Day 36: off the wall

Today most of the famito the action. I worked on mending a wall, Care cleaned a wall and Ash climbed up a wall.

The ladder was today's most popular piece of equipment and Ash made sure everyone got their turn, including herself. 

I finished taking the ugly textured paint off the  bathroom ceiling and am happy to say the bathroom is textured paint free now and for as long as we live in this house. It really is horrible stuff - butt ugly and difficult to take off. Whoever thought it was a good idea must have been blind and/or clinically insane. Thank goodness there's X-Tex. I should buy shares in that company seeing how much of the sh!tty paint exists in the UK. 

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Day 31: Our Anniversary

Today marks the one month in the house anniversary. Hard to believe it's only been a month given all that's gone on here. Here's a recap of the highlights

• Ripped out all the carpets from the house
• Rewired the entire place
• Installed a new boiler and unvented cylinder
• Knocked down the bathroom wall
• Put the bathroom wall back up (a little more to the left)
• Reinstalled all the bathroom fixtures (well almost)

Some photos below before and current for the bathroom.

Day 30: And we have a working shower

Day 30

Day 29: Teamwork

Today Wince came over to lend a much needed hand. We covered quite a lot during the day:

• Finishing tiling the shower enclosure
• Replacing some sagging plaster on the ceiling with plasterboard - this involved going into the loft to screw in some additional support
• Grabbing a kebab
• Bonding plastering the back corner where the masonry was still exposed
• PVA'ing the plasterboard with a 5:1 mixture in preparation for tiling (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvuejJBzMKQ as to why)
• Grouting - the kiddies came home around this time and were dying to help. We let them sponge the excess grout off afterwards
• Going for a curry and a pint at the local Indian restaurant

Overall, a really productive day. It was great to have an extra pair of hands - and better company than Capital Radio - Thanks Wince!

Day25: Little helper

It's been difficult to get much done in the evenings after picking up the kids after work. The only solution is to put the kids to work!

Tonight we laid down the Correx temporary floors from http://universalsitesupplies.co.uk/temporary-protection/floor-protection/universal-board-2-mm-black.html. Basically just glorified cardboard, but easy to cut and does the trick. I suspect that it won't last very long, but hopefully we won't need it for very long. Ash helped me tape it down to the floors. 

Day 22: Bath

Got the tiles around the bath mostly complete - just need to grout and seal now. The bath is also working now, thank goodness!

My little wall will allow the glass door to fit properly. It'll look OK when it's tiled.

Day21 : Tiling

The plan today was to tile the walls. However, I discovered that the shower glass was too tall for the sloping ceiling. So change of plans.. Had to be creative and customise the opening. I cut a 2*4 to size and doused it in water seal. Will tile it tomorrow. So a bit of lost time getting that ready. 

I did manage to start tiling the back wall. Looks pretty good. I used my new tile cutting machine and am happy with the results so far. Tomorrow the plan is to finish tiling the shower and grout the tiles. The priority is having a working shower for Monday. 

Day 19: Boxing day

Day 19 was the official moving day and it probably couldn't have been more hectic. Carolyn pulled an all nighter to get things packed at the old flat while I pushed on to get things ready at the new place - particularly making sure that we have important things like a floor, and one not full of nails.

The movers packed the truck quickly, missing a bunch of things on the way. Then they made a quick detour to grab a fridge from my colleague Miguel and progressed to surbiton. I only had one thing to do during the day and that was chairing a call at 2pm. And guess what time the movers showed up? 2.01pm. Awful timing. I was multitasking directing them with boxes and holding the meeting. Doing a poor job with each. Care followed this up with a hired car near midnight to drop off the next tranche of add stuff. How did we get so much junk when we arrived to the country 8 years ago with only 2 suitcases?

So one house is empty and one full of boxes. No worries about finishing the floors, you can't see them anyway!

Day 17 - Carolyn's First Post

Scott's been working diligently on the house the past two weeks.  I'm honestly amazed at the work that he's done (much of it on his own).  He has the most determination and strongest work ethic of anyone I know! We think you're doing a brilliant job and we're really proud of all you've achieved so far.  

While Scott's been tearing things apart, I've been taking care of the girls and was entertaining my parents when visiting from Canada.  I took them to the house twice.  Don't think I managed their expectations appropriately before the first visit - I could see the fear in my mom's eyes as if 'You're NOT moving my grandchildren in here!'  The second visit the concern was still in their eyes, but also the ability to see beyond the 'now' to what it can be (to be fair, I did ask my mom to play up for the camera).  Girls had a great time in the house.  There was no safe place for them to run around, so we put them in the new bathtub and said it was their new bed.  Didn't believe me at first but then decided they were ok with that.  I think they'll adjust quickly! 

I'm more of a liability than help at the house at this stage, so sorted out all the logistics for the move and coordinated the packing.  How have we managed to accumulate so much crap?!  

Day 17: Move in day... NOT!

Today was supposed to be move in day. Obviously without a floor in the bathroom this wasn't going to happen. We've made the very wise choice of deferring the move day until Wednesday.

My new plan was to tile the walls, but given the floor is missing and so are patches of wall, I've decided to give that some focus

So the results of today:
- plywood subfloor is down
- much less brick showing on the wall
- many of the joints are plastered over

I dotted and dabbed some plasterboard to the wall using a special adhesive from Wickes.  The only problem is that it comes in a 25kg bag. WTF. Who needs that much? I had to take an uber home

Day 16: Down the drain

Day 16 is all about plumbing. I need to run the hot and cold pipes to the basin and bath and re-terminate the toilet cold water supply. Also, I plan on running the basin 32mm waste pipe through the stud wall that Wince and I created.

This of course requires another trip to the friendly neighbourhood Wickes. I realised looking at the shower taps that they take 22mm connectors - and all I have is 15mm. I'm reading that this is quite common on showers, particularly on gravity fed systems. All I have to work with is 15mm and the pressure in the house looks pretty good so I just need something to adjust down.

It's been a while since I've soldered pipes so I was pleased with the results - no premature showers! All the soldered joints were drip free. I still have difficulty with the compression joints as it takes a bit of work to make these watertight. The basin waste pipe also slotted nicely into the partition wall. 

Day 15: It's a room again

Bracing for the drywall.

Day 15: Breakfast of champions

A little builder's breakfast

Day 14: Crunch time

Slept at the house again last night. This time was much warmer.

Today I put up another couple of sheets of aquapanel for the shower and prepped the brick wall for mounting backerboard and drywall. First I chiselled away the high points and then put down a coat of SBR, which apparently is a bonding agent like PVA except that it repels water and is a good primer. I'm going to put up the board using a technique called "dot and dab". Essentially this involves chucking a whole lot of tile adhesive on the wall and sticking the panels to it. The boards are then mechanically fixed using framing screws. Let's see.

I also ripped up the remaining floorboards and cutout the replacement plywood.

Finally, I started soldering the new pipes. The first compression fitting had a slow drip - much prefer solder myself.

Day 13: Lucky day

Last night was the first night I stayed over in the new house. Luckily no ghosts. Also no heat uunfortunately. Woke up in the middle of the night frozen solid. Discovered in the morning that the boiler was showing low water pressure. Quickly fixed that and all OK now.