Day 1936: Just too many choices

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. 

Day 480: Some venting

After a week off in Austria - it was back to business on the kitchen. The first order of business was to grout the tiles; cause white tiles by themselves are well .. a bit dull. We elected to go with  a grey "smoke" colour. This was more of a medium grey as opposed to the brownish/yellow "smoking" colour from the rest of the house.

The fun part was to get all of the excess tile adhesive outside of the joints between the tiles. Good practice is to use an adhesive similar in colour to the grout you plan on using. Lazy practice is to use the adhesive you have left over, in this case white, and scrape out any excess.

 

Then came the grout, one of my more favorite activities. Right behind smashing things. Grout was mixed into a peanut butter consistency and smeared on the wall working it well into the joints with my trusty float.

 

And then off it came. After many a wipe down with a builders sponge, it was looking rather sharp. Now to just let it dry and focus on a few other things ...

 

And once it was dry, finally time for the cooker hood (and a long story). 

So the cooker hood was originally ordered in April of 2016 with the cooker. We chose a Belling 90cm stainless steel hood to match the cooker. It was supposed to arrive in June last o=year just after the cooker .. unfortunately it didn't and I got a call from Curry's that it was delayed by the manufacturer Belling and would be refunded. So I then ordered from another outlet who said they could deliver in 2 months time. And after 2 months I got a call saying it would be delayed another 2 month, followed by another phone call and another 2 months. By the time I got a 3rd call from this outfit, I told them where to go. I managed to find another supplier that had it "in stock" only to find out a week later that it was, you guessed it, about 2 months away .. 

Now it was Christmas time, and I was in Canada and elected to go with the 100cm version, normally much more expensive, but on sale for Boxng Day. And it was in stock!!! The box arrived just after we got back to the UK and I really couldn't believe my eyes when the thing actually arrived. So yes, it's a 100cm hood over a 90cm cooker but my research shows that this isn't a bad thing because smoke doesn't just go straight upwards anyway, a bigger hood is actually better if you can fit it. 

 

And all I need to mount it was a bracket and 3 screws - these things don't actually weigh that much. So far so good.

 

And finally the hood was mounted. After initially struggling to get the 150mm piping routed out of the house, and then having to figure out how to conceal it (see here), and finally having all the issues with delivery .. the hood was up. And it looks nice and works a treat (i.e. it sucks, but in a productive kind of way)

Except of course there had to be an issue .. the cover for the tubing was not very forgiving. Apparently, though it's a 150mm extractor, Belling must not think many people are going to be fitting 150mm ducting because there was no give to the front. The ducting would have been mounted perfectly flush to the wall in order for it to work. And I had about 2cm of gap. Not the end of the world, but definitely a bit more customization in the near future. 

That aside, I'm still glad that we went with the full size ducting. The fan works much better without the constriction and is a whole lot quieter. Only to get this surround figured out now.

Day 460: And the survey says .....

The votes are in from the masses and an overwhelming majority of you (66%) voted for ...

WHITE TILES

So respecting the will of the people, we've elected to go with this option. "White means white!" and "We're going to make a success of it!"

I'll start with the obligatory BEFORE picture .. white walls, Scott's mediocre attempt at plastering .. boring ..

The kit involved in this weekend's project .. 

1. Mapei semi flexible tile adhesive - leftovers from the bathroom
2. 4 boxes of white metro tiles
3. A tile adhesive spreader
4. A grout float
5. 2mm wall tile spacers
6. Some "smoke" grey grouting
7. An old wood panel to keep everything on
8. And the most important tool, me

Since there was an annoying enough gap between the back of the range and the wall and the countertop and the wall - just big enough for a tile to slip down, I had to McGyver a little contraption to mount the tiles on. This involved some old wood - yes lots of that now - and a drywall corner. This fit snugly against the wall and provided a nice level base for the first row of tiles.

So on went the adhesive, spread nicely to allow the right coverage and then went on the tiles .. row by row ..

By row, by row, by row, ... [FAST FORWARD] and the first wall was finally finished. I discovered an unfortunate "bow" in the plaster ceiling at the back, but this won't be seen when grouted and covered by the range hood. End of day one ..

Day 2 (Sunday) didn't start off too well .. kids were throwing up all night with a stomach bug. Care and I weren't feeling 100% - possibly due to not sleeping, possibly due to the same bug, possibly due to too many bottles of wine at a Luke and Kathy's the night before - or possibly some combination of these. In any case, no rugby for Caitlin and a slow start to the side walls for tiles.

I manged to drag myself out of the house to pick up some edging strips from Topps Tiles. These things make the edges look nice and pretty and hide all of the sins from cut tiles. I got stainless steel ones to match the range and hood. And because stainless steel is cool. You can see the bling in the picture below.

More tiles went on row, by row, by row,, zzzzzzzz, by row, you get the picture.

Then it came to the challenging part (not really), the cutout for the range switch plate. I use a wet tile saw to make my cutouts mostly because power tools are cool and loud. In this case, cutouts are a breeze. Measure, mark and cut (and hope). But it this case  everything fit perfectly.

And the somewhat finished job .. All in all, pretty good and glad that we went with the white - the tens of thousands who voted for white made a good pick. (I'm sure the other colour would have looked nice as well)

I have to admit (it's hard to type while patting oneself on the back), tiling is actually a fairly easy thing to do once you get the hang of it. As you can probably gather, it's pretty repetitive so lots of opportunity to refine your skills. The key is having a reasonably flat / straight wall to work from. And to take your time in the more challenging parts. Measure twice , etc. 

So we're now on to grouting, but that will be the subject of another post. Finally we can get that range hood on. Looking forward to cooking bacon without setting off alarms across the street. Our neighbours will be very happy too.