Slow motion

I expected the tiling to go slow, and it is. I've only covered half of the bathroom after a full day at it.

One issue is the large tiles we chose. Almost every tile needs some unusual cut doing to it whereas with small tiles, most cuts are just straight breaks and any odd corner ones are fast to cut because they're small anyway.

I have had some successful tiling however. The holes for the shower outlet look good and it will be easy to get a watertight seal there.

Show outlet

The next issue will be tiling round the extractor fan. I feel the need for a new tool here.

Extractor fan

P.S I notice from the logs that there are quite a few people regularly reading this blog. I once tried to work out who was following it, feel free to add a comment from time to time, whoever you are.

Visible progress

There is visible progress today - I've started tiling! The end is in sight...

Wall tiles

Unfortunately, my tile cutter is too small for the big tiles we bought. After failing to hire one for a week because all(?) the hire shops in York are closed on Saturdays, I've ordered a new one from ebay at 1/3 of the price of B&Q.

Here are the nicely drilled floor tiles fitted. These hole cutters are brilliant.

Drilled Floor tiles

Finally, the sink didn't come with any clips to hold it to the worktop. I queried this with the supplier, who asked the manufacturer. Apparently the silicone sealant is meant to be enough to hold it in place. However, it's semi-recessed, so half of it overhangs the edge; if you fill it with water and lean on it, will it be secure? I don't believe it. So I'll have to be inventive and make some sort of clip....

Balancing act

And of course, the stupid bath waste is still leaking...I've added more silicone..again.

Making holes

I didn't do much tonight in the bathroom: just primed the walls ready for tiling. 

And re-sealed the bath waste again. If this doesn't work I will have to buy a new waste, this one is not appropriate since it requires a good seal against the underside of the bath, which is not smooth. It really is not a good thing to try and make a seal against a rough surface.  

However, I did play with a new diamond hole saw with excellent results!

Round holes:

Yesterday, Robin commented that you can never get a spanner anywhere near the nuts under a bath once the bath has been "tiled in". This is true and is what I was thinking when I brought all the pipes out to the side of the bath within reach. If you want to change the taps, for example, at a later date, then the only awkward nuts to tighten are the back-plate nuts for the tap; all of the water pipe connections are either in reach, or can be done before putting the taps onto the bath.

Accessible Pipes:

Functional

I didn't write anything last night because it took too long to fit a new trap to the bath. You'd think that changing a trap would be easy. But of course not. Somehow, removing the old trap I must have pulled a bit too hard on the waste of the bath. When I fitted the new trap, the seal had gone. 

So out came the bath completely so that I could remove the waste, clean up the silicone and reseal. On that note, the design of the bath waste is rubbish. It needs to make a seal against the bottom of the bath, which is a rough surface made of fibreglass. So the only way to get it watertight seems to be to use lots of silicone. And if that doesn't work, just repeat.

Anyway, after too long, we have a nice, small, watertight trap on the bath. If only I'd done that in the first place then I wouldn't have wasted an evening taking the bath out again.

Also, this one is a slimline one that doesn't need a hole in the floor to accommodate it. If only I'd done that in the first place then I wouldn't have had to cut a hole in the floor, which presumably is now a great place to have a leak.

New trap:

Today, however, was finally a productive evening!

I took the opportunity of the children being happily entertained to use the remaining daylight to cut the worktop for the sink. This was not as easy as you might imagine. Without instructions or a template, I guessed and marked and measured twice and marked and measured twice and marked and measured twice and still got it wrong. (But intentionally, it was the right way sort of wrong, so that was OK.)

So the sink is fitted and tested.  It isn't, however, attached to anything except pipes. I can't see any easy way to attach it to anything; there were no clips, extra bits or even instructions.

And fitting the replacement loo that the nice people at Maddisons delivered was easy. It didn't leak...

So now it's functional. We have a working bath, toilet and sink. 

Functional:

The main remaining jobs are basically (not necessarily in this order):

• tile the walls (slow and awkward)
• build some boxing around the pipes (awkward)
• attach the sink to the unit and the unit to the wall (easy, if I can find some kind of clips)
• attach the toilet to the wall and floor (easy)
• fit the towel rail/radiator (easy as long as my guess for where to put the pipes was about right)
• finish tiling the floor (I have new toys to cut the pipe holes, ebay is great!)
• shower fitting (apparently, it's "easy fit")
• finishing touches (erm)

It might be finished by Christmas then.

