Down On Our Hands & Knees ….. August 2014

04 - 10 August 2014:  London

Finishing the Hallway

We decided to continue the laminate wooden flooring from the kitchen into the hallway and bathroom.  So  my fulltime job was to continue on painting the hallway while Mark the newly recruited plumber started in the bathroom. 

Once the painting was finished we started laying the laminate flooring.  Those 5 doorways and 2 cupboards that had taken so long for me to paint around were now providing us with a huge challenge.  The hallway took a day for us both, as did the bathroom, the long straight parts taking just minutes but the doorways took hours – the results were outstanding and the work very fulfilling.  It will only look better as everything else gets finished off.  

Back To The Bathroom

I did the fiddly bits in the hallway - cleaning the old fittings, replacing some with new shiny ones, laying the skirting boards and painting inside the cupboards.  Meanwhile Mark carried on in the bathroom.  With the floor now down, the stage was set for installing the toilet and hand basin. 

Mark has had more experience than he would like with plumbing on the boat so slotted into his new role with confidence –  but then he had to piece it all the pipework together.  The toilet was started and successfully installed in no time at all but the basin well lets just say it wasn’t all straightforward, and the odd faulty piece that leaked at the seams once installed certainly didn’t help.   We purchased u-bends, s-bends, joiners, reducers and piping – at one point the floor was littered with pieces of plumbing that just refused to do what we needed it to.

 

But we have time (although diminishing by the day), patience and common sense, and after all these are only pipes so after quite some time and several trips to the local plumbing store we cracked it.  So next up it was fitting the electric power shower to the wall, in the photo above I am jigsawing our newly laid tiles as the holes from the previous shower plumbing are not matching up with the new shower.  Although the other photo shows the shower on the wall it is not finished …. there are a few hiccups!! 

6 Weeks Down, Just Over 2 Left