adhesive.

Once that was all dry and hard I cut the tiles to the correct height (I quadruple-checked this time) and stuck them on.

And finally the tiles are grouted. When that is dry I can seal them and start work installing the door. In between doing all this I managed to relocate my dear mother 200 miles from Kent to Devon. I think I'll just pop off to Milliways for lunch now.

Triumph and Disaster

Having toiled away for most of the week tiling and grouting the shower and shower room floor, I had reached the point yesterday morning where the shower enclosure was all ready for the door to be fitted. Rather than steaming ahead with that which was the temptation, I decided to paint the walls first so that I didn't get paint all over the door and stuff.

So this morning I set about fitting the door. The first thing I discovered was that due to a mis-measurement of about 15mm, I had cut all the top row of tiles about 15mm too low.

So I had to smash off the top row of tiles....

Which of course took half the plasterboard off with them. I really can't think of anything funny to say about this.

Bang up to date

This very morn was I tiling the shower.

Hole in the wall

The last thing Rich did before he left on his away mission was make a large rectangular hole in our bedroom wall. The day before, Janine had asked me where the hole was going to be, so I drew it on the wall in pen. In completely the wrong place. And the next day (when I wasn't around) Richard came and for some strange reason thought I'd marked it accurately, and made a hole in the wrong place. You've got to laugh...

This was after he'd filled the wrong hole and made the right one.

Through the hole, this is what you can see. A view through the dressing/wardrobe room into the en-suite shower room. As Rich was away we had Jack in for several days doing the plastering. He's very good. He helped lay the floor in the studio after I hurt my back.

Compact and bijou...

I know, I know already! I haven't updated the blog for weeks. Well, I've got lots of excuses, not least of which is that I sent Richard on a mission 200 miles away which has taken precedent over things here. Won't bore you with the details.

However, I have some pictures in reserve of what Richard was doing before he left. Here he's just starting on the third wall of the shower enclosure in the en-suite.

And here he's finished and plastered it. The bit that's not plastered will be tiled.

Then he put in the shower tray. A real neat little low-profile job.

Sewers

The Master Plaster Blaster has been troweling two-handed like a demented one of those blokes on an aircraft carrier waving two bats around to show the planes how to land. When Richard and I were speaking on the phone about how pink and wet the walls were, Paula, his lovely partner, thought we were being rude. Cuh, womens' minds are like sewers.

En-Suite

For the moment, we are concentrating our efforts on completing the en-suite shower room. When this is done, we can use it while we partly dismantle the bathroom in order to finish that off.

Yesterday, Richard installed a shower pump in the airing cupboard, and we pressure tested all the plumbing joints on the shower system. Then we charged up the pump and ran water through it. Don't want to tempt fate, but it all seemed to work.

So today Rich set about boarding up the wall inside which all the pipes and wiring run. The shower has a deluge head, shown here without its head.

A wider view.

The loo will be snug behind the yet to be built stud wall which will form the third side of the shower enclosure.

Christmas happened....

....and by some miracle we got an upstairs bathroom in a usable condition. There may not have been any heating, or a bath panel, but the bath was in, the taps worked, and most of the leaks were fixed.

On Boxing Day I was first up, and the first job of the day was to empty the tray placed below the sink unit to catch the water leaking from the hot tap connection. Thought I'd go to the loo while I was there, flushed it, nothing.... No whooshy noise like you're supposed to hear. Uh oh, rising panic, get a grip.... Taps don't work, this is bad. Very bad. Its really, really cold in here... Frozen pipes! Aaargh! Off with the skirting board, on with the fan heater and hair dryer. Got it thawed out and working, no new leaks, before any of our seven guests even got out of bed. The whole world in fact was ignorant of my twenty minutes of sheer, blind terror. That's the way it goes.

In between the seven Christmas guests leaving and the five New Year guests arriving, I had one day to get the oak wash stand out, sand it down, get two coats of Danish oil on it and put it back in. It hadn't stood up to the hard use over Christmas with constant exposure to water from plumbing leaks and guests, mainly due to the fact that some silly twit had painted it with floor sealer instead of Danish oil because they didn't read the labels on the very similar looking tins. What a moron.

Legend

We've been trial fitting some of the furniture and sanitaryware. Richard, who must by now have a near god-like status in the minds of anyone following this blog, will surely be elevated to legendary when you realize he's made the two oak washstands with his own gnarly hands.

Here's the small one for the shower room.....

.....and the big one for the bathroom.

And the throne for when the queen pops round.

Plumbing

Here's a couple of pictures of the plumbing that's going to be hidden inside the dividing wall between the two bathrooms.

The shower where you may notice part of the studwork was ever so slightly on fire when the joint was soldered....

....and the bath.

Latest progress

Once again, blogfans, I am practically buried under a deluge of stroppy emails from frustrated viewers demanding an update. Highly remiss of me to have kept you all waiting so long.


All the water and heating pipes have been run, and will be
hidden behind skirting and insulation board.

The lobby/dressing room area won't have the full-height sloping ceilings so the
stud wall has been insulated against the cold void which will be behind it.

The dressing room area will be lit during daylight by a sun pipe. That's a highly reflective pipe that links the ceiling with a hole in the roof covered with perspex to let in daylight.

Things are starting to look nice and tidy around the skylights. The ceilings have foam board insulation between the rafters, and are further covered in insulated plasterboard.

The outside walls are covered in that too.

The corner round the hot water tank will be neatly boxed in and the sink will go next to it.

Spot of bother looming for the portholes: I had some bendy board to line the holes with but it was just too short. Need to find another method, so any sensible suggestions are welcome. In fact it's so long since I had a meaningful number of comments on a post, I'll happily accept stupid ones too.

Warmer and snugglier

The first piece of insulated plasterboard goes up on the ceiling. It will be like a high security prison for Thermal Units in here. There will be no escape.

Warm and snuggly

This is the first stage of insulating the roof. Three inch insulation board between all the rafters.

Stud

Today Richard occupied himself with work most appropriate. He began construction of the stud walls. A stud building stud walls. Well when you think about it, any wall built by a stud would be a stud wall. Richard's walls are particularly studdy, according to Richard. As for me, I'd rather not think about such things.

The insulation board came too. All the outside walls and ceilings will be covered in this, and hardly an ounce of heat will escape from our new bathrooms.

Porthole

I've been working on fitting the porthole windows over the weekend and while Richard fits the second skylight today.

First I made a former from bits of scrap wood and nailed it in place from the outside. Then I squidged some render and bits of brick into the gaps from the inside, which I forgot to take a picture of. When that had set, I could take the former off from the outside leaving a lovely round hole for the window frame.

The frame was then wedged in place and all the gaps filled with expanding foam, the greatest building material ever invented.

Here's the window from the outside after I'd sealed the the bare render with watered down paint.