The Bathroom Renovation - Part 2

After so much activity in April and early May, the last four weeks have been pretty quiet and I don't have a lot to tell you. Once the shower glass and door went in we could use it again after 3 weeks of washing in the kitchen sink, so we took a big breath and did a few non-bathroom things.

The delivery of our Ikea bathroom cabinets brought with them a new desk each. My (possibly) antique desk got shifted to the storeroom to begin another life and I now have a nice long, slim model that doesn't cut off the circulation in my thighs.

Paul scored a shorter version of mine with a cupboard as well as a drawer.  He had been working on the vintage dining table, old but ugly - it went down to the garage.

We had managed to get rid of almost all of our surplus household goods.  Only some Christmas decorations and the worst of the artificial flowers went to landfill. We even had a complete baby pram with all the trimmings - a bit dusty but now in a new home.  Paul put a price on the table and six chairs and it is still with us.

Finally, after a lot of hassling, we obtained our Dechetterie pass and joined the locals to dispose of our building waste.  

You'd think that this Dechetterie was the tenth wonder of the world given the reverence in which it is held by the locals.  Every single male that Paul has spoken to since we arrived opened the conversation by asking if we had gained our Dechetterie pass yet? So the moment our pass was approved we loaded our broken stuff, flattened cardboard, old paint cans, broken concrete, and old flower pots and headed off to the next village. The much lauded "pass" turned out to be an automatic electronic number plate scanner installed at the gate to raise a barrier to allow us to drive in.

It was very interesting watching the locals trying to work out 'what went where'.  Despite good labelling and lots of help, many found it very challenging and I suspect the staff spend a lot of time moving stuff from the wrong skip to the right skip. However, generally speaking the French are excellent at recycling and acknowledge it is their responsibility to do so.

Given there was now a bit more space in the garage, Paul could have a really good clean up........ and buy a few more tools. Apparently we need this pressure washer to clean the deck.

And we need this compressor to blow up the bike tyres and clean the filters on the vacuum.

And I need this plant to look amazing and brighten up the otherwise dull living room.  We are now in the second heatwave (hottest start to summer in more than 20 years) and it has been mid 30s every day for 10 days. So we have the shutters closed, the curtains drawn and the ceiling fan spinning at an alarming rate. 

My Anthurium was 5.65 euros at the supermarche ($8.53 AUD), pretty good value I thought for 8 flower spikes.  I think next month I'll do a post on French shopping - what's in the supermarket and how much does it cost?

So after getting the Ikea flat pack desks assembled, cleaning out the garage and having a bit of a break to sit out the first heat wave of the season, we returned our attention on the bathroom.

We had to source new white paint as my first choice had been too grey. We opted for Dulux Satin Basic White. Still not what I wanted but we had to get on with it, so the ceiling got two coats and the walls another three coats. That all took a week

Next was the handbasin and drawers. It turned out to be not quite what we wanted (the handbasin lacks a bit of depth) but otherwise it looks good and works well.

Next came the new shower mixer with two heads and a corner unit for bottles, etc. The towel rails and hooks were next.

The mirror I bought from Ikea proved to be just too big given where the wires for over mirror light had been placed. Apparently, everyone in France wants an over mirror light. It was one of the things our French plumber / electrician Alain insisted we needed - along with the two shower heads and the concealed toilet cistern. Apparently these are the most highly valued items that will add the greatest value to our property at resale.

We replaced the old electric blower heater with an energy efficient towel rail and added a vertical column storage unit to match the vanity. Our final purchases were to be the mirror and some towels. The mirror proved tricky and required a bit of running around. The towels were an online purchase from My Nordic Nest in Sweden and should be here within the week.

In the meantime, these posters popped up all over town. They say:

The Day of Breeding, Saturday 11 June, Lauzun.  

Helice the beautiful Blonde invites you for 

Competition, Displays, Animations, Spectacles.

There was much action at the lake - grass cutting, white marquees and seating for 200 plus.

A lot of ropes and sticks appeared. The following day it was tractors and hay bales.

The marquees looked incredible reflected in the lake at dusk.

