Cat has Monday off, so paints the second coat in the study.
When the paint is wet you can see all the tool marks and hand prints from the plasterers in the lime plaster. It is most bizarre, they disappear (mostly) when the paint is dry.
Cutting in the last corner. Cat’s hair is still getting in the way…
You can see where Colin has patched up the lime plaster, it has some drying out to do but should dry and disappear.
Cat’s next task is to clean off the gaffer tape from the copper pipes ready for the plumber to fit the rads later this week. The gaffer tape has been on for so long it has broken down and comes off in individual strands, then cat cleans it up with white spirit and wire wool, all while being bent double on the floor…
Then she moves onto cleaning the flagstones where the radiators will stand. These got covered in lime mortar when they were pointed months ago, which has now set hard and is difficult to remove as it is sitting in the uneven surface of the stones.
Cat dissolves the mortar with the floor cleaning acid we used in the summer (environmentally friendly stuff, don’t worry) and scrubs it off with a small wire brush, stone by stone, making sure not to get it on the pointing as it will remove this too… She has the whole floor to do at some point before we move in! Not something I can help with unfortunately, just watching her makes my back hurt.
You can see the difference between the three stones she has done and the others not yet cleaned.
The flagstones on the other side of the sitting room where the second rad will sit have also been scrubbed clean.
Cat has a great deal of filling to do in the bathroom walls. This is the thermostat on the heated towel rail.
The pipes for the heated towel rail.
The damage to the top of the roll top bath. Sadly it is at the front where it is most visible.
The damage to the inside of the bath. There are two scratches like this inside the bath.
The damage to the shower tray. This and the bath will be repaired. There are companies who do invisible repairs so you will not know they were ever damaged. Yet to find out the cost…
The enormous holes that were cut out of the wall for the bath waste pipe, twice as it was in the wrong place first time. What a mess! Quite why you would need such a massive cut out for a small pipe I do not understand. We need to repair and fill these.
The sink waste that was also cut out in the wrong place first time.
The hole in the ceiling for the shower head needs filling, tricky to get to though!
A hole for the toilet water inlet pipe, also cut in the wrong place first time.
The cuts around the shower tray that also need filling.
One of the feet of the shower that has already gone through our 300+ year old historic floorboards. We are going to have to try and get some 18mm marine ply board fitted underneath the feet (which should have been fitted in the first place). This shower MUST NOT leak, so it MUST NOT move.
I am taking up the RamBoard flooring in the bathroom which involves carefully pulling it out from under the plastered walls without damaging the plaster. Then hoovering it all very thoroughly to get rid of all the plaster dust before it gets walked into the wood.
Thankfully our beautiful floor has been very well protected under the RamBoard, and looks as fabulous as we remember.
I think we will need some circular discs to go underneath the bath feet to spread the load and protect the old floorboards. Also one leg is too short so the bath needs levelling (the existing feet are not adjustable). Our carpenter will make these out of bits of old floorboards that we have left over.
The copper radiator pipes on the landing outside the bathroom where the pipes are way too low and also not level. Nothing we can do about this now, but our plumber and carpenter will have a tricky job. Before the radiators are fitted we need our carpenter to fit skirting boards, not easy when the pipes are so low and they do not come out of the wall straight… The gaffer tape also needs removing and the pipes need cleaning up.
I have hoovered the whole house (again) but am going to tackle Cat’s room. This hasn’t been cleaned in a while and is still filled with rubble and stone dust.
After.
Before.
After.
A hole in the crappy old floor that you could pass things up through from the dining room below. This will get patched and will be dealt with in phase 2 when we renovate this side of the house…
Our local carpet fitting company Ray Randerson Carpets came to measure up the attic bedroom and the dining room and brought over some carpet samples.
The dining room where the knackered old parquet flooring currently is will be laid with a cheap lino temporarily, just until phase 2. Ultimately this will be stone or slate and we will be lowering the floor level so there is little point in putting a good floor down now.
Andrew, our plumber, is back for the day to fit the rads in the sitting room. They have been wrapped up and protected for so long we had almost forgotten what they looked like, but they look amazing next to the wall and stone floor. How exciting!
Andrew has had to move the pipe on the left here as it wasn’t in the right place, so he has dug out the mortar that it was sitting in.
Working out where we want the brass brackets to go (higher than this).
Dry fitting the radiator in Zanna’s bedroom to check the pipes are in the correct place before the skirting boards get fitted at the weekend.
The floor is slightly wonky still in Zanna’s bedroom, so the rad will also be slightly wonky. We tried to straighten them up with copper pennies underneath the feet but it looks untidy. We don’t mind them wonky.
The radiators are the Traditional Victorian style in Gunmetal Grey from the Cast Iron Radiator Centre at our very friendly local reclamation yard in Coventry.