Day 39: Thursday - Lots of action

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 and the glass shower panels because otherwise the cabinets "sweat". This also makes life easier as the measurements are less critical than if we were trying to butt the cabinets against the glass. Because I can't bear to waste space, I immediately start thinking that this could be a place for a pull-out towel rail for hand towels and/or cloths. 

We send the dimensions of the basin we're still waiting for, and we're expecting drawings back from the cabinet makers for us to agree to before they start. They were pretty quick last time, when they did the cabinetry in bathroom and kitchen for 1A Little O'Grady Street, so we're hopeful that there won't be a delay in getting them.

Lay day tomorrow. Plasterer returns Monday to finish off. Then the next step will be water-proofing the base of the shower recess, which seems to need a few days elapsed time.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day zero of the bathroom project

Image
We've been planning this one for years. It's the finally step in future-proofing our little one-storey terrace so that we can keep living here for as long as possible, even if we become decrepit (or more decrepit) as we age. For a year or so we've had an agreement with our builders, who did our most recent reno here at no 8 Finlay Street and the complete make-over of 1A Little O'Grady Street, that if they found themselves with a 2-3 week gap in their schedule, we'd like a bathroom makeover. And it's TIME. Tony gave us a call last week to say they could start Monday 5 September. That's tomorrow. Under current lockdown rules, builders can't work on a site that's occupied, so we are moving next door to 1A for the duration. We can return to the "big house" in the evenings to cook dinner and watch TV, but we need to be out by the time they start work in the morning. Given our attitude to early rising, it's no surprise that we've decided
Read more

Day 83: Restoring the laundry

First step is to move the washing machine and dryer back into the bathroom. Fortunately neighbour Cam is mowing nature strips (as he does regularly, such a good bloke) and is happy to come in and give Peter a hand to raise the dryer into position on top of the washer. Everything we move is absolutely covered in dust, so much cleaning goes on. Even though the bathroom was cleaned by both the carpenters and the painters, it still needed another sweep and floor wash, and basins and benches needed going over. We have to then connect the washing machine to power and water inlets and outlets, ditto the dryer (out only). This is a finicky job requiring water off water on again exercises. We had asked if the toilet could be moved a bit to the right as the washing machine and dryer take up less space than the old shower recess. The toilet was moved quite a lot to the right, and we were fearful that it would feel cramped, or even that it would be just too close for comfort. To our relief it is O
Read more

Day 84: Getting our home back, and getting back home

We work all day Sunday, mostly rehanging all the pictures in the hallway (eighteen of them, but who's counting). Helen has the job of sorting the boxes of stuff from the old bathroom cupboards and putting the contents back into the new and old cupboards in the bathroom. Quite a bit of aged stuff finishes up in the bin, which is all to the good. It's twelve weeks since we moved into 1A, and over time more and more stuff has crept from one house to the other, more clothes, more food, more books, a computer, a desk chair, assorted cat equipment. We trek back and forth all day between houses, carrying rubbish to the bins, retrieving items from 1A. We stow the spare tiles in the roof, and some of the residual paint in the garage. Tools come out to fix things and hang pictures, then go away again. We sweep, vaccuum, mop, dust, mop, dust and mop again. The fine sanding dust covering everything seems immovable. If we were starting again, we'd make sure we covered everything beforeh
Read more