Bathroom....DONE!

Dear blog, it has been 40 days since my last posting and progress has been made!! If I were a religious man and had to confess for each time the renovation of my bathroom had caused me to swear, I would be here a very, very, very long time.

It has been a mighty long affair and having spent the best part of 70 days working on such a small room the thought of writing about the bathroom in my spare time was simply not attractive. Now however, I can say with pride that the bathroom is now complete, end of!

Following on from my last post I got the plasterer in to skim the hall construction around the boiler, the hall ceiling and the bathroom in its entirety. It looked fantastic when it was complete and it felt like a finished bathroom was only days away. How wrong I was.

The tiling started well with a 4 day effort achieving a wall covering of about 30%. The remaining bare walls didn’t get fully covered for another 2-3 weeks. Before you mock my slow progress, tiling takes bloody ages; especially when you have walls that are anything but straight and you cut each and every tile by hand. In one area there was a deviation of around 20mm from one edge of the tile to the other; needless to say I went through a huge amount of adhesive. Fortunately the finished article looks nearly perfect.

When the tiling came to a close I was low on motivation and the pleasure of grouting soon brought me back to life as I saw the room slowly coming together. This joy was short lived as a switch to Wickes own brand grout caused major headaches as it stuck to the tiles like superglue. It was a good thing I had my Dad around that day to take over and complete a job that would have certainly resulted in minor nervous break down.

Another weekend plumbing in the towel rail and the shower with the help of Tod brought me ever closer to the finish line. New taps also went on the basin and the new toilet was plumbed in. Having a shower for the first time since we moved in was finally in sight.

Another weekend was spent working on stripping the panel door which was in a terrible state and repairing the window sills. The glass panel in the door broke during the repair which turned out to be a good thing as a new piece of cut glass will look grand.

Another weekend was spent drinking beer.

Another weekend was spent choosing a floor.

Another weekend was spent painting and sealing whilst Shell went out and brought the accessories……. and then finally I had my first shower. It’s great to have the room finished and I’m pleased that the finished article is better than I ever expected. All the fittings from the taps, to the shower, to the towel rail, to the toilet roll holder match perfectly and the colours of the wood, the floor and the tiles look superb.

In hindsight I am pleased that I spent the time to achieve a high standard of finish throughout the room and although it was stressful and painful at times it was completely worth it.

With some new skills and a greater tolerance to working in very hot small rooms, its time to move on to the second bedroom, I can’t wait!