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 ...