On going backwards and other such things

We realised, with great joy at the thought, that this weekend is the first of five weekends at home. That's five consecutive weekends with only a few bits and pieces in the diary. With a burst of enthusiasm we've made ourselves a list of projects we'd like to work on, almost certainly more than we'll get done - but its good to have aims in life!

First things first though, the bathroom. You may have noticed we've gone quiet on that one, and that's because the project has gone quiet - in fact with no help from us it's been going backwards. We've hit two snags...

Where the sink was....

The first is that around a week after rejoicing in the final fitting of the sink, we discovered that it was not to be the final fitting after all. A very slow leak appeared, coming from a manufacturing fault in the sink itself rather than our plumbing. This one has been really frustrating as plumbing leaks we can deal with (usually by applying a hefty dose of silicon sealant), but a flawed sink means it had to come out and be sent back for a replacement, damaging the finish on the worktop in the process.

Getting ready to refinish the scuffs and other damaged caused by removing the sink.

Our other set back is that the paint on the wall in one particular corner has started to react. Slowly but surely its been bubbling and peeling until we could ignore it no more.

Since the corner in question is the one nearest the bath and shower we debated if humidity was the problem. We stripped off the dodgy paint, made sure everything was dry and applied a fresh coat - and within a matter of minutes it started to bubble up again. Oh.

After the first coat of base coat the bubbliness was still coming through a little
- not very easy to photograph though!

Time to pull in the big boys. Over the course of the weekend we've applied several liberal coats of Base Coat by Polycell - the same people that make Polyfilla, which is supposed to seal in whatever is behind and allow you to paint your colour of choice over the top.  So far we seem to be winning - but we'll have to keep an eye on it.

So this weekend has been re-painting, re-varnishing and putting up the mirrored cabinet that arrived this week.

Forward progress at last - fixing the new medicine cabinet to the wall.

In other news, we've taken the old bath to the tip, revealing the lanky grass that's been hiding underneath it, and bonfired away some more of the bits that have been covering our patio. Oh and Lemon is having her first broody spell of the season - we had a couple of warmer days apparently and she was off, hunkering down in the coop at every possibly opportunity - eggs or no eggs. So starts the annual battle of wills....

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Refitting the Bathroom 2. Painting and Tiling

Last weekend we rather excitedly made a start to our bathroom project. We've had to work out a fairly careful schedule that meant it was basically a functional bathroom for the majority of the build, and with that in mind this week we have:

... emptied the room of all the fixtures and fittings including the heated towel rail we had fitted a couple of years back. This is about the only thing we're hoping to reuse at the end of the project.

... removed all the tiles. We did this one in stages so that the bath/shower area was protected for as long as possible. By the end of Friday though we'd stripped them all out. Unfortunately some of the plaster board couldn't stand the abuse of yet another round of tile removal (we think we might be the third or fourth to attempt this) and we'll need to re-plaster this area before we put in the new bath or start tiling.

... painted the walls. The areas that wanted painting are, unsurprisingly, not overly close to all the plumbing work so we got this done last Sunday. The walls are now "green blue" which is a minty green colour, and hopefully once we've fitted the cupboards and new tiles we should have a nice neat painted edge.

... painted the gloss work. For the same reasons as above we got this one done early, we just need to be careful maneuvering the baths in and out!

So at the end of the week our bathroom was still all in place (sink aside), but ready for a long weekend to break the back of the task. Hopefully by the time we're back at work on Wednesday we'll have the new toilet and bath all fitted and maybe some tiles up too. That's plan A anyway....

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A Bedroom Makeover 6. More Labels

A rather photo heavy post with the rest of the box labels...

Joe asked that this one looked like a toddler had been allowed near
the glitter. It certainly went all over the table so I think that counts!

Calculators, hole punch, staplers etc...

Getting photos of more of the shelves together was a little tricky without all the labels reflecting the light and turning into bright white squares! Making these has been good fun and should certainly make it easier next time we wonder "which box was that in again?" (which we're already doing regularly).

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