More grout....

The larger part of the shower area is now grouted, and although doing the soap/shampoo niche was tricky, it seems to have worked well enough. The end of the partition wall is still untiled, as Point P have not yet got the final edging strip for me. It shouldn't take too long, though.



The sink is now in place, and the drain is connected. I'll leave off connecting the water supply until I'm able to connect the shower too. Although there are individual valves to close off the basin taps separately from the shower, I don't know which is which. The basin will eventually have a line of grout round the base, as otherwise there's a dirt-trap between the basin and the tiles. It doesn't sit absolutely flat on the tiles.

I've also wired up an electric socket on the wall near the basin, which shows in this picture:



Unfortunately the socket will have to come off again. I put screws into five of the six holes provided, thinking that would be enough, as the sixth risked going through the mains cable. But in fact without the sixth it's distinctly flexible, so I'll have to drill a careful hole for it.

Starting grouting, & the Solar Heating

I grouted a couple of small areas: by the shower, and by the door.

I can't do much more as I am still waiting for the builders' merchants to get the edging strip that I have ordered. Thanks, Point P, you're now more than a week later than you said.

Here's the entry to the shower:



In the corner the grouting gets wider towards the top, but it's set nicely and looks like a good seal, and I imagine people won't notice. Or not often. At the right hand edge it makes a good finish up against the new architrave strip.

Over by the door, I had the opposite problem: fitting the narrow strip of vertical tiles resulted in a join in the corner that would have been better if it was a bit wider. But it will be behind the door most of the time (when I put the door back on its hinges) so I'm not too concerned.



There's an odd level change up at the top corner, as there was before I tiled it (the door-frame projects more into the bathroom on the right than it does on the left), but it is hardly noticeable. Once the new architrave/moulding strips are painted the same colour as the rest of the wood, it should look as if it was always meant to be that way.

I'm pleased with the colour of the grout against the lighter and darker tiles. I wondered at first whether the lighter tiles ought to have a lighter grout, but seeing it actually done makes it look almost professional!

Solar Panels

The solar heating has been in action now for a year. In 2011 the pump was in action for 1,352 hours, a bit under an average four hours a day. For 2012 I've reset the controller to give me an additional record, of kilowatt-hours: it measures the fluid temperature as it comes into, and goes out of, the hot water cylinder. That temperature drop represents the amount of heat transferred, and there's a flow-meter to calculate the total useful input. It won't measure the heat put into the pool, so it'll be a conservative estimate of the efficiency of the system.

But it worked well last year: from April to October we only had to turn on the boiler on a few odd days when it had been overcast for a few days. For the rest of the time, all our hot water was provided by the sun.

Not a lot of sun recently, however: and there's a fair bit of snow forecast for the coming week.

Architraving mad?

Yesterday I fitted the extra architrave around the window and door, and today I got on with the tiling.

Here's the state of play this evening (I stopped when I ran out of tile cement):



The new strips of moulding look rather obvious but I hope that once they are painted it will look as if it is a single piece of rather fancy woodwork. Whether or not, it does provide a good edge for the tiles, both at the reveals (the bit next to the window) and on the walls where the tiles meet the framing for the window opening.

There's only one annoying thing about the tiles I put up today. After starting on the wall in the shower area, I discovered that the outside wall slopes out a bit towards the top. If I had started the tiling from the other side (the left rather than the right), I could have cut the last tiles that meet the sloping wall to make a good fit. As it is, the joints will be slightly tapered to allow me to get an eventual vertical column of tiles.

Yesterday I also grouted the white tiles on the floor next to the shower: they look pretty good. Well, I'm pleased with the result.

Monday midday

When I finished last night it was getting dark, and I had turned off the elctricity in the bathroom in order to tile round the light switch. So I wasn't able to get a picture. I put a few more tiles up this morning and this gives an idea of where I am now:



This shot gives a slightly better view of the holes in the tiles that are needed for the suspended WC. It won't go up for a while: I'll need to be sure the tile cement is really hard, and the grouting done too:



Finally this picture:



gives a view of the problem with tiling over the top of the existing tiles, when the new tiles go further up the wall. It's just possible to see the layer of wediboard - with a thin black vertical line and lightblue foam filler - above the level of the old tiles. You can also see how thick it makes the tiled surface of the wall. There's a good 2cm ledge at the top.

