Bathroom floor

The floor is now in place and grouted, but I haven't yet cleaned the surface mist of grout off the tiles. It's best to wait until the joins are fully dry.



It's been heavy rainstorms interspersed with lighter ones all day long, so the air is very damp and I expect it will take a bit longer to dry than usual.

The local tiler has kindly offered to lend me his big tile cutter for the wall tiles, and I hope to be able to start those fairly soon. Though I'll be starting with the washbasin surface, which has to be cemented in place and then tiled before I do the walls around it. I am not looking forward to cutting the large format tiles to produce exactly sized holes - the one for the tap has to be just big enough for the pipes, but not so big that the body of the tap falls through: as near as posible just 28mm diameter.

I'm pleased with these first results.

I'm slightly less pleased with the night-time visitor we had on Saturday:



Eventually it took half a dozen farming neighbours and a tractor with a telescopic arm to get the cow out. She appears to be no worse for her chilly experience.

Putting it back together

I'm still working on the bathroom.

The first job I tackled was bolting down the framework for the suspended WC. The cement floor however proved to be a bit brittle, and the rawlbolts seemed to crack it rather than provide a good hold. The water pipes were a bit in the way, and I had to cut away part of the metal framework to get it to fit against the wall in the right position.



The best bet seemed to be to cast a block of cement round the feet and hope that would provide a better anchorage. The cement didn't quite fill up all the way to the front of the shuttering but it will do pretty well.



The framework is also bolted to the wall at the top, definitely a belt and braces approach. So this is what it then looked like:



The next job was to clad the outside of the framework with "carreaux de plâtre", the material I have also used for the shower's freestanding wall. These were the thinner versions, just 5cm thick. When the tiles arrive this whole structure will be tiled, and only then can I actually fit the WC to it. But I am reasonably confident it will be good and solid.



As all the pipes and the mechanism are bricked up inside it, I hope that it is all properly assembled with the pipe unions done up sufficiently tightly - I did check it all with water under mains pressure before the cladding went up and nothing was obviously wrong. It appears to be possible to change the internal mechanism through the front flush panel, though I wouldn't want to try to do it myself. The picture above also shows a bit of the re-wiring: I've cut a channel into the wall for the wires (in conduit) for a new lightswitch by the door. And I've filled it flush with the wall surface.

Finally, I've finished the shower's freestanding wall, and done the structure for the washbasin. The grey surfaces are Wedi-board, hopefully waterproof, and they will all eventually be tiled. In fact everything in this picture except the doorframe will be tiled .... eventually. The light on the lefthand wall will I hope become a razor and electric toothbrush socket, and there will be an illuminated mirror above the washbasin. Again the wires for this are now in conduit below the surface of the lefthand wall, and then along the top of the shower wall (embedded there too).



Of course, this kind of work tends to spread over all adjacent surfaces. So the kitchen is looking a bit sorry for itself right now:



I still haven't worked out how to get the pipe tails for the shower into the right place, and I am reluctantly coming round to the conclusion that I am going to have to cut out a section of the plasterboard to let me get at the gaffer tape and the pipes lower down. The wall will be tiled so it shouldn't matter too much.