Plastering. Oh what joy. One, incidentally, that I had not yet experienced. However, my sister, Blick, sweated out most of her plastering apprenticeship in this room.

This room is a monument to her perseverance and resultant skill. It was not an easy room to begin a plastering career in.

Normally the installation of cornice along the top of the wall means that the plasterer doesn't have to concern himself with the join between the ceiling and walls. It is all covered up. However, as we were creating and plastering our cornice ourselves, the plasterer of this room had three horizontal right-angle corners to deal with on top of the four vertical ones. Two concave and one convex. The final surfaces of that cornice consist almost entirely of applied plaster, I am sure. The original gyprock was but the skeleton awaiting flesh!

However painful, the creation of this different cornice effect was necessary and, indeed, attractive in the end. As can be seen, at this point the cornice has been created and half plastered on all four walls. The intrusion of the beam above the door is now invisible. Voila! Three identical replicas built, and the original problem has disappeared.

  

Here you can see that the shower base and tiled 'back' are installed. Two narrow glass panels and a glass door will complete it. The door is destined to angle across the front corner, saving room.

 Yes, our shoddy old 'kitchen' lights are still our source of artificial light in the bathroom. Not long after, the electrician came and installed one of those three-in-one things, consisting of heat lamp, fan and normal light. He also installed a wall bracket light over the bath.

 

And this is the bath. A bath with a history.

One day Mum and Dad headed off to buy a free-standing cast iron bath. Of course, our almost non-existent budget was boasting it's customary several thousand less than several thousand dollars, so second-hand was our only option. Wandering amongst old baths galore, her keen eye on sharp lookout, our aesthetics director could find nothing suitable. That is, none except that ancient bath way down the back, full of ash and rubbish, rusted beyond belief and apparently leg-less.

Lets be blunt: it was a wreck. But, it had the Right Shape. Slick put to use the haggling skills he'd learned in Mexico so many years ago, and bought it. Are we crazy? Well, judge by the photo above.

Did you know that a glossy enamel paint is applied to trains? No? Neither did we, till we started researching places that might re-coat our bath in enamel. It's true, though, and that is what now covers our bath.

It wasn't quite as straight-forward as just rocking up to somewhere for a spray job, unfortunately. First the bath had to be laboriously scraped by the team as someone had hand-painted the bath - and it hadn't worked. At least it showed us how pointless that avenue of endeavour would be. All that paint had to be taken off and even chisels were out before the end. Paint removed, we hauled it in to the enamelers and left it, waiting for the call that would let us know they'd found time for it. The call finally came and we picked it up (including the four odd legs - nothing like a bit of eccentricity!), lugged it home and polished it with the special cloths that were provided. This took off the last tiny nibs.

Finally we heaved into place, connected the plumbing and stood back to admire our new bath.

To be quite honest, our bath isn't the same as your average several-thousand-dollar new cast-iron bath. The enamel is thinner than the original enamel, as our enamel is a two-part paint product. This has meant, in practical terms, that it is much easier to chip or scrape the finish on our bath. Two years later and our bath now bears small scars from clumsily handled metal plugs and various other accidents, but it is certainly in full working order.

June 16th found Slick framing up the wall that would close the room off from the living area. Some thought and discussion had to go into this step before he could proceed, as the original builder had (for whatever reason) interrupted the ceiling surface with a low beam. You can see it in the picture below. It runs along behind the top timber of the wall frame.

This beam didn't run in line with the wall of the room to the left. (Of course not, that would be too straightforward and logical.) Instead, it was set back a little more than the width of the wall. This meant that even though we set the wall frame on the outside of the beam (so the beam protruded into the bathroom) the new wall still wasn't quite flush with the old. This caused plastering challenges later on.

 

Inside the bathroom, after deciding on framing up the wall outside the beam, we were left with the problem of resolving the beam visually. It looked really odd, one wall jutting out at the top. We ended up figuring 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em' and built look-alike boxes along the top of the other three walls. This transformed a problem into a stylistic distinction and advantage, saving us from the cornice issue and giving the bathroom an individual look and feel. However, it was painful to accomplish, as anyone versed in the art of plastering could inform you. The next picture will give you a glimpse of what it looked like in progress:

You can see that the box cornice surfaces consisted largely of plaster by the time we'd done two concave corners and one converse, with very little between. Blick learned to plaster on this room and she did a good job. (Those lights were the kitchen lights. We were a little short on light in the kitchen for a while!)

 

As you can see in most of the above photos, the bottom timber of the wall goes right from wall to wall. Eventually the door into the bathroom was to hang on the right-hand side, so after the wall had been built and secured Dad must have cut out the section of the base plate in the door area.

You may wonder about the pine two-by-fours. They are new, bought cheaply from the discard pile at our local building supply store. The timbers were too full of big knots and other weaknesses to be sold to construction builders who would use them in load or stress bearing situations. The timber was fine for our purposes as we were able to cut out the imperfections and use the timber in relatively low-stress applications. The walls, for instance, basically held up the gyprock, pine panelling and insulation. No major load bearing or lateral strain was being taken. Thus they were ideal for us.