As we walk up from the lake, our white umbrella marks our little narrow house. On the right, the crepe myrtle in the neighbour's garden is now in full leaf and covered with pink tips. I can't wait to see it in flower. At the rear, they are now half way through replacing the church roof and have moved the scaffolding and safety net from the front half, to the rear half.

Wandering up up the main street to the restaurant I am always very envious of those with a patch of dirt at the front for a climbing rose. The roses have been magnificent throughout the village, especially this one.

If you're interested, this house with the rose is for sale - have a look here. It includes a 360 degree virtual tour...... and I thought our house had a lot of "stuff".

Dinner outside at our local - Gostar (pronounced Goss-tar) meaning 'savour' in Patois Gascon.

The Day of Breeding finally came and it was like an agricultural show.... a bit of everything, big tractors, little citroens, lots of sashes and rosettes.

Very smelly donkeys with a racing stripe but why weren't as smelly as the goats a little further along.

Helice was there and invited everyone to guess her weight for a magnificent but undisclosed prize.  Paul was disappointed; he reckoned he had her weight calculated to within 100 grams but he couldn't work out where to enter the competiton and submit his winning guess.  While recognising cultural differences you'd still think that there would be someone standing with or near Helice to take our money.  But this is France. Nothing is predictable!

And then there were the big boys! The breed is called Blonde d'Aquitaine. 

The queues lining up to eat the animals on show seemed a bit tasteless to me, given the circumstances. The local producers were selling their roast suckling pig, goose foi gras, spring lamb, baby goat and Blonde boeuf. I wonder if this is Helice's fate?  At least they weren't cooking donkey.

The 200+ seats under the marquees were packed from 11am until midnight.

The bathroom is finally finished except for a few little touches that we know about and you don't. You don't want to know, believe me ... they involve hanging out of windows with wet cement and laying on the floor for a long period with a minuscule paint brush.

It worked pretty well really. The black trolley will provide visitors with somewhere for their bits and pieces as there is not really any bench space.

We had enough rescued tiles to fill in the area that was underneath the old bath. Did I mention that the old bath is now a horse trough. 

Despite the heat wave the towel rail has been tested.... but just the once. And my snappy new towels provide a bit of contrast.

It would have been wonderful to have replaced the horrible 1970s floor tiles but that would have been a wish too far.  Instead I found a a rather dramatic mat that takes your eye away from the tacky brown ...... well, takes it away a bit.

We are off to Italy next Monday to meet our little family and introduce our grandsons, Jack and Henry to Paul's birthplace, Trieste.

The Bathroom Renovation - Part 1

I have no reason for beginning with this image. None at all. I just thought you might like it - that's all.

Here's another image you might like. It is a rare photograph of Paul - reading flat pack instructions.

Day 1 - 13 April. Two days before Easter. The day we finally began on the bathroom, the sun came out and my pots of herbs started zinging away. It took all day to clear everything moveable out of the bathroom.

Day 2.  The first job was to remove the once white, but now painted Tuscany Red tiles. The upper rows had been glued on 50 years ago but the lower rows had been cemented on. Clearing one wall took almost 5 days.

The sides of the vanity turned out to be made of plaster. I thought they must have been cast in-situ but later we saw these solid plaster sections in various sizes in the bricolage (hardware store). 

With the sunshine sprung forth the vines and the roses.

This is the walkway past several quite old houses, along an old wall below the castle. You can see the castle roof at the top left. The house at top right is the Environmental Department of the Commune de Pays du Lauzun and the open space on the other side of the wall is where our communal compost system lives.

Day 7 and the long wall is clear ready for the window changeover. We can still use the shower at this point. Paul spends the day on the internet ordering the shower base and glass screen. The pre-ordered windows arrive.

Day 8. I polished up my almost forgotten painting and ladder skills on the downstairs toilet which had been a delightful shade of mauve with a touch of bright purple. The challenge of filling in the "drainage alcove" is a work in progress.

Day 10. With added confidence I started filling, sanding and undercoating the worst sections of the red wall. 

Day 9 had required an all day excursion to Agen to purchase tools, cement, plaster and to look at tiles.

I don't know how many places we visited to look at bathroom furniture, but it was a lot.

