Wednesday 6th February 2013

Like many things, the experience of something is so much different to the anticipation. Take for example snow: me all love the thought of snow, but once we have to get up half an early to clear the drive just to slide and slither to work we soon are wishing for a thaw and a return to normal. And so it is with getting a new bathroom. As I now can see, the bathroom is most difficult of rooms to change; tiles to be removed, water to be turned off and finding somewhere to have a shower when yours it out of action for days on end, floorboards to be ripped up in order to follow a copper pipe and the dust as walls are rubbed down in preparation for new tiles and some new paint.

I have worked from home these past two days, so I can help with taking the old bath and shower out, and be on hand to make tea and offer advice (ha!) on what to do next or why the water hasn’t stopped coming out of the shower. Monday the bath was removed; we are not replacing this so the pipes had to be cut down below the level of the floor and capped off. The old shower base was cut out from the wall and carried to the front garden where all the other rubble and broken tiles are being stored.



Yesterday, the shower was taken off; it took three hours to find where the previous owner had hidden all the stopcocks! And once that was off the remaining tiles were taken down, the guy prepared the new shower base, and in the evening Jools and I got to rub the walls down so her brother can come round this evening to plaster.

It looks like a bomb has hit, with the floorboards exposed, bare brickwork too, but, once the plastering is done, and tomorrow when the shower base is put down it will begin to get better. The new sink and toilet will go on, and then, hopefully on Friday, the new shower tiles can be put in and the rest of the shower frame. Then, just painting and the flooring next week and it should be back to normal.



But with a new shower and all that.

Last night, after a couple of hours of rubbing the old plaster down, and a quick dinner of fish and chips, we drove to Jools’ Dad’s for a shower before getting back home in time to be able to flop down in bed and so be ready to do it all again today. I know people who build or renovate their houses do this month after month, year after year, sometimes. Rather than me, but it must bring a certain amount of satisfaction knowing you have done it all.

Or most of it.

And that is it, really. What has been happening in our world. Other than to say, the year is getting on; it is now getting light when I drive to work, and I know had it have not been cloudy this morning I would have seen the sun rising as I came out of the tunnel in Ramsgate on the way to work this morning. It is light now until after five in the evening, and there are green shoots of growth in the garden. It will soon be spring. And on the 2nd, Phil did not see a shadow, so no 6 more weeks of winter.