The plumber has gotten on quite well considering he was sick Wednesday and had a half day off on Friday. This is what it looked like after day one, and by Friday afternoon he had removed the remainder of the tiles and the rest of the enclosure. I am relieved to find out that the leaky shower hadn't done much damage to the subfloor.
He's supposed to be finished in the main bathroom now and I spent time on Friday and Saturday filling in dents and smoothing over the channels that were cut in the wall for electrics. DH and DS helped to give it all a really good clean, which felt like reclaiming the bathroom back from the plumber. There was still a surprising amount of brick dust hiding on top of door and window frames and in every crevice so we basically had to vacuum every surface except the ceiling. Today we have painted two coats of paint on the two walls which were damaged during construction. Then we can get the blinds back up tonight and stop feeling like we are on show to the neighbours. I think the rough spots around the electrical channel that was chiseled out in the wall need more attention but that can be a subsequent job which won't affect the blinds. And I'm pleased to report that the new shower does not leak, thankfully.
The floor is proving more of an issue. I contacted the previous owner of our house and he told me what brand of tiles he'd used on the bathroom floor but they seem to be discontinued (not surprising as he bought them about eight years ago). So we've pried up several tiles from the ensuite in the hopes that we can clean them off and re-lay them in the main bathroom. They seem to have brought the top layer of plywood floor with them so cleaning them could be difficult. I need to contact the tiler this week to see if he can come. The plumber can't finish sealing in the newly relocated units until we have a floor in place and I want to get him to do it before he disappears off to his next job. I also need him to go back to the main bathroom and improve the very obvious join he made between two bits of skirting board so that we can paint that as well. Plus we'll need a complete replacement floor in the ensuite.
Meanwhile the weather has turned abruptly autumnal (not to mention a bit hurricane-y as we get the tail end of various storms) so I've been hurrying to frostproof the garden: draining and moving fountains and bird baths into the shed, mulching various plants such as my fuschias, and bringing in a few tender plants which I am hoping will survive indoors until the spring.
Coupled with a very demanding month at work, I haven't had a lot of time or energy for crafting, grrrr. I did finish quilting on my Hawaiian wallhanging, added a hanging sleeve and am currently pinning on the binding. I also got a fair bit of knitting done on my fingerless glove during the lecture at gardening club, and more done on it during a lecture at a Lace Day I attended yesterday in Letchworth.
It wasn't great timing to be out most of the day at a Lace Day when we have so much on, but it was a ticket I had booked months ago and I had a ride arranged with some ladies I had met at the St Ives Lace Day, so I decided to go. It was a nice event, well organised and in a lovely historic hall which used to be a Temperance (non-alcoholic) pub called the Skittles Inn. There was a raffle and I won a little resin figurine of a lacemaker sitting at her pillow, and a fantastic secondhand table with loads of good stuff. I picked up several books I thought would be useful, all for the princely sum of £10. Bargain. This included a quilling set which I bought for the paper because you can use quilling paper to make dollshouse things. So I've got lots of reading ahead.
I got on quite well with my Bucks Point hexagonal edging and finally finished turning the second corner (only four corners to go....). It takes quite a while to turn the corner because you reach the corner pin on the inside edge, but then have to make lace all the way around (from say 10 o'clock around to 4 o'clock if the pillow was a clock face) before you continue on from that corner pin. In fact it had been so long since I did the inside edge that I had to look up how to do it again.
There were also a handful of suppliers at the event and one was selling yarn where I got this very festive red and green acrylic yarn which has a strand of silver glitter running through it. It's sock weight, so I could make festive socks or gloves out of it, or perhaps ornaments.
On my day off it was too wet to garden so I did get some time on my quilt frame. I loaded the small top I made out of Japanese fabrics and started stitching a new panto design on it. Love the fabrics in this Japanese top, the designs are so soft and delicate.
I'm having a lot of trouble with my broken front track and actually had to move the longer unbroken bit along so that I can stitch the Japanese quilt without running over the break. I tried patching in a bit of track from the previous tracks (which I replaced but kept) but no matter what I tried there was a noticeable bump when the carriage wheels ran over the join, which never failed to grab the machine and make it wobble terribly as first one wheel then the other wheel hit the break. I don't even know if you can still get replacement plastic tracks for this frame because it's so old, but they seem like a waste of money because they wear out so quickly. I remember reading about one woman who had replaced her plastic tracks with metal strip so I think I need to look into that. It's going to be a problem if I try to quilt anything wider than a lap quilt. Either that or manage to win £10,000 on the lottery so I can buy a Handiquilter Avante and frame. That would be better :)
Signing off from a cluttered and dusty house, hope you've had a good week!
1 comment:
Keep repeating *it will be worth it in the end*! I hate doing work on the house as it always ends up being more complicated than I’m sure it needs to be...
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