DIY Project Diary – week 5

Last week was tough. The tiler spent 5 days doing the tiling (he’d estimated 3 days work) so I decided to do the grouting myself. I thought there was nothing to it, I’d done grouting before! Grouting between big tiles is easy. But the mosaic tiles are a nightmare – particularly cleaning off the dried grout. There was dust everywhere. Anyway, it was a good exercise for my arms but it took me two days to do it! Then I had to seal around the bath and taps with silicon – it’s fiddly but strangely satisfying..

We also finished the cabinets. We had to cut the iroko strips into 60 pieces then I had to sand them all – one by one. This took me another two days! Then I glued them onto the MDF doors, which needed some careful work as the gaps between the strips had to line up on all doors. This was a frustratingly slow job. I thought it would take maximum 2-3 hours but it took me almost 3 days to complete. The last couple of days I spent on oiling the cabinet doors, filling and painting the ceiling (we removed the ugly ventilator and replaced it with another one, including a light, which we located above the shower).

Whilst the tiler was doing his job the bathroom door had to be removed, so we took the opportunity to get it mirrored. We’ve found a local glazing company, who said they’d be able to cover one side with mirror within a week. They weren’t even that expensive. So we didn’t have a door on the bathroom for five days. Of course this wasn’t terribly harmonious when one of you is asleep next door and other needs to go big time… The glass company called us on Friday to confirm that the door was ready and was on its way. We were pleased. Not only because we can get our privacy back but mainly because – at last we’ve found a company who could deliver a job on time!!!

But our feeling of satisfaction was soon demolished by another call… apparently the mirror broke when they put the door into the van. They’ll have to redo it. This will take another week. So we have to face another week of no privacy in the loo.

In the meantime we had to delay the stair carpet layers and the parquet floor layers we’d booked back in January. Our home renovation should have been finished by now… we’re not even half-way! This is very depressing. But we have to get on with it… the house still looks like a warehouse and we are still camping out in the spare bedroom. The sitting room now has piles of reclaimed parquet blocks which are covered in bitumen & dirt. They smell really awful. The hallway is lined with tools, equipments and materials. The bedroom is full of boxes and things for the new kitchen. The only space that looks vaguely tidy is the office – this is not only essential for our sanity but we do need to do some other work and make some money to finance this project.