Tiling preparation

This evening we prepared the walls for tiling - mostly removing old adhesive.

Actually Karen did most of that. I mostly did some thinking (and removing the toilet, which will be replaced tomorrow by the nice guys at the bathroom supplier). There are just lots of unknowns to think about.

• What height to have the border/trim so that we don't get tiny bits of tiles to cut around the bath/sink/window.
• The tile adhesive gives strict instructions about using the right sort of primer...is all this really necessary for previously plastered walls (even if the old adhesive didn't really stick well).
• The border/trim is porous. Do I have to seal? Before installing? Before grouting? With what?

At least I've decided on the height and drawn a nice horizontal line rather higher than I expected about half way up the wall.

Going nowhere fast

It was a disappointing few hours this evening.

I thought I would assemble the sink/vanity unit. But...there's a cupboard missing and there's no point cutting the worktop to size until I know exactly how big the cupboard is.

Empty space:

I thought I would adjust the legs of the bath properly. But...the idea of reusing the old trap wasn't a good one, and it's leaking. So the bath needs to come out again.

Old trap:

I thought I would test to see if the toilet is still leaking. It is. Despite putting silicone around the gasket. After 20 minutes of prodding, poking, shining bright lights down the holes, I hit upon the idea of blowing down the screw hole to see if the water is actually entering the screw hole through an invisible fracture in the basin. The toilet is indeed faulty - water can get from the inlet to the bowl to the screw hole. 

Leaky toilet:

I know that I could probably "fix it" by filling the screw hole with silicone when I put the screw in. Had the cupboard not been missing I probably would have done so. However, a general lack of progress tonight puts me in the mood to ask the supplier to replace it.

Finally, in an attempt to not have had a completely wasted night, I leveled the patch in the wall and attached the door (ready for a visitor tomorrow night who might value some privacy while she doesn't have a bath and doesn't use the toilet or sink.

Wall:

Door:

Bathroom - day three

Today I had an extra pair of hands; in a few hours we had almost tiled the floor, almost patched the wall where the shower is to go and almost fitted the loo.

1. Almost fitted the loo: needs to be a few inches to the left, with a new waste pipe, but if only I could stop it dripping when it flushes! There's a gasket between the cistern and bowl that just doesn't hold the water back.

Perhaps I'm fitting it wrongly. The toilet comes with very brief fitting instructions. However, I was surprised to find that the toilet seat comes with a 36 page user guide.

2. Almost a floor: time to invest in some new tools. Perhaps a diamond hole saw?

3. Almost patched the wall: close, but not quite flat.

I also discovered that the bath waste leaks. It's not one of the connections that I made, but the pre-assembled connection from the overflow to the waste. Some silicone will help I hope.

Bathroom - day two

It was not a busy day, with a lie-in (late start) and watching Slum Dog Millionaire in the evening instead of working. There was, however, some of progress on the bathroom.

After finishing the floor (screwing it down and some waterproofing), it took me too long to realize that the installation guide for the bath was wrong. The baseboard for the bath (a fundamental, structural part) was not a separate item, as per diagram, but was actually built-in to the fibreglass itself.  

Before fitting the bath, it thought that I would try to fit the shower, while I had good access. The shower came with an "easy-fit" option. I should have taken that with a pinch of salt. "Easy fit" unless you are replacing an old shower, with one pipe coming from above, and the other below, and with the hot and cold the other way round to the old shower.

After a few hours, and accidentally cracking the plasterboard on the other side of the wall, I have the shower plumbed in (at least the back end of it - I suppose that the next step is the "easy fit" bit) and a great hole in the wall to plaster over. I did manage to re-use two of the copper pipes from under the old sink.

And then the joy of flexible tap connectors that are just not quite flexible enough, so you have to extend the copper pipe in odd directions just to get the flexible tap connectors to fit. 

It all seemed OK though, and I finally had a bath tonight. We were only without bath/shower for one day. Not so bad after all.

Bathroom - day one

If there was a reason for putting off replacing our bathroom, it was because I didn't know how long it would take.  I know that I could manage with a building site for a bathroom (I could use the shower at work), but I'm not sure how we'd bath the kids if it wasn't warm enough for a padding pool. It probably wouldn't be warm enough if it took until November anyway. 

I know how there are always unexpected things that crop up, don't go to plan, or just take a long time.

So, with after a certain amount of peer pressure...we ordered, made a plan and I started.