Day 13. Paul took a big breath and knocked out the two windows.  We are two storeys up with the ancient roof of the old house next door one floor lower.  So everything, including the waste, needed to be managed from inside. The French don't frame, insulate then plaster as we would.  They rarely use wood because of white ant problems.  Instead they use these big terracotta hollow bricks and lots of cement.

The windows took several days as they needed to some framework to attach the new PVC window frame to, and  then the gap bricked in with the large terracotta bricks. It was tricky. In the meantime I got at least one coat of undercoat on all the walls and two coats in the spots I could get to.

We are now at the point where we needed a plumber and electrician. Meet our neighbour Alain Lagrange. Alain speaks no English and has lived in Lauzun his entire life. Paul's French has improved rapidly.

Day 17. Alain removed the bidet, toilet, handbasin and bath and closed off the water pipes. He also removed the floor tiles to chip out a channel to drain the new shower and enlarged the hole in the floor slab to take the new outlet. Despite best efforts, we now have a house covered in brick and cement dust.

Alain cut bricks and inserted the hot and cold pipes for the new shower. He also chased in the electrics from that old light that was over the former vanity, around the new window and added a new light and power-point for the new vanity.

Day 25. Alain framed in the new toilet and helped Paul position the shower base. I have no photos of the mammoth effort of carrying the shower base up two flights of stairs. I was so concerned that they were both going to have a heart attack that I didn't notice my camera settings were wrong and I have 10 entirely black photos of that mammoth effort.

Day 27. The shower base was finally cemented in with all the drainage levels correct. 

We had to leave it to dry for 24 hours so we went to Bordeaux to pick up the vanity, taps, knobs and towel rails plus a bathroom storage column and two desks.  Good old Ikea proved yet again to have the best quality at the best price.  We ordered everything online, then did a Click and Collect for those items that would fit in our car and paid 50 euros delivery for all the stuff that didn't.

Once all the underlying cement and plaster patching was dry, Paul and Alain got the plasterboard in place for the tiles.

There is no AC sheeting in France for tiling; instead they use this thick and heavy plasterboard. Finding a tile centre that had tiles in stock (as opposed to 4-6 weeks delivery) proved a challenge but finally we tracked down a bricolage in Bergerac.  It took two trips as tiles are heavy and 10 sq.m was too much for our car in a single load.

It took Paul 8 days to complete the tiling We used these big 60 x 30 tiles so the big circle for the sewerage outlet was a challenge. He had had to buy a water-cooled tile cutter which was a great investment but it didn't help with cutting circles.

Day 29.  Our postal ballots arrived for the federal election and it was my job to front the formidable lady at La Poste and mail them to the Australian Embassy in Paris.

Meanwhile the tiling is coming along.

While Paul has been stuck in the bathroom, the weather has become positively balmy and I've broken out the sun umbrella and the old white plastic furniture. This delightful scene lasted all of 2 days then it rained for 5 days.  But whose complaining? It's the middle of Spring and all of the trees now have their leaves, the roses are in full bloom and the vines are verdant. And I have fresh herbs everyday.

Grouting.

All the tiles are up with just the final section on the left to grout. The tile cutter is sitting on a section of floor that was formerly under the bath. We are hopeful to have saved enough of the old floor tiles that were formerly used as skirting board, to level and retile this area.

Day 33. Now to tackle the pink ceiling and get the third and final undercoat on the red walls.

Day 34. 16 May.  Finished - finally. Well - finished the main reconstruction at least. Now for the fittings and the final detailing.

Day 35. Paul and Alain heave three heavy panes of shower glass up two floors - again avoiding heart attacks.

While while work progressed on the shower glass, two young hefty lads heaved the Ikea delivery up one flight into the living room carrying two boxes at a time.  Oh, to be young again.

Meanwhile I have been gradually getting rid of the masses of stuffed animals, dried flowers, vases, pots, glasses, pictures, Christmas decorations, lampshades, books and candle paraphernalia that were in the house.  I'm doing good business. Every time I go downstairs something else has disappeared.  I haven't started on what came out of the kitchen cupboards yet!

It's the end of the day and I just went upstairs to see how things were progressing and was told in no uncertain terms - "Don't ask! Just don't ask!" 

I think this is probably an opportune time to end Part 1 and open a bottle of wine.