tiggymalvern (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tiggymalvern) wrote2008-04-12 10:35 am
tiggymalvern) wrote2008-04-12 10:35 am
Entry tags:
The Great Bathroom Project
We are now four weeks into the Hideous Bathroom Replacement.
The first week, the leader of the demolition team had a funeral to deal with, and he wasn't around. This was hardly his fault, and I'm sure he wasn't pleased by it either, but it was unfortunate that the rest of his team were incapable of removing a metal bathtub without him. They hit it with sledgehammers a lot, and it acquired some impressively large dents, but it stayed firmly put next to the wall. And so it was that the demolition that was supposed to be completed by Wednesday finished the following Monday when the Head Man returned.
The second week didn't go too badly - the workmen framing out the new floorplan and walls actually made up a day on the original schedule, and the project manager sent us a revised calendar for the following two weeks. The only drawback at this point came when the designer informed us that the decorative trim tiles we chose are on back order until some time around the end of May, exact date of arrival customs-dependent and therefore randomly unpredictable. Our bathroom, of course, is scheduled to be finished in mid May. But she thinks she can get hold of something almost identical from another company, so we left that in her hands to deal with until she waves an alternative under our noses.
The third week was less than impressive - the electrics had been scheduled to take a day, and when the electrician didn't show up till 3pm, I was unsurprised when they were not completed. Unfortunately, they weren't completed the following day either, but crawled over into the morning of a third day, leaving us already a day and a half behind the revised calendar. And thus the plumbing was not started until Friday afternoon, by which time all plumbing and venting should have been complete.
This began a period of great fun for the cats - by now we had walls ripped out and no new walls in place, and we had floorboards taken up for the plumbing. The cats, growing bored by their days sealed out of the way in two rooms in the basement, spent their evenings and nights roaming beneath the floorboards, to emerge covered in cobwebs, sawdust and random bits of insulation, which they trailed gleefully around the house.
The fourth week should have consisted entirely of dry walling. Instead it consisted of plumbing, venting, insulation and plaster board placement. As an added bonus, on Thursday morning, the man who brings the truck to take away all the rubbish reversed into the stairs leading up to the front door. The metal rail was unequal to the sudden weight of a truck and buckled, and the wooden stairs it was bolted to were in two minds what to do about it - some of them elected to splinter and release the bolts free into the fresh green Pacific Northwest air. Others clung tightly to the departing railing, and pulled apart where they were nailed to other stairs instead.
The project manager sent a man to do a temporary repair on the stairs at lunchtime, but it was another half day when all work had to stop, because the workmen couldn't get stuff, or indeed themselves, inside.
The dry walling man finally had access to start work on Friday afternoon. Two weeks into the revised calendar, we're running almost a week behind. But at least we have a floor in place, so the cats are no longer running free in the ceilings, and instead have only plaster dust to coat themselves in. And stuff will eventually happen without any input at all from me, because the project manager's paid to get all stressed about that kind of thing, so we don't bother.
The first week, the leader of the demolition team had a funeral to deal with, and he wasn't around. This was hardly his fault, and I'm sure he wasn't pleased by it either, but it was unfortunate that the rest of his team were incapable of removing a metal bathtub without him. They hit it with sledgehammers a lot, and it acquired some impressively large dents, but it stayed firmly put next to the wall. And so it was that the demolition that was supposed to be completed by Wednesday finished the following Monday when the Head Man returned.
The second week didn't go too badly - the workmen framing out the new floorplan and walls actually made up a day on the original schedule, and the project manager sent us a revised calendar for the following two weeks. The only drawback at this point came when the designer informed us that the decorative trim tiles we chose are on back order until some time around the end of May, exact date of arrival customs-dependent and therefore randomly unpredictable. Our bathroom, of course, is scheduled to be finished in mid May. But she thinks she can get hold of something almost identical from another company, so we left that in her hands to deal with until she waves an alternative under our noses.
The third week was less than impressive - the electrics had been scheduled to take a day, and when the electrician didn't show up till 3pm, I was unsurprised when they were not completed. Unfortunately, they weren't completed the following day either, but crawled over into the morning of a third day, leaving us already a day and a half behind the revised calendar. And thus the plumbing was not started until Friday afternoon, by which time all plumbing and venting should have been complete.
This began a period of great fun for the cats - by now we had walls ripped out and no new walls in place, and we had floorboards taken up for the plumbing. The cats, growing bored by their days sealed out of the way in two rooms in the basement, spent their evenings and nights roaming beneath the floorboards, to emerge covered in cobwebs, sawdust and random bits of insulation, which they trailed gleefully around the house.
The fourth week should have consisted entirely of dry walling. Instead it consisted of plumbing, venting, insulation and plaster board placement. As an added bonus, on Thursday morning, the man who brings the truck to take away all the rubbish reversed into the stairs leading up to the front door. The metal rail was unequal to the sudden weight of a truck and buckled, and the wooden stairs it was bolted to were in two minds what to do about it - some of them elected to splinter and release the bolts free into the fresh green Pacific Northwest air. Others clung tightly to the departing railing, and pulled apart where they were nailed to other stairs instead.
The project manager sent a man to do a temporary repair on the stairs at lunchtime, but it was another half day when all work had to stop, because the workmen couldn't get stuff, or indeed themselves, inside.
The dry walling man finally had access to start work on Friday afternoon. Two weeks into the revised calendar, we're running almost a week behind. But at least we have a floor in place, so the cats are no longer running free in the ceilings, and instead have only plaster dust to coat themselves in. And stuff will eventually happen without any input at all from me, because the project manager's paid to get all stressed about that kind of thing, so we don't bother.
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Murphy seems to be very busy these days going between your house and Pira's.
Good luck with the rest!
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It has to rock for the cats to be able to go in the walls, though. :-)
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I'm not sure the kitties agree - I'm fairly sure they don't feel their interesting evenings are adequate compensation for missing out on everything during the day!
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Well, me stressing and screaming about it wouldn't change a thing, so what would be the point? If these people don't fix our steps, we won't pay them, so they'd lose out a lot more than we would! And the looks on people's faces was definitely entertaining XD
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At least they don't weigh enough to go through the ceiling - if they did, we'd have an awful lot of holes by now!
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I will post them all together, then you can compare! I figured since this is going to take 2 months, if I posted a 'before', you'd all have forgotten it anyway by the time I get to 'after' :-)
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Well, it's currently a floor all covered in plaster dust, so we elect not to walk on it, but it does mean the room's starting to look more like a room in need of decoration instead of a shell :-) It was interesting to see what our house is actually made of, and how the construction works. Wood looks so insubstantial when you're used to brick!
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We were more concerned about the boys getting boarded into the floor or walls when they started reconstruction!
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