The Bathroom Project at No 8

 Mick is over his COVID and was back sanding and fixing cracks in the hall.

 No one came Friday or over the weekend.

Shaun from Unlimited Glass comes to measure up for the glass panels around the shower. The need to use standard size panels is what finally determines exactly how far they will project from the wall. The gap between through which we will enter will be about 750mm, which is not that wide, but as the doorway to the bathroom is only 700mm, anything that will go through that door (like a walker, when we get old and decrepit) will also go into the shower recess. All the decisions about the type of glass, height and width of panels, are confirmed by phone and then email by Joseph, the boss at Unlimited Glass.

Matt the tiler comes and put the cement base in the shower recess. He has a look at the tiles which we have stored in the garage, and we have a discussion about the opening to the shower and about skirtings.

Nick the plumber comes and fits the plate that goes behind the shower mixer tap fitting. Andrew the electrician comes and does the cut outs in the plaster for switches and sockets. He also installs the four supports for the heated towel rail.

Saturday, Sunday AND Monday, nothing happens. Well, not quite nothing - on Monday builder Tony drops off the materials for the cement that the tiler will use to create a sloped shower base.

Friday, and we are free at last! Lockdown ends, we get negative results for our COVID test on Thursday and so we feel we can join the rest of Melbourne in going OUT. In the morning Peter goes to Bunnings and collects the vanity basin and the tap, the last bits of our order. Tony comes around lunchtime and does the first lot of waterproofing of the shower recess.  Waterproofing He also picks up both the vanity basin and the trough to take to West City Cabinets, so they can be fitted exactly. We communicate over some finer details with West City Cabinets. Tony tells us that work will resume on Tuesday next week. At least we don't have to get up at an ungodly hour on Monday.

Thursday. We get cabinet plans and drawings from West City Cabinets via email, which we tweak and send back. We arrange with Tony for him to pick up both basins from us and/or Bunnings tomorrow and take them to West City Cabinets. We go to have a second COVID test. Health directive is now that we only have to isolate for 7 days if we are fully vaxxed (not 14 as it used to be). It comes into force at midnight tonight, but it's retrospective. So we reckon that provided we test negative again, we've had our 7 days since the exposure and we can be free tomorrow with everyone else. The cabinets

Wednesday, Tony and Dave come to do a deep clean on the house. We check with Bunnings, find that the basin we want may not be available for another week. We decide to order the cheaper version instead, which is the same as the one we have in 1A. Even that is the last one in stock at Port Melbourne, so we are glad we made the decision.

Call from Tony early Monday to tell us that the plasterer will not be returning as expected as he has COVID. Since we briefly spent time in the house when he was there on Thursday, talking to the guys from West City Cabinets, we have to go off and get tested. Peter promptly develops COVID symptoms, which disappear on Tuesday when our tests both return negative results.

 So the 2-3 week project has now been going for 6 weeks elapsed. Tony (builder) rang us to ask about the finish we wanted on the bathroom cabinetry. It appears that's going to take about 3 weeks. Then there will be final things like splashbacks, so we reckon we're looking at another 4 weeks elapsed. We should get back into the big house about the same time that lockdown ends. Parties all round.

Plasterer Mick arrives early and works all day with Chris helping. Walls and ceiling all now covered. It's starting to look like a room again. Peter decides to follow up with Bunnings to see how our order is going and finds that they have four of the six items on our list. He organises a drive-and-collect for what they have and so we have an exciting excursion to the Bunnings carpark. There's a bit of a wait before they come with the laundry trough and tap, the shower rail and mixer tap (combo item), and the heated towel rail. We are still waiting on the vanity basin and mixer tap to go with it. It is perfect timing because the guys from West City Cabinets come to day to discuss the size and shape of the two new bathroom cabinets. We had planned to have the new vanity replicate the old one, but we are talked out of that plan and into something that will be easier to construct and probably work better. We also find that the cabinet makers recommend leaving a gap between cabinet

Chris lifts one of the flooring panels and cuts a trapdoor in it, which allows him to locate the cause of the squeak (folded hanging strap supporting a plumbing pipe) and fix. He then adds noggins in the wall in the right spots to support the towel rail.   Now that the floor is complete it's starting to look like a room, not just a hole in the ground or a derelict building. Tomorrow, the plasterer comes. Today Chris takes more of the old plaster off the wall as he decides it is not in a good enough state to leave. Once the walls are replastered and the ceiling is skinned, it will really start to look like a room again.

 Chris and Andrew finish off the electrical work. Chris starts putting down the floor. When he's done everything except the shower area, he realises that something under the floor is squeaking. He and Peter decide it's some part of the plumbing and spend some time trying to locate and fix the problem, then give it up until the morning.

 Andrew comes today to do the electrical wiring. We draw diagrams of what goes where and give him the specs of the heated towel rail we have on order. This leads to a decision to rehang the door, opening the other way, because otherwise there won't be room for a switch panel just inside the door, because the heated towel rail has to fit into the space between the laundry cupboard and sink and the doorway. Even though it's the skinniest one we can find, there isn't quite enough room for it and switches, so the door will open from the right where there is plenty of room for switches.  We decide it's a feature, not a bug as it will make it easier to get washing out of the washing machine and dryer. Wiring pictures, in case we need to remember where the wires are in the walls:

 And we don't have to get up at an ungodly hour because no one is coming.  We spend time over the weekend thinking about where power points and switches will go, in order to send a plan to Andrew the electrician, who is due Monday.

 James and a couple of others returned today and finished off this round of plumbing. Shower waste and pipes to tap Waste water for toilet and washing machine, pipes for handbasin Pipes and waste for laundry trough New instant gas HWS installed New space where the old storage HWS has been removed

 Lots of new pipes now appearing under the bearers, both incoming water and outgoing waste.

It's day 16 in work terms, but day 30 in elapsed time. The construction lockdown ended at midnight Monday, and Chris is back this morning to finish off the carpentry work. In the hiatus we finalised our choice of floor tiles and put in our order with National Tiles. A pallet with 7 boxes of tiles is duly delivered on schedule on Monday (yesterday).  The tiles look something like this: and we hope they look ok with the wall panels, which look like this. The sample tile looks better with the panel than the two do in this post. Hopefully so will the full tiles. And while Chris is working away, we finalise our decisions on basins, taps, the shower rail and a heated towel rail, and place orders with Bunnings.