Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Not a lot to report. The 3 coats of waterproofing need a day to dry between each coat, so the first few days this week is just watching paint dry—literally!

Both the tiler and the project manager have been here for short stints on both days—the tiler to do the waterproofing and prep work for tiling (which starts tomorrow, Day 9!) and the PM to do small things, like patch holes in walls then sand down in preparation for the tiling and painting, vacuum the concrete floors with an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner, replace skirtings on the bedroom side of the en suite that were taken off to allow the doorway to be widened etc.

And the tiler has put up his plan for the floorboard-style tiles he’ll be laying on the floor.

Day 6 of bathroom renos. Very quiet today. The only activity was the tiler doing the first waterproofing coat, and the project manager installing the architraves for the 2 widened doorways. Both were finished and gone before 11am.

Tomorrow will be another coat of waterproofing around 8am, with possibly the final (3rd) coat tomorrow afternoon if the weather remains hot and dry as expected. The Australian Standard for waterproofing is one coat up to 1.8 m high in the shower, but this company does 2 coats as standard and up to tile height (2 m in our case). Because I’ve had 3 bathrooms retiled in the past 16 years because of waterproofing issues, I insisted on 3 coats—I DO NOT want to have to be in a situation where this has to be redone.

Also, sometime in the past few work days, the cistern got installed inside the frame that will conceal it.

A very quiet day today. The PM and tiler both turned up early, and the tiler got on to filling and screeding the floor and wall area for the shower. But concrete (or whatever he uses) has to dry so he was done and gone by mid-morning. He’ll be back later today to do a bit more, then it will all dry over the weekend. He’ll start the waterproofing on Monday and that will take 3 days because I want 3 coats and up much higher on the walls than the Australian standard. He told me he’s not just waterproofing the shower area, but also the walls, floors and window ledges where water could splash, and the back wall where the bath used to be, and into the main bathroom area too. Each coat has to dry, so 3 coats = 3 days before he can start tiling. He can’t start tiling earlier from the toilet out otherwise he could be out in the measurements—the tiling has to start from the where the shower screen will go, which is why he can’t do anything until the waterproofing is all done. In my chat about our 3 previous experiences with bad waterproofing and bathrooms, I found that he and I are very much on the same page about getting the waterproofing done right the first time, because it’s way to expensive to fix later. An extra day for a 3rd coat? in the scheme of things, it’s a small price to pay.

The PM was also here first thing (it’s his day off!) and we pulled down the blue plastic that we’d had up to minimise the dust. He did a few things then took off for the day.

Much quieter today, though there was some noise at various times. Fewer people too! The project manager (PM) was here bright and early, along with the tiler. The tiler spent the morning starting the work on the floors, specifically concreting the hole through to the sane where the bath and its waste pipe had been (the blue level in the photo) and smoothing the window ledge and walls for the shower wet area. He left about midday as everything has to dry before the next stage. Luckily we’re in the middle of summer so we can keep the window wide open and the ambient temperature helps with the drying process.

We nearly had a potential long-term problem yesterday. Fortunately, our PM is on the ball. Before the tiler smoothed out and coated the shower walls, the PM called me in to see how high I wanted the shelves for the shampoo etc. to be. My husband has deliberately not seen ANY of renos and wasn’t going to until it was finished. But we needed him to come in and check the height for the shower shelves (he’s 190 cm, I’m 168 cm, and the PM is not much bigger than me). And then we realised that the shower head position was going to be about 5 cm above his head, which is not enough! So, the PM made a quick decision to call back the plumber and raise the fitting for the shower head (we couldn’t raise it too far because there’s a stupid [but necessary] bulkhead in the way, but it’s gone up about 10 cm more). Meanwhile the PM got straight onto clearing out the cement the plumber used to cover the chased section of new pipework that he’d only done the day before, before it hardened fully. The plumber came a few hours later and made the change in about 10 mins. Phew! The PM said this wouldn’t be an extra expense as it was his fault for not checking first.

Another cool thing—back in the day, tilers etc. would mix their cement outside and bring it in with a wheelbarrow,  which is not good for the floors it has to cross to get to the en suite bathroom. But these days it’s a bit different. Our tiler mixes in situ, using one of those big plastic tubs (the blue one in the photo) and a mixing machine that’s like a big blender! Easy peasy, and no mess! The only thing that comes from outside is a garden hose to add water to the mix.