A plan was carefully crafted to minimize the amount of time that the bath/shower would be out of action. So, I removed the sink and the lino floor. I didn't take a photo when I started, but I did take a photo at this point.

And that's the point I realised that the plan would have to the thrown out. The floor was rotten under the WC and would need replacing. (So I couldn't simply add 6mm plywood reinforcement over the 18mm chipboard, I would have to go to the backup plan and replace the floorboards with 18mm plywood, which would be more work but better because the floor would be lower).

As for the backup plan? The joist that I had planned to replace the boards up to, wasn't where I thought it was. It was under the bath. So, any opportunity to keep the bath in place until just about everything else was finished was gone.

So the bath came out, and so did the floor.

Some new pipes - moving the radiator.

And a new floor, with new pipes in the right place for the towel rail and sink.

All creatures great and small, and then there are wasps

I'm told (and Wikipedia says so too) that wasps are an important part of the biological cycle. Specifically, "Wasps are critically important in natural biocontrol. Almost every pest insect species has at least one wasp species that is a predator or parasite upon it. Parasitic wasps are also increasingly used in agricultural pest control as they have little impact on crops. Wasps also constitute an important part of the food chain.

However, I do find them to be the most intolerable of all the common forms of life that are found in the garden, county, city, park. Well, everywhere. There's just no escape. At this time of the year, you can't eat anything outside without at least one buzzing around.

I thought that we were OK living out in the countryside; for the past two years at least we have had relatively few. It was far worse in the city where there are lots of rubbish bins and other soft targets. 

However, this year we've been hit as well. Last week there were a dozen or so buzzing round the wheelie bin, which contained little more than dirty nappies. They somehow got inside too. Yesterday, there were at least fifty around our compost bin.

Later in the evening, I did turn the compost so that any food scraps in it were buried deep within, rather than being near the top. That certainly helped with the composting as well as wasp reduction; there were none near it today.

In looking for reasons (other then reminding me to turn the compost from time to time) to justify to myself why these things deserve a second chance at survival if they come near me, I search the internet and discover that there are many different kind of wasps.  The family Vespidae includes over 5000 different species of wasps. I'm sure you only see one or two kinds though, probably the familar looking Vespula vulgaris, the common wasp

I came across this forum question that says that wasps are good for getting rid of carcasses, and the BBC's article explaining how Teesiders should love wasps because they are good at recycling (erm..making nests out of chewed up wood).

I'm not convinced.

As I look into my garden tonight, I see lots of bees, hoverflies and other flying things all eagerly visiting all the flowers. They are so interested in the flowers don't even notice when I walk past. I'm glad they are enjoying them and I'm glad to help the dwindling bee population.

A solitary wasp floating near the bin (now empty) makes a wasp-line for me as I pass, I'm sure it's looking for a fight, stinger at the ready... If I had been suitably armed, that wasp would have not survived the night. Lucky for him, I was not.

Wasps: room 101.

Much Better Way

Today at work I almost started only one small task, although I achieved a great deal more.

All I had to do was do a bit of budgeting and financial planning - cash flow, profit, the usual thing. After consistently failing to get the numbers to add up (literally) for most of the morning, I decided that our over-evolved financial planning spreadsheet was just not up to the job and could be done in a MBW¹.

The problem with TOW² is that as soon as you try to tie financial transactions that occur on different dates together (for example, you invoice in May, so you show a profit in May, but you get half cash in July and the rest in September, before paying the VAT to HMRC in November) you easily generate spaghetti links all over your spreadsheet. This is just error-prone, particularly when things change (you don't get the order until June so you invoice in June instead....which formulae do you change?...).

So after some thought, I ended up with a much better Openoffice spreadsheet-based financial forecast that actually works. It's based on the same principles as typical accounting packages - basically nominal codes and double entry bookkeeping and so on. It's got clear inputs, outputs, bits you can edit, and bits that you should not.

Not only does this mean that there are far fewer ways to break it, but it ties much closer to the accounting software that we use for the real accounts. It's faster to use, will save me lots of time in the future and it probably also gets the numbers to add up too.

So, today I did great things!

And tomorrow, I'll actually do the budgets.

^1.Much Better Way.

^2.The Old Way.

Binless Wifi

The "departure" area of the Eurostar at St Pancreas appears to have no rubbush bins, but does have free internet access.

Tube

Someone put a video of me on You Tube.

Fame at last.