The big white boat

There’s a big white boat sitting in our bathroom.

The inaugural shower

Almost three months to the day, we have finally had the inaugural shower and suddenly things felt much better.

With a herringbone feature wall with down lights and a rain shower, it was the best shower I’ve had in three months. No flip flops and no button to keep pushing. Bliss.

The bathroom isn’t quite finished yet as we have the bath to install, windows, vanity, sink, mirror, pendant lights, shower screen and of course, a door (minor details) but we’re getting there.

Lovely and cosy

Another day, another cloud of brick dust!

It goes without saying we are not very popular with the neighbours and we’re not very clean.

Every evening I vacuum, dust and clean in order to start again the next day as the orange dust continues to settle.

This week the rest of the old Edwardian plaster has come off the hall. Hallelujah! It’s taken almost a year but we’re finally getting plastered.

From moving in day…

Stripping

It’s lovely and cosy for winter!

Death in Poland

Sadly our head builder has had to return to Poland as his mother in law has died. That’s sad news for him and (selfishly) sad news for us as the bathroom has stalled again.

Hopefully he’ll be back next week. We miss him!

More dust = more progress?

Today apparently all the plaster has been knocked off the walls in the hall.
This is what I’m going home…

Good thing I’ve bought some new dusters!

More progress

We have decided to push on with the hall and are starting plastering next week.

This is bliss to me as the missing chunks of plaster, loose wiring and bare lightbulbs has been quite depressing.

Now with the bathroom door moved and the worst of the building work done, we can finally plaster the hall and link the good rooms together. It’s going to get even dustier as all the old plaster has to come off so more sanity cleaning ahead.

We’ll also start wiring, plumbing and plastering the kitchen and we’re installing new French doors this week so we’re finally feeling some progress is being made.

Things don’t look very different in the kitchen but we’re realising what a big room it is without the cement mixer!

This week’s progress

Inching along at a snail’s pace, this week saw us ordering three more boxes of tiles which meant we were delayed again by a week.

We seem to have a lot of half tiles around so perhaps they’ve been used as testers, still we now have a dark grey tiled box which is odd considering I wanted a light, white bathroom!

This week we also have lights hanging from the ceiling (they’re not supposed to be) but we can already see the benefit of better quality lighting as the light is warmer and more flattering (thank god!)

Next week tiling should be finished, grouting done and the bath and shower installed. Big T is painting the ceiling and then I can pop the lights back, get electrocuted and then, as if by magic (or very slow graft) we may be able to wash!

I feel I’ve said that for the past four weeks though so will just wait to see how things progress.

Another week, another tile

And so another week passes and still no shower as we seem to be laying one tile a day. It’s the slowest progress I’ve ever seen and one which is wearing ever so thin.

I very much hope we like the bathroom after all this. It’s looking a bit “Room 101” (as described by Big T) at the moment.

The kitchen is a rough shell, steel in and wall out but not much else to report.

It’s hard to stay positive after almost eleven months and while the scaffolding coming down was a great thing, we can now see more of the filth we’re living in.

I write this from the laundrette where I’m waiting for a load of washing to finish. I’ve taken Friday afternoon off work to try and get things cleaned up a little, for the sake of sanity.

Let’s hope something gets finished soon as funds and patience are dwindling rapidly.