In the last post a huge amount was covered, we left the project with a second bathroom tantalizingly close to completion, and a bedroom empty and ready for some plaster to hit the walls. This meant a rather uncomfortable week on the sofa but the result of Darren's work was once again a great milestone in the progression of the project.
As with the bathroom I spent the following weekend sealing with PVA and painting. I had assistance from Will on the sealing and given its a task I really do not enjoy its always good to have a helping hand and some company to go with it.
With the painting I was left to my own devices but it was OK and I tootled along at a steady pace, this time far happier with the choice of colour, and by the end of the weekend the room was a far cry from the messy state it had been in a week earlier.
As well as helping to seal the bedroom plaster Will had helped out assembling the shower door on the Saturday. It was a real shame that he was not there on the Sunday too as I managed to chip the glass when fitting it (it was heavy). Its not hugely noticeable but it is sure to annoy me for some time to come. This, along with the fact that I struggled to find a suitable porcelain drill bit for the tiles made the whole shower door fitting process something that I have erased from memory. I was however pretty happy with the end result. Another big step forward!
The following week I had AJ up and staying on the sofa as he was doing a work placement in Bristol. Charlie also came up for the day on the Saturday and was a great help. Main jobs were installation of the cornice in the bedroom and removal of the now redundant old bathroom.
The cornice I had ordered custom arrived on Friday before I returned from work and luckily AJ was in to receive it. Unfortunately it turned out to be different in profile to what I had originally specified. This was frustrating not least because of the umming and arrring that followed. It was not what I had expected and I was therefore reluctant to put it up until I reflected, contemplated and procrastinated for far longer than necessary. This was a little pathetic really and lead to a bunch of holding in place by Charlie in different orientations to get a feel for what it would look like.
I did not end up making a decision on the cornice that weekend; not whether to keep it nor what the orientation should be if I did. So while that difficult decision was placed on the back burner we turned our attention to the old bathroom. What followed was much of the same destruction that is now commonplace on this blog, so I will leave it to the pictures to paint the words.
From the bedroom side:
From the living room side:
And one view from the center prior to starting - but I did not take a second of these it was more of a picture to document the old - that, and a chance for Charlie to get into the photosynth as many times as he could...
The old shower tiling was odd. Layers upon layers of replacement tile placed on top of plasterboard even under it all looked like was suffering from a fairly ready supply of water. Its probably a good thing I took it all out when I did.
That brings me close to being up to date. Over the following week I decided to go ahead with cornice that had been delivered. It had had time to grow on me and with AJ still in residence I had someone able to provide the extra pair of hands that were necessary in order to hold the fragile and cumbersome lengths in place while being fixed. However, at what cost I don't know. I have a sneaking suspicion that I am going to be reminded of the fact that "AJ helped build the flat" for some time to come. Perhaps that is unfair and premature, and after all, beggar's cant be choosers. They can be grateful though, but not wanting to break from form I will leave documenting that to the end of the post.
This weekend just gone I had planned to make huge headway, but it was not to be so as I was once again thwarted by a practically incapacitating hangover from an unexpected night out. I did have the sense to power through and get supplies of wood from Travis Perkins on Saturday morning however and this left the weekend as only a partial failure. Sunday was spent erecting the new stud walls for the wardrobe area and taking an inordinate amount of rubbish to the tip.
I'm crossing fingers that I can keep some momentum and get the main room layout finished in the next couple of weeks and then it is simply a case of "Finishing". We shall see how it goes, perhaps Christmas is a realistic finishing deadline.
As usual big thanks to Will, Charlie and AJ (in order of appearance). There is a real imminent danger that with Charlie now working and Will and Dan soon to be heading to South East Asia with a work project, I will be going it alone for some weeks to come. So we will see how that all goes. Thanks and well done for having the perseverance to get through the whole post and I will hopefully update again soon.
