Installing the Bath

The bath arrived at the end of 2007.

As you can see from the photograph, there is now a Velux window in the plastered ceiling and the bath is in place.

The taps will be mounted centrally on the far wall and the twiddly operating knob for the waste plug will be centrally on the near side of the bath. There will be a bath panel on the front.

The open wall to the left will house the hidden cistern and the loo itself will be hung on the wall. We have chosen one that doesn't stand on the floor (after much deliberation about how safe it is - we're not exactly skinny!) hoping it would make cleaning a little less unpleasant.

Well, that's as far as we've got in 2007 ... happy new year!

;-)

Brick Wall Down, Stud Wall Up ...

and ... hey presto! we have a utility/laundry room.

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If you can be bothered referring all the way back to the plans on one of our original postings, you will see that we had a separate bathroom and toilet. A wall separated the loo from the kitchen.

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We knocked it down - after moving the W.C. to its new location in the old bathroom, having ripped out the rotted unit that was holding up the whb/sink and was, no doubt, harbouring billions of germs.

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Meanwhile, Christmas came and went (we went too - spent Christmas elsewhere!), then we built another wall 3ft into the kitchen, thus creating a small (6ft) laundry/utility room. The photo shows the view from the kitchen - you can see the gas boiler on the wall and a temporary mobile pantry-unit! (note the yellow and pink walls - and the electrics! H&S nightmare!)

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I should clarify that when I say 'we' that means Del and Tone - with a little encouragement from the paymasters.

From Attic to En-suite

November. . Del and Tone have moved inside to work on converting the roof space at the front of the house from a mini-attic to a reasonable sized en-suite. The photos show the wooden supports and insulation. There will still be some eaves storage which can be accessed from the bedroom. The irony is that we bought the tiles and sanitaryware for the downstairs shower-room a few months earlier but we hadn't given this room much thought! Time to do so.

We have a a local builders supplies merchants, Brookers, not far from here so we grabbed tons of brochures - Ideal Standard, Aqualisa, various radiator companies - and also looked at their wall tiles and vinyl floor samples.

I love going to Brookers. It's quite old fashioned in some ways and service seems to run at the speed of an action-reply but they have unusual things to rummage through and you can browse for hours without being harrassed for a sale. They sell work clothing and boots at very reasonable prices that could easily be worn as casual wear.

Brookers also has a shop in Hitchin town centre. It was better before they housed the post office but it's still a good shop to wander round. It has a brilliant range of cookery and kitchen stuff that I've never found anywhere else, including the internet, plus gardening, diy and small household appliances. It's staffed by women who are probably retired dinnerladies - friendly and helpful.

Brookers has a website. Well, more a web presence. It's a pleasant design but doesn't give much information other than contact info and an idea of the what they can supply (no detail, but that would have meant a dedicated resource and budget to maintain such a diverse site and I get the impression that they've lasted till now without technology so why change); also, unless you happen to know that the company is T.Brooker & Sons, the site's near impossible to find! For those of you who live in North Herts and want to contact Brookers, it's www.tbrooker.co.uk/

We made our choices for the en-suite. Meanwhile, work continued in another area ...

Moving on ... to the next window

Halloween Special! The nights are getting longer and more importantly, the working day is getting shorter!

:-o

Soon, there will be more concentration on internal tasks.

:-)

The third dormer is well under way without breaking into the bedroom, which is still useable.

:-D