Down tools

As we prepare for an influx of relatives this weekend on account of a first birthday party, I've taken the drastic step of tidying away the tools, screws and general mess from the bathroom and hallway.

It's not that the work is finished (still....) but that it's harder to cover up for the fact in it's taking so long when the walk from the bedroom to the shower in the morning is a bit like playing Indiana Jones.

Anyway, we're nearly there. The remaining jobs are:

• sort out the ceiling, which is the original artex supplemented with a splattering of tile adhesive
• get the grout off the floor, which stuck to the non-polished tiles....doh
• fit the extractor fan
• fit mirror, toilet roll holder etc
• perhaps fit a new cupboard to make more storage space.

Have I forgotten anything? 

I took the old bath to the tip today. It went into the landfill skip. I felt so guilty. I'd tried leaving on the drive (no one stole it, although they took the sink) and advertising on freecycle (no replies).

What else can you do with an old acrylic/fibreglass bath?

Nearly there

I didn't do any work on the bathroom tonight. Instead, I seem to be addicted to failblog.org. I sit here laughing at page after page of people getting things wrong in the stupidest ways possible. 

I suppose the fact that I could be finished with this long overdue project in a few evenings,  if only I could face getting the tile cutter out again to do that one last bit of tiling, is something of a FAIL.

Darkness

Today was the first day of the year when I actually had to get up when it was still dark. On the upside, I suppose I'm making efficient use of the available daylight. But I didn't mind the darkness because I used the new shower for the first time!

Why wait so long after fitting it? Because there seems to be a shortage of shower curtain rails. Would you believe it!

I looked in B&Q - the only suitable one (i.e with brackets, rather then the weak-looking friction-fit job) was £60, which was more than I wanted to pay and it didn't look that good anyway because it looked like the curtain would fall off the hooks. I looked in Screwfix, they had exactly the same one as B&Q at £25. (Yes less than half the price - B&Q is so expensive for such things) but were out of stock. In fact they had no stock available for any that I liked. Even ebay had nothing, for once. 

Finally I found one on the internet, which arrived yesterday and was fitted immediately.

Also last night, I tackled the problem in the sink. After being away for a couple of days on a trip, it was not a pleasant job. Wearing latex gloves I tackled the smelly mess.

The problem was of my own making (in two senses of the word). Having been bitten once trying to reuse an old waste trap, I made sure that I bought a new one for the sink. Knowing that space was tight, I bought a nice tidy compact trap.

However, last week, when fitting the front of the sink unit is on, it became clear that there would not be enough room even for this trap: the semi recessed sink sits so that the waste hole is so close to the front of the unit. So I tempted fate and put the old trap on the sink, which was a simple U-bend in the form of a P-trap.

Of course, it was a bad idea.

When I fitted it, it dripped slightly, so I ended up over tightening it onto the waste. This, in itself caused no problems, but when I want to remove it, of course it was stuck tight. Turning harder (which is pretty hard because you cannot really get a spanner to it once the sink is fitted into the unit) just managed to unseat the waste unit itself.

In fact, the trap was stuck so tight that I had to resort to a saw to remove it. 90 minutes later and I had the waste and trap out. 10 minutes after that I had the waste re-seated and sealed, and a new P-trap fitted.

With a sigh of relief, I soaked the few tools that I had used in bleach - I really don't want any chance of a repeat of the events of last weekend.