Midway through Day 3 of the bathroom renos… Not much to report—just more noise.

Plumber came again this morning (more drilling), as did the project manager (more drilling; put up the door frames in the newly widened doorways; marked up for the electricians; installed the cistern). Then came the electricians (3) who’ve done more drilling to relocate light/fan switches, shift one power outlet and add another, including drilling through the wardrobe in my sewing room. Our power will go off this afternoon for an hour or so while they connect it all up (plus work in the roof space — under Western Australian law the power must be turned off if anyone enters a roof space).

Reminder to those who don’t live in Australia: Most houses in Western Australia (and much of Australia) are built of brick, typically double brick outer walls and single brick inner walls. And our electrical voltage is 240V so only licensed electricians are allowed to do electrical work. Every time I see a North American reno show where they just knock down or put up walls willy-nilly or do their own electrical work, I shake my head as our experience here is so different to that.

End of Day 3. The project manager popped in to do a bit and check the work and told me that the worst of the drilling is over!!! Yay!!! It doesn’t look like much has changed but it has and ultimately all that work will be concealed behind tiles and paint.

The photo below is of the new power point locations on the wall below where the vanity and mirrored cupboards will go. The power point on the far right wall had to move because it’s where the sliding door will run. You only get to do this once so I went for it and said 2x double power points!

Next one is of the new light/fan switch location inside the toilet. The previous one was inside the left of the door frame, but with a sliding door, that was going to be a silly place. The project manager suggested here, handy to where you open the door, so here it is. The other is the relocated one for the light/fan switches for the main bathroom. The architrave for the doorway is now in place.

This final photo doesn’t look much but it was a LOT of work for the plumber. The wet cement hides where the old tapset and shower head pipes and connections were. They had to be pulled out and covered over. The hole near the top of the wall on the left is for the new rain shower head, and the bit sticking out halfway up the right wall is for the new mixer tap for the shower. The original plan was to have that tap much further right so you don’t have any chance of scalding yourself when turning on the shower. But those plans had to change quickly once the demolition guys had exposed the bare wall. Why? Because if you look on the right wall, towards the corner, you’ll see a ragged line of grey cement. And when the project manager and I went outside, we discovered that that bit of cement conceals the ONLY hot water pipe into the house. They couldn’t run the pipes between the tap and the shower head without cutting into that pipe—it’s likely not very far below that cement. So the compromise is to move the tap to the right side. It couldn’t remain on the left as it would be too close to the fixed-glass shower screen and would almost certainly be a scalding hazard as there’s no room to move out of the way.

Not a lot to report today.

The project manager was here this morning framing the surround for the toilet cistern, and bringing in some of the fittings (e.g. toilet—yes we have a toilet in the bedroom right now!).

The plumber may be here this afternoon or tomorrow morning (the strip-out people finished earlier than expected, so the plumber may not get here today).

Tomorrow the electricians will be back to shift/add power points and re-situate light/fan switches etc. that had to be moved when the doors were widened. Then on Thursday the floor and wall prep starts ready for the tiling.

7:30 am Day 1 of bathroom renos. Strip-out boss and project manager arrive right on time.

By 9am, the strip-out crew had removed most of the fittings—shower screens, vanity cupboards and basin (not sure about the bath yet [updated: bath was removed around 9:30]), and have just started on some noise-making stuff. So far, no need for noise-cancelling earbuds or headphones. But brick cutting will come…

And they tented off the main hall with blue plastic to reduce the dust, as well as the insects that would likely come in through the wide-open front doors. With the internal doors closed, it’s like going through airlocks to get to various parts of the house.

By 10am, the bathroom was looking like a demolition site.

And the front of the house was looking like a storage yard. I like how they’ve put dropsheets down everywhere to protect floors, concrete paths etc.

More updates to come… we’re only 3 hours into a 3 week reno…

As at lunch time on Day 1. All the tiles have now been stripped from the walls and floor, and the toilet removed. Next comes the brick cutting to widen the doorways.

The brick cutting started around 1:30pm, and with luck the strip out will all be done today (the project manager said 1 to 1.5 days), so 1 day would be excellent!

The brick cutting was all done within an hour. Not as bad as I expected it to be. Next up is some jack-hammering to cut a recess in the shower to allow the appropriate fall and a few other bits and pieces, then clean-up. They expect to be finished today!

