With the Beast from the East - Part 2 wreaking havoc on the UK this week (we got down to -8 C which is $%@#'n cold here), there was understandably a little less activity going on atop our house. The guys did some work but I felt bad for them being outside. I had a heater and was wearing my coat in the cabin and I was still shivering.
The brickwork doesn't work when it's that cold. Apparently anything under 4 degrees C is a non-starter as the mortar won't set properly and could freeze.
Making the most of the quiet time, we set off to determining the finishing and fixtures. This is the part that I enjoy the least - I'm good at smashing and putting back together but don't ask me what colour of tile complements an accent wall. My answer will usually be "the one on sale".
Care however was armed with a pile of home magazines to determine the "perfect look". First the bathroom, I'm told we'll go with something like the picture below with a pattern tile on the floor, light metro tiles and a colourful wall pattern. The basin will be a vanity unit in a light grey with round mirror. To which I said "OK!"
The architect's drawings didn't have the fixtures put in place to scale so Care took it upon herself to show a hidden talent for both PowerPoint and for architecture. I have to admit - it was pretty good.
We had initially intended on a free standing bath but seeing as we're not in a massive mansion with cavernous space, it would have looked out of place. It was key however to have both a walk in shower (which we'll use all the time) and a separate bath (which we'll never use). Given the large'ish size of the bathroom footprint, we'd have room for both (just).
A lot of thinking has gone into this design - use of natural light, easy access to all the features, visual appeal on entry, routing of waste pipes. It's great when you can start from a relatively blank canvas. We opted for 2 windows with the vanity in the middle to allow a mirror to be above the sink yet maximizing window area. The kids and I saw a Bluetooth enabled, 36 colour led/speaker/mirror for the vanity unit which we thought was super cool .... this was vetoed unfortunately. 👎
And of course the other choices to make were on tiles .. for anyone following this blog, you'll realise 2 things 1) I've spent a lot of time tiling and quite enjoy it and 2) I absolutely hate picking tiles out.
When a while tile is not really a white tile and you're starting to debate texture, edges and gloss it all becomes a bit too much .. and don't get me started on colour. choices for grout, which then takes you back to tile re-selection. For someone that's colour blind, this is my definition of cruel punishment. For bathroom part 1 - we had a mountain of tile samples to work through. I can't believe I never posted a picture of this for comedy value; there was over 100 individual samples in all.
Here we are starting again. The boxes are arriving daily and the mountain is once again growing. And because the showrooms are all closed at the moment, we need to order samples to see them. Help me.
And if this wasn't too many choices for one week, MTL has come back to us with more things we need to decide on - fascia board colour, newel/spindle design, stair tread colour .... luckily these were much quicker decisions.
We made some choices this week but there are still many, many more to come over the next month. And the tile mountain will continue to grow.