Done, finished, complete!

Yes, it can only be the bathroom!

While we knew we were going to be squeezing a lot of this work in around the rest of life, I don't think either of us predicted it would take three and a half months! To be fair, most of the last month has been dealing with the things that didn't work first time. Finally though, we can say that it is finished. Finito. Done. Hooray!

First up though, a reminder of the "before" photos:

 

And now it looks like this:

Worktop with countertop sink and plenty of storage

Draining board for lots of bottles

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Refitting the Bathroom 4. Shower

Another bathroom post, I hope you don't mind; our lives currently revolve around little else and so the blog will naturally do likewise for a while still.

Since I last posted the focus has been on tiling in the hope we'd have the main walls done before the sparky arrived to wire in our new shower on Tuesday morning. This was a close call that saw us grouting like mad on Monday evening, but we did get there.

Tiled and grouted walls

This shower is one of the rather exciting bits about our new setup, a gadget for the bathroom! In the old bathroom the shower was one of those "connected to the bath taps" jobs, except that the handle to switch from bath to shower had long since snapped off and a spanner lived on the bathroom windowsill for this purpose. Having seen so many of the bathtap/shower combos that have failed over time we decided to try something different.

Shower fittings on the wall all ready to go.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard we tried to rearrange things, the bath and consequently the shower needed to go in the same location as before - with the shower head on a rather thin and flimsy stud wall. Worried about the weight of sitting a classic electric shower there we've opted for a digital shower instead. Any excuse!

The main body of our shower, tucked snuggly out of the way.

With a digital shower the bulk of the unit sits tidily away under the bath with just a small outlet for the shower head required in our stud - hopefully much less strain on the wall. The shower is controlled by a remote unit which, in the case of the one we've chosen, is wireless (you can also get digital showers where the remote is connected by a long length of wire). This means it can sit anywhere in the bathroom with no worries about water flow and pipework.

The wireless shower controller

Getting the shower wired into our mains has been the only job we've employed someone to do (well that and soldering up our pipework mishap), and yesterday Andy came and sorted it out for us. We used Andy to help us sort out the electrics when we first bought the house and he did all that was needed yesterday with minimal fuss which was great. All we need to do now is silicon around the edge of the bath and we can have a shower!

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Refitting the Bathroom 3. We Will Rebuild!

One long weekend (and it felt very long!) and we've made some good progress on our bathroom project. Here's a quick whiz through of what we've achieved so far:

We finished gutting the place. The old suite was removed on Saturday and we stripped out the floor boards too. As I mentioned at the start, a rotting floor was one of the motivations for getting this project done - it was good to see it go.

Gutted...

We burst a pipe. Yes, you read that correctly! In getting the floor up we cut one of the pipes to the central heating system (the nearest pipe in the photo above) and so had the boiler off until the very kind plumber could come and solder it back together for us three days later. Oops! It turns out our pipes run so close to the floor boards that they touch which might explain why we get so many creaks and bangs as the heating warms up.

We laid new chip board, complete with drawings of where all the pipes are to stop some poor sod in the future making the same mistake. In the process we've also found that the joists are a medley of heights so there's no way the floor will ever be flat. Useful.

The toilet in a temporary setting while we sorted out the new floor boards

We replaced the toilet with its new "back to wall" counterpart. The cistern will be hidden inside one of the new cupboards once all is done.

We've tiled the wall behind where the bath is going. We figured this would be much easier without the bath in place. With a little more time we'd have tiled further but the deadline of going back to work was looming over us so...

First wall of new tiles all stuck in place

We fitted the new bath. By 10.30 the night before we went back to work we were both able to wash off all the plaster dust, tile adhesive and general dirt to become presentable again! We're feeling very grateful that we decided to use speedfit plumbing as Joe managed to get most of the fittings for the bath and shower together in about half an hour.


There's lots more to do yet, but it feels like we might be on the homeward stretch now - we're rebuilding rather than tearing down anyway. *Sigh of relief*

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Refitting the Bathroom 1. Getting Organised

When we bought our house there was one job that was most definitely on the hit list right from the start: completely redoing the bathroom. There are many reasons for doing this, not least that the bath has leaked so many times that we're not sure how stable the floor is anymore, The current shell suite has certainly seen better days, and has a nasty habit of encouraging water to pool rather than drain nicely. The current layout has no real storage and all sorts of box sections to hide pipes that feel fairly bodged together.

In short we're stripping the whole lot out and starting again. We want something that feels fresh and clean, has plenty of storage and has a more modern feel to it. The room is just under a 2m square so there isn't much space to play with however we've got a plan that we think makes good use of the room:

So that's lots of new cupboards and a worktop that runs round the room
with a countertop sink, along with new toilet, bath and shower.
Oh and sorry the whole thing is so blindingly bright!

Its taken quite a bit of effort (and several years of stopping and starting) to get all our thoughts pinned down but we're finally there and at the end of last week we put in an order for most of the parts we're going to need. Joe's hoping to achieve most of it himself, with me as a sidekick (and a little bit of wiring from the electrician). Did I mention that this is the only bathroom - and only toilet - in the house so everything needs to stay fairly functional throughout the refit? Watch this space!

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March in the Chicken Coop

This month in the chicken coop...

... they've not been in the coop. Well they have, but after a winter of using it as a shelter from all the wind and rain they've rediscovered their love of the garden. This has it's ups and downs. It's so much fun seeing them explore again, and they're following us round more. Last weekend Joe was trying to plant out a day-lily we'd bought out of season last year (hooray for the "dead plants section"!), but could hardly dig for Pepper checking the loose soil for worms. We almost had a headless hen! On the downside they now start squawking at sun up for the gate to be opened and we're not impressed.

... they've been laying. We're finally up to speed with three regular layers. Fizzy, as always, has decided that eggs are not for her, but we're getting 15-20 eggs a week from the other three which is more than enough to keep us happy!

... getting muddy. At the start of the month Fizzy started to get particularly muddy. Her feathers were all clumped together and we weren't sure she was going to get on top of it again so we stepped in and gave her a bath....

This was after her bath.... still brown but not so muddy.

She wasn't impressed by the peace offering....

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