catch up

Hi

So...its been ages.  What have I been doing? I have no idea!

The plastering was done in the annex bathroom and bedroom...so I have been painting in the bathroom - haven't started on the bedroom yet - and have no idea what colour to do it!  The bathroom however, I painted.  Three coats - one white then 2 blue.  I really liked it until ray (plasterer) saw it, and I said do you like the colour - and he just said no.  lol.  Like his honesty - but this morning the guys turned up to do the flooring - they haven't quite started laying it yet - but as soon as I saw the boxes outside the room  I thought - yeah that colour (on the walls) isn't going to work!  I think it is going to look too bright - but I'll see when the floor is in.  If it is wrong at least I can change it.

After Karl had finished the plastering in the bathroom - I noticed (not that it was hard to see!!) that behind the radiator there was an ugly piece of plasterboard just stuck in at the side!! I had no idea how to conceal it.  The problem was that - because the walls had plasterboard put on and then plastered - the wall stuck out more than the window sill.  I called Ray (Karls boss) and said I needed him to look at something Karl had left....I needed to know what on earth I could do to cover it!  He came and looked at it, and said - you just need to build a new window sill to go over the existing one - with a lip which will cover the gap between sill and radiator (and mess behind it)....oh is that all!!!  So...as Ray had left Connor behind and left me some wood - me  and Connor set to making a new one!  We had fun figuring it out...it was an odd shape so we had to get that right 1st....but we managed it well....then we fit it and cut out another piece of wood for the lip and fitted that...filled over the embedded screws and gave it a lick of paint and it looks awesome!  I'll put pics up when the bathroom is finished.

I finished the tiles in the back porch!!!  I've put that on this blog as a separate post - under house renovations!  So - I won't talk about it here - other than to say - it was a pain in the butt!!! But it is done! yay!

I also pulled all the carpet up in the games room - don't know if I have already mentioned that? But it has good boards under there - so I'll be sanding and sorting them out in the (hopefully) near future!  Unfortunately I have to make the annex stuff priority before I can start on that!

So...other than the work on the house...I have been eating lots and not running...so I'm putting weight on again! I think it is because when I work on the house all day I have no energy left to exercise or cook - so we get take-out! but it has to change!! 

We've had a few good pool nights and Helen and Paul have been around - which is always fun but nothing else of note to talk about....

back porch tiling project!

I also finished the tiles!!!  It was a nightmare right from the beginning to the end!  When we first took up the carpet tiles and saw that it had been "repaired" with ugly big black tiles I had no idea how we would sort it out.  A year later I had done so many DIY projects I thought - I can do that!  So...I knocked out the big black tiles...then some of the broken original ones.  Then I found that they wouldn't come out easily - and I broke others trying to get them out!  Then I realised that new tiles with stick up too high - so I had to break up the concrete underneath - which dislodged and broke more tiles - the area I had to re-tile got bigger and bigger!!  Meanwhile, I struggled to buy replacements - found the right size in reproduction tiles - but the white was actually cream and nowhere near the right colour - also the while ones were slightly bigger than the black ones.  I had to start searching repeatedly looking for original ones being sold.  I went and looked at some - but they were grey!  Eventually somebody was selling them online and I sent a broken one of mine to check the colour - they said they didn't match.  I asked for a pic and thought - that will do!! BUT I ended up paying about £80 for 14 white tiles - he charged me £25 for a 'small order' and £25 for postage!  Anyway - they were mm's too big!  So I had to shave off two edges with the wet tile cutter!

So - I had to lay more concrete in the gap as bringing up the old concrete had gone down to dirt and too deep.  I hadn't done this before - and in hindsight I really should have used more!

When it came to laying the tiles - I had to use so much adhesive because it was too deep.  I should have stopped and used more concrete - but I didn't really realise until it was too late.  The tiles are so tightly packed together I had difficulty getting them in - and they kept sinking in - in the adhesive!  Basically it was so stressful - but I finished it - and just hoped they'd be okay when dry!

Here are the pics!!

This is a 'before'pic.  You can see the large black tiles put it, but other bits were damaged too.

So - I started taking the tiles out....

This is how big the hole ended up after I had dug up the concrete - and broke and dislodged other tiles!!

as you can see the concrete underneath was too high - and tiles kept getting broken!

Anyway - this is how it turned out!!

You can see - on the bottom half of this pic - the slightly different colour white and new looking black tiles!

So - just need to do some grouting now!!  All in all, a major stressful pain in the butt - but good enough to 'use' the floor!