Bathroom Beginnings

It is June 15th. Our kitchen has suddenly shrunk. As readers of previous posts have already seen, first a door has been removed, then a window installed. The wall separating the kitchen and dining area has also been removed, unfortunately without a photographic record. Now a completely new wall is being built, cutting the kitchen almost in half.

 

First, the kitchen was half cleaned out, then the wall framed in. Shelves had to be made and furniture, such as the pantry cabinet, fitted back into the remaining kitchen so the cook didn't go quite crazy. Then the panelling was nailed on. This tongue and groove pine panelling was actually bought new. Gyprock recycled from other walls in the house and gyprock bought for a song off the 'damaged pile' then clad the upper walls.

That night, Dad got out the (new) tin of Tongue Oil/Polyurethane mix and put down the first layer of floor sealant.

Oh, I nearly forgot. Speaking of the floor and sealing it, obviously the floor had first to be sanded back. The floorboards, fresh and new when we took up the linoleum fifteen months before, were by now darkened with a layer of ingrained dirt. In shifts, we painstakingly sanded off that fifteen month layer of our life story with a palm sander. Dad's belt sander died ages ago, so, going through many sandpaper pads, we worked the floor with a little, zippy hand sander. It was slow and numbing. After finishing a shift, your hand/s would feel fat and clumsy - as though you had pins-and-needles - and itchy, as well! But it was soon done, being only a small space, and resulted in a floor that looked and smelled almost brand-new.

Then the sealant poured on and transformed the pale honey pine into rich, warm tones that deepened even to black over the knots in the timber. Shame about the smell!