Next morning (after the events documented in the previous post), Slick removed the plumbing and began to take down the wall. Porch/dining area and bathroom were about to become one.

Isn't the morning sunlight flooding through that window glorious? It was especially so to us, having used that room almost entirely by artificial light for most of the past eighteen months. Below, at the beginning of Day 3, Alick can be seen sweeping the floor after Slick had taken down the plywood wall. In the photo on the right, if you look through the wall frame, through the dining room and past the fridge, you can see Llick in the kitchen. Since we closed off the original entry into the kitchen by putting in the new bathroom, we had to make that opening through to the kitchen. It was much more convenient for transferring food onto the table, however.

 

  In the above photo, the last piece of gyprock is coming down, opening up what was the bathroom to the lounge area. As you can see on the left, nobody has yet worked up the energy to empty and move the crockery cabinet.

 

You will see in the above photos that Slick is opening up the toilet room, too. The toilet,as seen on the right, is no more. Its stained ugliness dictated a swift and effective end. Somebody had fun.

 

 Ah, never say we don't have fun - every now and again. This piece is obviously part of the ceiling, which was destined - one way or another - to change. At this stage we were still undecided whether to create a cathedral ceiling over the dining room, or somehow fit in a little attic. If fact, we were also playing with the idea of putting the new kitchen in this bathroom/toilet area - a new idea for us. Up to this point, we had been planning on putting the new kitchen in the big room on the south east corner of the house; however, council regulations had made things complicated. We had by this stage discovered that, unless we spent the large, precious quantities of money and time necessary to lodge a development application, we could only put bathrooms and kitchens in areas that contained existing plumbing. We got away with moving our bathroom because it was put in the kitchen; we now knew we would be able to legally move our kitchen, as long as we put it where the bathroom had been. The question now was, How can we fit within the council regulations and at the same time make this work for us within the plan of the house? How can we put the kitchen where the bathroom was, yet make it an efficient and usable space?

 

As you can see, the space was not large. Not for a kitchen for a family of nine. If you also look back up at the photo taken from the lounge room and imagine the pink room beyond as another living room, it will become obvious that putting the kitchen in where the bathroom had been would also create a bottleneck between one half of the public living space and the next. All these things and more we pondered in between our progressive deconstruction of the old bathroom. To discover our eventual resolution of these issues, you'll have to wait on coming posts!

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.

Back to the bathroom.

It is now August 22nd. Due to budget restrictions, it has taken a while to actually install the plumbing and electricity. But now it is all just about done. We (unfortunately) had to take the gyprock off that wall in order to run the pipes for the sink and shower. I say 'unfortunately' because it meant more plastering later on.

This photo was taken on September 3rd. The new panelling is on, the toilet in and the sink installed. The sink bowl was taken in part payment for a job Dad did locally and is from a very limited supply. Only one man produces them, and the glaze is their most intriguing (and apparently difficult) aspect. The sink stand was built by Slick. In the above photo it is still undergoing final adjustments. Its surfaces have not yet been finished.

We based the bathroom colours on those to be found in the sink bowl glaze.

 

By September 8th, colour was being applied. The sink was removed for safety, meanwhile.

Perhaps it was because progress was so drawn out that we have very few and scattered photos of this part of the renovation. Even though the successful completion of this new bathroom would act as a removed chock, allowing all the rest of the renovation to go forward, and even though we knew this only too well (every other move we thought of making was blocked by the placement and necessary existence of the old bathroom), we could only go forward as fast as our resources allowed. By the time the above photo had been taken (September 29th), we had paid for the plumbing and electricity work, and bought a new toilet (you will soon see why that was necessary), new lights and a shower screen. All our outlay was over, and only our own time and effort lay between us and a completed bathroom. Finally our urgency for change could be translated into action!

Sorry folks, somehow we missed out on photos of the painting of the laundry. You'll just have to believe me when I tell you that the laundry was originally white...ish and had all the plumbing coming in on the wall where the big double-sash window is now. Thanks to the services of Phil the Plumber, all our water now comes in through the western wall, where you see all the taps. Thanks to Keith and Jon the Electricians, our fresh green walls also sported new powerpoints, and thanks to Llick and Click everything was freshly painted. Thanks to Slick, the room finally had the natural light it had been starved of. For when we first bought the property, there had only been a very small window to let light into the bare, dark room that did for a laundry. And very soon after our arrival even that little window had been removed - along with the asbestos cladding - and closed up for security reasons. It was glorious to see that sunlight streaming through the windows into a fresh, clean room.

Our next step was to tile the floor, and May 15th, 2007, was the day we did it.

 

 

This door leads into the back of the garage/shed/workshop (we call it all these things).Those stacked boxes contain the slate tiles we were about to lay.

 

 The external door, which is almost directly opposite the current kitchen door.

 

To begin the tiling process, we measured the walls and strung string-lines from the centres of each. This gave us reference points with which we could start the tiles off square and straight.

 

They are actually slates, not tiles, bought at a bargain price because they were the last of the supply. We had just enough to do the laundry, plus a box or two left over.

Because I have no more photos, I communicate the rest of the process by text. By completing the  room systematically, working from the quarter of the room furthest from the door, we managed not to trap ourselves into a corner! We had tiled too many times before to make that mistake, and finished the tiling by the end of the afternoon.

The next day we grouted with dark grey grout, and it did look good. Once the grout was dry, we washed the floor a few times to remove the remaining surface grit and oxide. Clean and well dried, the floor then received a coat of smelly, but effective, slate sealant, which brought out all the subtle colours in the stone as well as seal it from the water that it would later have to endure.

From raw concrete, splotched with old white paint, industrial and ugly, to an attractive, dark floor that set off the bright walls and brighter ceiling - the effect had to be seen to be fully appreciated. This room was no longer a rough afterthought or a dark little utility hole in which clothes were supposed to become clean, it was now a sunny room with a character and feel all of it's own; a place that felt clean and businesslike, without jarring the senses. The laundry was transformed, and now all that it needed was its furniture.

Our washing machine was brought back in, a set of sorting shelves built for the dirty laundry and a deep sink installed next to the washing machine. We were in business!