Bathroom Day 8

Not a lot has happened in the bathroom on day 8. The plumber made his way through the inch or so of snow that we had this morning to make it to our house and got all of the rest of the grouting done.

Then at 9:30 he left to go get a piece of plumbing material for the new toilet. It took him 2 hours to get through the gridlocked traffic to the plumbing shop and then spent an hour getting half way back here when his wife phoned to say that she had taken the kids to the park and locked herself out. So by the time he had rescued them from the sub-zero temperatures and got back here it was 3:30 and as he needed 2 hours for the grout on the floor tiles to dry to install the new toilet decided to call it a day.

We had a bit of a mission getting home. 2 trains were broken down outside purley blocking both tracks so trains were backed up trying to get into East Croydon and there was another broken down train at Edenbridge meaning going to Hayes and getting the bus was also impossible. I managed to squeeze onto a West Croydon train after about 45 minutes of waiting at London Bridge. Ollie gave up with London Bridge as it was too busy and decided to tube it to Elephant and Castle and then get a train to Mitcham where he could pick up the tram.

My journey took a total of 3 hours and Ollie's 3 and a half. We got home to find that there is over 9 inches of snow here. We've measured it with a ruler so it's no exaggeration. I can't remember ever seeing snow that deep! Talking to the lady next door this is common for this area and they always get lots when it snows. I think we may be spending tomorrow working from home.

Bathroom Day 7

It's really starting to come together now. All the tiling is finished and the grouting has been done on the tiles that were done last week.

The radiator is also in and works! It gets quite hot too.

I'm sure that's not the cosiest place to sleep

Look what's asleep on the roof of our shed! We get a lot of urban foxes around here. This is one of the less scrany ones. We have one really skinny mangy one that prowls the back garden, one huge one (easily as big as a golden retriever!) that skulks around the front and this one that tends to hang about.
 

It's been really bitterly cold here today. We've got the heating on above 20 degrees (unheard of) and we're huddled under many layers of clothes and my feet are still like ice blocks!

Bathroom Day 6

A lot has happened in the bathroom today. We went off to Bluewater to do some Christmas shopping. When we got back we had a fitted bath and all the walls are almost fully tiled.

We now have a fully functioning bath although we have to wait until tomorrow before we can use it so that the silicon has a chance to dry properly.

I love the bath filler. It's great not having any taps on the bath to get all limescally.

Bathroom Day 5

Day 5 in the bathroom has been very productive. We now have one fully tiled wall and one wall partly tiled. I love the tiles and think they are well worth the money!

We even have perfect curves to match our stupid ceiling!

We are still waiting on the replacement bath and we may or may not have a working bath/shower over the weekend.

Just Magnolia Challenge - White plus one

I thought I would have a go at the Just Magnolia challenge this week. The challenge was to use just white and one other colour on your card with a magnolia stamp as your main focal point. I haven't used my Magnolia's much for this batch of Christmas cards so I thought I'd dust off my favourite and give it a whirl.

I had been dying to use this purple wrapping paper on a card and I cut the Gerberas  (I know not really a Christmassy type flower, but I thought they went quite nicely!) and the nestie shapes with my cricut. I'm really getting the hang of the thing now and I'm not sure how I ever managed without it!

Bathroom Day 4

 Day 4 in the bathroom didn't really end very well.  Everything was going ok, we now have 4 fully plasterboarded and sealed walls. The shower is fully plumbed and the arm is fitted to the wall. We were hoping that we would have a fully functional bath by the time the plumber had to go to the dentist, but just before lunch he managed to damage the bottom of the bath screwing the legs on! To be fair to him (he says it's the first bath in 100 he's done it!) the bath company provided the screws which were too long. So he disappeared to find a new bath and hopefully will come back tomorrow with a new one to fit!

 

We went to see Harry Potter this afternoon, it was ok they managed to stay as true to the book as they could. I always prefer books to films so it was never going to be as good for me. Plus this was my least favourite of the HP books. We did manage to successfully predict where the break would be for the split of the 2 films. Even though we went to a quiet showing there were still 2 people at the back who insisted on talking the whole way through. That really annoys me, so I said to Ollie that we'll stick to Blu ray which is cheaper and no-one talks!

Bathroom Day 3

Day three in the bathroom has seen most of the walls covered in plasterboard, all the pipework for the bath and shower controls has been done and the rest of the plasterboard cut for the last wall.

I also tidied up the understairs cupboard, I've sorted all the DIY stuff into individual crates according to activity and made it so you can actually get to the back to find stuff!

Blogger is playing up with pictures, so I've just got the 2 today.

Tomorrow we are hoping that the bath will be in and even maybe plumbed so we can have a bath! Today we went swimming and had a shower at the local leisure centre. The plumber has to knock off early tomorrow to go to the dentist so we have booked to see HP!

Some cards with my cricut

I have been having a bit of a play today while the tradesmen were doing their thing.

Apart from everything getting covered in dust I got 2 cards finished.

Bathroom Day 2

Well at the end of day 2 there isn't a lot left in our little bathroom and we have some good things and some bad things.

I'm not sure how much of a relaxing week off this is going to be with tradesmen turning up at 8 every day!

We still have a loo with a bucket flush system with water out of a temporary tap!

We have holes in the ceiling for the new lights and new sockets for the power for all our funky gadgets.

 

The good news was that the floor was nearly as bad as we feared and wasn't rotten. It doesn't need to be replaced and as long as it dries out tonight with the help of a heater then we can just board over the top for the tiles.

Bad news was that most of the plaster came off the wall with the remaining tiles and the plasterer is on holiday! We are going to have fancy waterproof plasterboard which should provide a nice surface for the tiles.

We also had all the rest of the bathroom stuff delivered and all seems ok apart the vanity unit for the sink is the wall unit rather than the floor unit. I've left that up to the fitter and the bathroom shop to sort out a resolution for that problem!

Bathroom Day 1

To try and save a little bit of money on the bathroom installation we were going to take the tiles off ourselves. They did not want to come quietly! This was after we had already had arguments with the doors that we were cutting up to put in the skip.  We discovered that the glass in the old front door was definately not safety glass!

We are going to need a plasterer!

Before Photos

The bathroom is being ripped out this week. These are the before photos...

The shower doesn't work, the hot tab on the sink leaks into the electrical consumer unit in the kitchen, the floor is damp where the bath hasn't ever been sealed properly which is causing black mould to grow by the back door and today I managed to break the flush for the loo!

60th Birthday party

Last weekend was Ollie's dad's 60th Birthday party at Hempstead house in Sittingbourne.

We were in charge of balloons and place cards and I think Paul was quite impressed with them.  The children were very impressed with the balloons inside balloons!

The food was really good as was the wine and a good time was had by all.

Card making class and fireworks

It was mum's birthday on Friday so we booked ourselves into Jenny's Christmas card making with a twist class at Pickleberry Papercrafts for all day Saturday. I must say it was a fab class and we learned loads of new techniques.

After that we went back to mums for the traditional dinner and fireworks. We always have vegetable soup, sausages in rolls and jacket potatoes for dinner. Then Ollie does the firework display. Each year he has managed to make it bigger and better with more and more impressive fireworks. This year was no exception and while we were in Sittingbourne last weekend we stopped off at our firework shop to stock up.

I must say that this year was the best display yet, even the Sainsbury's fireworks were impressive (apart from the dud one that didn't go off) and our rockets were amazing, the boom supersonic and the explosion filling the whole sky.