3:30pm: I’m hoping they’ve finished the jack-hammering! It goes through your bones, and I’m a room and a hallway away! You can tell I’ve never been involved in extensive renos before  The noise-cancelling ear buds aren’t much use against jack-hammering. I feel for the guys doing this sort of work—it would certainly rattle your bones!!

5pm: And the strip-out people have finished their part of the job! The skip bin is getting full..

There are no more tiles…

And the doorways to the bathroom and toilet inside the en suite are MUCH wider!

Day 1 is DONE. We were told it would be the worst day for noise and dust. The dust appears to be at a minimum and the noise, while bad at times, was mostly bearable.

Our bathroom renovations are getting closer…

We moved into our current house 13 years ago, and, right from the get-go I’ve had issues with aspects of the en suite bathroom, initially related to the stupid and monstrous corner bath (not even a spa bath) that was already there, and that we had to climb into and out of to open the window. Then as we’ve got older, it’s become more obvious this bathroom is not accessible or useable if one of us was incapacitated for even the short term. We have a second bathroom, but that’s even harder to access if you were on crutches, using a walker, or in a wheelchair as it’s down a narrow passage.

Ten years ago I decided the en suite bathroom (including a separate toilet with a door within the en suite) needed to have wider doors and no corner bath, but my DH wasn’t too keen as he didn’t want the disruption, and besides ‘it’s fine’. But after a couple of small falls (bruises only) for both of us on the shower hob and getting into/out of the bath, about 5 years ago he finally agreed to get the bathroom done. I didn’t do much about it (work, life etc.) but I did start collecting ideas and writing up a spec sheet of what was absolutely necessary versus what would be nice to have, including what we didn’t want—no bath!). Then in late 2020, I contacted the only 2 bathroom reno companies in my nearby town. Both came out within days to take a look, talk through my needs, and take a copy of the spec sheet with them. Both promised me a quote either ‘just before or just after the Christmas break’. Then… nothing!

I called them both again in February 2021, leaving a voice message with one and leaving a message with the receptionist for the other (she promised he’d get back to me within the week). And then I got ghosted. I’ve heard absolutely nothing from either of them from December 2020 to February 2023.

We had continual lockdowns for COVID, supply chains were disrupted, housing was going through the roof, and the labour market was really tight. I thought we’d wait it out until things had settled down a bit, but I certainly wasn’t keen to try the 2 local companies again. Fast forward to 2022 and I was having a chat with my cleaner who mentioned she was getting her bathroom reno’ed. I asked her who she was using and it was a different company to those I’d contacted—it was a company that was an arm of the tile and bathroom fittings retailer, and as the owners had plumbing and building skills and as they saw a huge need for a bathroom reno company, they set up their own reno division in the height of the pandemic.

I contacted them, and the lovely Tony came out to take a look, talk with me about options, etc. And he got back to me promptly!! After several weeks of back and forth via emails and a visit to the showroom to look at options, we finally had a firm quote. On payment of the deposit we’d get a firm start date, though he did warn me that it would be several months away. Not a problem—I’d already waited 13 years! I paid the 30% deposit on 13 September 2022, and got a start date of 13 February 2023. Meantime, my cleaner’s reno had been finished and she LOVED it. She especially loved how the tradies cleaned up after themselves and how professional they all were (she loved it so much she’s already booked her own en suite bathroom to be done!).

So here we are, about 1 week out from the renos starting. Tony came out yesterday to mark walls and discuss final logistics. We’ll sleep in our bedroom for the last time on Thursday night, then Tony and a couple of others will come on Friday and get some prep work done (e.g. pull back the bedroom carpet, drop off the skip bin, isolate some electrical points and light switches) before the bathroom demolition starts on Monday 13th. Because we have to have doors widened (double-brick house, with single-brick internal walls), there’ll be a lot of noise and dust, which they’ll try to minimise as much as possible. Tony said the worst of that will take 1 to 2 days (brick saws make a helluva noise, as do machines and tools to lift tiles from walls and floors!). He also said it’s a 3-week job, so we’ll be sleeping in the spare bedroom and using the other bathroom and toilet for that time—fortunately, we have that so we don’t have to move out. The 3-week time frame is just small inconvenience, I hope.

I’ve already taken the ‘before’ photos—the one below shows most of the issues.

