A Night on the Tiles

Just a short post tonight, to say that things are moving on. After a bit of fiddling and final fitting in place of the vanity unit - although it had been plumbed in, it wasn't properly fixed yesterday - Y started tiling. That bit doesn't look any different from yesterday, so I haven't taken another picture. 

He's done quite a bit of tiling, but I won't reveal a whole wall until things are entirely finished ... must keep some surprises up my sleeve.



Because it was crucial where certain elements went , I missed my Pilates class today, in order to be here to set him on the right datum line. 

[Don't tell my Pilates teacher, but in the end I would have been able to get there and back in time, but I didn't want to risk him starting in the wrong place, and he thought he'd be starting the tiling about an hour before he actually did.]


Anyway, there are a few more days before he'll have finished everything, but I shan't post again now until I can show you the completed room. [We have chosen our wall colour, by the way, and will reveal that at the same time!]

Edit, morning of 22 Nov., to add that the cistern leaked/overflowed in the night, so suspect he'll need to sort that before any more tiling gets done today ...

Now Wash Your Hands...

We have a working loo and handbasin!

After collecting the new loo seat, Y went to get connectors for the new tap. Wouldn't you think all taps nowadays would be metric? Especially with a continental-sounding name like Grohe. Not a bit of it! The diameter of the hoses leading into this tap is three-eighths of an inch! So instead of being able to pick up the usual connectors to go between the isolators and the tap hoses, Y had to go to a specialist plumbing supplies to get four connectors - to connect the metric pipe isolators to a short length of pipe, and then to 'convert' that pipe to the size of the hoses feeding the tap.

That done, Y arrived here and set about actually fitting the loo. When you see a back-to-the-wall loo in a hotel en-suite, you don't think much about it. You probably notice in some of the more modern, or more recently converted hotels, a door between rooms that evidently leads to a 'service room' that gives access to the back of all the plumbing. 

When you have a vanity unit fitted, that gives a shelf above the loo, and a cupboard under the basin, you don't really think about how it will go in. The large waste pipe from the loo has to be fitted, but to manoeuvre the pan into place - after fitting the seat! - at the same time as connecting the cistern to the flush feed at the back of the pan, whilst holding the cistern and getting the cold feed into the cistern connected before the cistern itself can be put on its housing and the lid put on ... I think an octopus would have been hard pressed to come up with enough arms.

But it's in, and it works.

Tomorrow the tiling begins.