Around the edge of the window reveal I will add another strip of moulding (architrave?) which will cover the edge of the new tiling. And I'll have something similar to do round the doorway.

Up and down

A drive through mist and sunshine to Figeac, and I bought two more tubs of adhesive. So I was able to finish off the wall I had been working on yesterday. Not grouted yet, of course: I'll tackle that when all the tiles are up. A very cold today: barely above zero all day long, and minus 4 forecast for tonight.



I'm feeling a little bruised, as I managed to tip myself off that stepladder. Even falling from 50cm can be painful. Somehow my legs went one way and the ladder went the other, and I found myself on the floor with a painful bottom and a knock on the head (but it can't have been too bad, as it bled very little). I still have no idea how it happened, but I can say it only happened once. Well, only once today.

I've bought a sack of light grey grout which I hope will go well enough with both colours: I used up some left-over grey grout on the floor and that looked pretty good against the brown. This is slightly lighter in colour and should be OK against the off-white tiles too.

And as far as I can tell the wediboard is firmly stuck to the wall, and the tiles are firmly stuck to it. When using the rubber mallet to get a firm placement, it didn't sound hollow anywhere.

More tomorrow I hope.

Up the wall

Still tiling.....

Before going away at Christmas I cast a new screed next to the shower, as otherwise the water wouldn't have drained from this raised area back into the shower. I am usually tempted to take the shuttering off much too early, so giving it 15 days to harden was a bonus. When I came back I removed the shuttering and covered the floor with plastic sheeting: putting up tiles and grouting is a messy business, and I didn't want to spend all my time cleaning the floor. It then looked like this before I started to tile the section by the shower:



For some reason, probably just procrastination, I decided that the surface under the washbasin had to be done first, which meant cutting a round 30mm hole in a tile for the tap. The tap is tall, to clear the washbasin, and the base is square and about 35mm or less across. If the hole is too large the tap will fall through or chip the tile, leaving the tap wobbly. But does anyone sell a 30mm diamond hole cutter? No, of course not. The best I could find was 27mm, which I enlarged with a grindstone. I made my own jig out of a scrap bit of plywood - the smaller hole cutters don't have a drill in the middle to centre them.



The result wasn't too bad. The hole is slightly wider across one diameter, to get the pipe tails through. And from left to right it's the grindstone, the diamond cutter, and the sponge that you put inside to keep the cut wet.

So I was finally able to start the tiling. This shows the little bit of floor I did. With luck it will look better when it's grouted:



At present the wall on the left (see below) looks a little odd, as I am tiling on top of old tiles part way up the wall, and then on the original surface. To avoid a step where the old tiles end, I've been gluing thin wediboard to the walls above the old tiles, to take up the missing thickness. As wediboard is black the effect is pretty odd above the lighter coloured tiles (and there's also just one narrow row of old tiles showing). I also decided that I'd get better adhesion by cutting the wediboard into strips that would flex a little and fit tightly on the wall: if I'd done the whole 2 meters by 50 cm in one piece the board would have pulled away from low spots as the glue can't hold a curve into the board. It's surprisingly rigid (as it's supposed to be).



I left gaps between the strips of wediboard in the belief that a bit of (thick) adhesive between the new tile and the old untiled wall would give added security to the new tiles. I suspect this was unnecessary, and with luck the tiles won't fall off.

The left hand wall will have two rows of the lighter coloured tiles above the single row of them already there, while above the washbasin it will be all brown with a big illuminated mirror in the middle (you can see the embedded electric cable at the top. I haven't yet decided what to put where the other cable appears on the left hand wall. Possibly a razor socket, or maybe just an ordinary one (French rules are different).

Eventually I ran out of adhesive so it's off to Figeac tomorrow to get some more, and some more stainless steel tile edging. Naturally I'd ordered slightly too little.