Other than the ‘as is’ mess, there are a LOT of things wrong with the design of this bathroom that make it inaccessible and unsafe. In the photo you can see:

• Raised hob in shower (yes, we’ve both tripped on it at least once in 13 years).
• Stupid corner bath that’s useless for anything (I tried to run a bath the first year we were here—the hot water ran out before I had about an inch in the bath!). But its biggest problem is that you have to get into it to open/close the window! (DH tries to lean over it!) And see that little step? You can’t use it as it’s too narrow, and it’s an impediment both climbing into and out of the bath. You have to be super careful (slip hazard, trip hazard, no handholds for 2+ points of connection), and yes, we’ve both slipped at least once, and had bruises to prove it.
• You can’t see the doors in this picture, but the door into the en suite is about 720 mm wide and then into the toilet is 620 mm wide. The MINIMUM requirement for wheelchairs and other mobility aids is 820 mm (preferably 850 mm).
• There’s a gap between the vanity and bath where the dust bunnies lurk (too narrow for the vacuum cleaner head).
• There’s wasted space on the vanity—the plinth and the top are both deep nothingness spaces.

In addition to solving all these issues (wider doorways, no bath, walk-in shower), we’re going to be getting a set of mirrored overhead cupboards to replace the large mirror that just sits on the wall and has no other function than a mirror, and a smart toilet! I figured we’d only do this once and none of us is getting any younger, so why not?

BTW, Tony’s company has been so busy he told us on Friday that they are now booked all the way to the end of the year, and starting to book for January 2024!

Photos below (9 Feb 2023) after we removed everything, including the handles on the vanity! (I kept them because they’re the same as the handles in the kitchen and if one of those needs to be replaced, we likely won’t get an exact match as these handles were all put in when the house was built, around 2005, and I can guarantee you can’t get exact replacements!). The blue tape labels the things we want them to take off for us to keep, and NOT throw in the skip bin—the second bathroom can use another towel rail and we may have someone who will take the mirror. And the pencil lines on the wall (there are a lot of them, mostly not seen in the other photos) show where the door to the en suite will be widened to. The toilet door will be widened even further as it is much narrower again.

My neighbour texted to ask if I’d like a zucchini or two as she had heaps spare in her garden. We’re not big zucchini eaters, so I thanked her and said I’d take just the one. We just met at the fence, and this is the zucchini she gave me — it’s HUGE!! I’m now looking up zucchini recipes and tips for freezing it.

Edited to add: It’s 3.5 kg (3500 g or almost 8 lb for those in the US)

Update: I got 22 cups of grated zucchini (11x 2-cup Ziplock bags) plus a heap of pith that was quite furry and full of very big seeds (I tossed that out). Full size carving knife to show scale. All now in the freezer for later use.

There are a LOT of things I hate about an Australian summer, not least of which are the relentless heat, the hot easterly winds coming from the inner part of the continent, the flies, and the always-present threat of bushfires. But one of summer’s joys is hanging the washing on the line and it being dry by the time the second load is ready to go out. Then bringing in the washing and smothering your face into the smell of the sun and fresh air that lingers for hours in the towels etc. Burning your hand on the metal spring in the pegs isn’t so wonderful, however! (guess who left the peg bucket outside in the sun for 30+ minutes this morning?)

For those living in other climes, nearly every Australian who lives in a house with a backyard has a clothesline, even if they also have a dryer. And when the weather’s fine and if we have the time to do so, we peg out our laundry to dry in the sun. I realise this may seem like an old-fashioned novelty to many of my friends and family in other parts of the world, and it certainly isn’t recommended if you live in a cold climate (when I lived in Canada, I recall naively pegging out my clothes on the outside line when it was -5C — they didn’t dry, instead they froze 🙂 )

I also remember living up north (particularly the Pilbara region of Western Australia) and there we had two big issues with laundry. One was that the cold water was often hotter than the hot water! (In those days, the cold water was piped to the town across about 20+ miles in aboveground pipes.) And the other was that in the hottest time of the year we had to hang our laundry out at night to avoid bleaching and rotting from the harsh sun.

BTW, we’ve never owned a dryer in the house where we’ve lived for the past 13 years—we hang out our washing all year round. There’s rarely a run of more than a few days a week of wet weather in the middle of winter. The clothes take longer to dry in winter, but invariably they do, or we help them along by hanging them over a portable clothes rack in the house.