In with the new, out with the old (August 2007)

Now we wouldn't be so arrogant as to suggest that we are good builders, but we feel sufficiently qualified to rubbish the work of the previous builders in this house. At least we are trying to do a good job! The previous guys were clearly trying to take shortcuts wherever they could - converting this property into flats and selling them on as quickly as possible.

So destroying their handiwork has not exactly been heart-wrenching for us, and getting rid of the nasty old bathroom has been a particular highlight. First we had to remove the old pipes, now no longer connected to the mains supply. It was like spaghetti junction in the roof with copper pipes everywhere. For some reason the water pipes went all the way up into the roof, around the back of the bathroom, up a bit further, back down to the boiler in the kitchen, then back up again to feed the bathroom!

So, George cut into the pipes upstairs (still containing water), while I stood underneath in the kitchen/living room holding buckets to catch the flow and stop murky water splashing all over the couch, computer, etc. Removing the drainage pipes was by far the worst task, unsurprisingly. Once cut and drained as much as possible, I had to push these pipes through the external wall while George waited outside to collect them. Each time I banged on the pipe to push it through the brickwork, gobs of foul-smelling sludge splattered all over every surface inside, including me! It was a very large, nasty clean-up job - there was even grey sludge on each slat of the venetian blinds in the bathroom.

Unpleasant, but so satisfying! The next task was to remove the old bathroom suite. The basin and steel bath came out whole without too much trouble, but the toilet had to be smashed up. The stench of stagnant water that had been sitting in the unused toilet bowl for a few days was quite overpowering!

We then moved onto the walls. We discovered a layer of tiles hidden under the tongue and groove panelling! And there were tiles under the laminate floor as well. The bathroom was only built about 15 years ago, so the tiles must have been covered over pretty early on. Even though it seemed ridiculous we could understand why someone would want to cover them up - they were quite ugly!

It became a lot darker in the roof once the pale-coloured walls had gone, even with the light shining through the hole in the brickwork where the toilet drainage pipe had been.
And an angel came down from the heavens... Actually it's George bricking up the toilet hole (it was a sunny day - a rare and wondrous event this summer).
North end of old bathroom with basin and bath removed...

...and now no walls or floor!
It's amazing how much rubbish is produced by demolishing one small bathroom! And this pile was created before the floor and all of the walls were removed. We decided that this lot was too much for us to take to the dump, so we called Ecojunk. You do have to pay them to take the stuff away, but it's cheaper and much easier than a skip, and they aim to recycle 80% of the junk collected.

The next job was to remove the stairs.

Going, going...

...gone!

Some of you may have wondered how we manage to take stuff to the tip when we do not own a car. It's actually very easy - we just hire a car from our local car club, Streetcar. You can book a car by internet or phone and be driving it 10 minutes later. There are 10 different cars within 8 minutes walk of our house, and you can hire one for as little as half an hour. It's so easy and cheap (£4.95 per hour including everything even petrol), and without the car club we would have definitely been forced to buy a car.

The only downside is that the Streetcar vehicles, being Volkswagon Golfs, are not always large enough for our needs. The first time we discovered this was at the builders merchants and faced with collecting 10 sheets of roof insulation whose size we had slightly misjudged. The only option was to tie the insulation sheets to the top of the car, using some rope that we bought from the builders merchants shop. The only way we could tie them down securely was by winding down all 4 car windows and threading the rope around and around. Then we had to climb back into the car through the windows because the car doors were now tied shut by the rope - it was quite embarrassing having to do this in the middle of the builders yard!

A new bathroom at last (August 2007)

Our new bathroom is (mostly) in! It took much longer than expected. There is so much intricate work involved with installing a new bathroom, and we were learning all the way along. Plumbing seems to be one of those jobs that is "easy when you know how". I guess that's why professional plumbers earn so much! We did employ a professional, for the end of the job - to divert the water supply from the old pipes to the new pipes. George's new pipes held up well, and we now have a working bath, basin and toilet! We can't install the shower until we've built the next bit of wall. And we can't build the next wall until the stairs are removed. So in the meantime we are showering at work and the gym, and having the occasional bath at home when we have no other option.

Plumbing has not been much fun, overall. But I got my five minutes of amusement when I learned some new plumbing terms. Did you know that pipes can be described as male or female? Male = a fitting that is inserted into another fitting. Female = (you guessed it) a fitting into which another fitting is inserted. Nipple, cock, elbow; the list goes on. Plumbers are so admirably matter-of-fact - why use fancy words when a body part analogy will suffice?


One of the most infuriating things about this flat is the complete absence of right angles and straight surfaces. We had to build this wall to create a square set of angles, in order to install the bathroom furniture. We also had to make a specially shaped, sloping platform for the toilet to sit on, to make it level (unlike the floor).

This nifty drill really makes light work of an otherwise tricky task - making a new hole for the toilet drainage pipe.
Just look at that - isn't it perfect?
The slow business of installing the bathroom furniture.

And - a finished bathroom (sort of)! No tiles on either floor or walls, no mirror, no lighting, no ceiling, no door, no shower. But we have running water, and storage space!!

Filling the first bath. It takes about half an hour to fill it (the water pressure is still bad); we share the same bath water to economise on time and water. We've rigged up a makeshift shower curtain to stop splashes affecting the new plasterboard.

It's a very open plan bathroom at the moment - there are just two partial walls between it and the living room. Bathing in what is essentially a building site is surprisingly enjoyable - the room is full of light (during the day) and you can look up at the sky while lying in the water. Up until mid-afternoon the sun pours in - it's going to be a really pleasant room when it's finished.

We now have just one half of the back room to store tools, ladders etc. We also walk through here to access the bathroom at the moment; the proper entry to the bathroom is currently blocked by the stairs.

Not much DIY (July 2007)

We've had our flat for just over one year, and what a short year it's been. There's still so much to do on the house - everything has taken longer than we thought (surprise, surprise), and we have been struggling to keep the momentum going since Summer started. That's mainly because we've had a lot of other distractions that Summer tends to bring.

A particularly welcome distraction was the return of our Christmas feline house-guests while their owners were on holiday. Little George and Jess stayed for a whole week this time, and although it sometimes felt a bit crowded with all four of us in our one-room flat we all had good fun. The building site turned out to be a veritable cat's playground; full of dark holes to hide in, tight gaps to squeeze through and high beams to jump onto (see below). This provided much amusement for both cat and human. Luckily at one year of age they were sensible enough (just) to avoid harming themselves on the numerous sharp tools lying around. Our newly bought copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was not so lucky. We arrived home one day to find that a corner of the book's hardback cover had mysteriously disappeared, with small teeth marks serving as the only clue to the culprit!

At the end of July we took a day off the DIY to go to Sundae on the Common. This is a festival unlike any other. In addition to the usual music and fairground attractions, this annual festival offers unlimited free Ben & Jerry's ice cream! There was also a stall providing free pancakes, which went rather well with the free icecream. Although, it is interesting how little icecream you can actually eat before you start feeling sick, even when it's free!

Not only does the Ben & Jerry's festival provide good music, free ice cream and amusing activities like toe wrestling, but it offers all this for the staggeringly small ticket price of £12. AND, it's all carbon neutral (including the ice cream).

Thousands of you, one of me: I make that Pimm's O'Clock! What better way to recycle an old Routemaster London Bus than to fill it with booze and surround it with a mini white picket fence? As for the double deckchairs, they will definitely be going on next summer's shopping list.