What are you all up to
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Hopefully those fellows won't come back again ABM, but think others' advice is sound in alerting the police.We
Trip sounds as if it is going well, TG, still a few weeks of it left, I guess.
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Thank you all for shewing that you care !! It's not hard to find yours truly, parked outside my front window on the road and He (? they ? ) rang the door bells of three houses at least.
But I will have b/room window open a bit tonight and ring my semi-tame PCSO at breakfast time tomorrow
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Yes, I have all fingers, and toes, crossed!
The original board did some 7 years of service, the new one 6 years, I have also in the past had to replace the pump and the control panel, so the costs are mounting up.
No word on the car as yet, they are quite busy but it will be looked at today, Thursday, at the latest, so if the parts are readily available, she should get it back either today or Friday. At least they do have a car they can use for the holiday if there are delays, even if it is a bit of a squeeze.
Just got the quote for the revamp of our en suite bathroom.......that was a shock to the system! However, we are not used to paying others to do work, so are no doubt totally out of date with what things cost these days!
All the walls and ceiling will have to be removed as they are plasterboard, and then replaced, so is too much for me to tackle the whole thing myself. We will just have to bite the bullet and get it done, at least we know they will do a good job.
I will be re-fitting the cupboards, a new counter top with inset basin, finishing off the tiling above that, and laying the flooring, so not getting away with doing nothing. Work starts on the 18th, so we have a clear week to prepare, remove what we are keeping, and move upstairs out of the way. Not sure how long the job will take.
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These jokers get everywhere. "Oi was joost passing..." In a cul-de sac, yeah right! He was on false plates as well, so quickly passed it on to 101.
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Our original house bathroom, now a shower room, which I installed quite a few years go, is next on our list for refurbishment. Not yet been brave enough to start getting quotes!!! Unlike Kj it will be for the complete job, apart perhaps for me painting the ceiling! I to wondered about whether plaster board might me to be replaced. Kj do you even watch the Skill Builder videos on YouTube? The guy that does the videos does all sorts but he does have an interesting one of refurbishing a bathroom. He uses lots of the latest innovations which no doubt add to the cost!!!
David
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Our bathroom needs a refurb. OH has nearly finished doing daughter's but I don't know whether he wants to tackle ours and we have to get the ceiling replastered first. Friends of ours are at home with all of their new bathroom fittings sitting in their dining room, they bought everything in preparation but the actual fitting quotes were quite high and starting dates quite long.
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David.....our plasterboard has to come off as this is a timber frame house and the tiles will not come off the walls without damaging the plasterboard.....I know they are very well stuck on as I did all the tiling.
We are also having the ceiling down as we want different, inset, lights, plus it is finished with (non asbestos) Artex. The correct type of PB is in short supply, and expensive, so that is no doubt pushing up costs, as is the doubling of timber prices, though we will not need a lot of timber, just a small bit of wall to move/rebuild.
I have not watched any of those videos, but I think OH may have as she did mention something about them.
I presume we are saving a little by me doing some of the work after the main stuff is done, but the reason for me doing it is that we do not have space to store the size of countertop we will need, so must wait till all the other work is done and then hope it will not take too long to arrive. Then it has to sit and acclimatise for a week or so. That would hold everything up and mean a second visit by the builders, so easier for me to fit it and then finish the tiling myself.
This is still the original bathroom from 1988, so it has done well, but we need to have an easy access shower now instead of one over the bath.
Apparently the average cost of a total bathroom refurb these days is £6500, but of course depends on the size, the amount of work involved, and the degree of luxury. Our bathroom is fairly big, 3.6x2.1 metres, and we have chosen good quality fittings, but nothing luxurious, so will be above the average, unfortunately.
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Similar here, we have had most stuff sitting in a spare room for almost 9 months now. We wanted to carry on with planned holidays, other wise we could have had it done a little sooner, but then the builders needed to get on with outside work, including DD's new roof, over the summer, so it has all dragged on.
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We partially refurbed our bathroom last year. We wanted a new shower installing, low level, put easy clean panelling over tiles, new shower and cubicle, but just couldn’t get anyone to do it. Plan B is in place now. We are going to take out the existing shower tray (ceramic😱) regrout existing tiles, which are perfect apart from grout, new low level tray in, new cubicle, live with existing electric shower, which is still good. Going to do it ourselves, take our time.😬
Garden day today, weather is just too nice for indoor stuff. Shrub and rose trimming. OH off to fill up MH today, get ready for another trip.
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Kj
I think you would find some of those Skill Builder videos very interesting as he often goes through the pros and cons of doing things different ways. I suspect some the the projects he undertakes I doubt money is of the prime importance!!!
The cost you mention for a bathroom refurb is about what we were expecting. As Wickes did our kitchen we may well go back to them for a quote. I find it difficult to work out how independents will perform. My son lives in a new build 4 bedroom house which is about 5 years old and has had no end of trouble with the en suite. I think he might have now got it sorted but he has had several plumbers out to try and sort it.
Re the ceilings. Our whole house has artex and giving the age its probably not the best sort. When we had the kitchen done we had the ceiling skimmed over with plaster and will do the same in the bathroom.
David
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I think ours will come in at around £8k. There is a lot of work in removing all the PB, and we will need a skip, which is a big cost these days.
We had hoped to come in at £7k since I was doing some bits, but we decided to go ahead anyway as these are very good and tidy builders and have done quite a bit of other work that we have seen.
Last year they did a "remodel" for our son........3 bedrooms made into 2 larger bedrooms and a shower room......with 2 new dormer windows and 1 new velux, plus a refit of their tiny en suite, and have just finished a refit of their other shower room downstairs.
They also did the renovation of a bedroom and bathroom for our daughter last year, and redid the shower area in their en suite, and this year they have rebuilt her badly leaking extension roof in zinc, inserting a group of 4 velux windows to let in more light.....it has made a huge difference.
Getting someone you can rely on to do a good job is a bit of a minefield these days.
We have bought an Aqualisa shower, 1200x900 low level Mira non slip tray, Kudox 2 sided enclosure, Ideal Standard concealed cistern WC, Ideal Standard inset basin, new radiator, new heated towel rail, 20sq m of tiles, new lights, and LVT flooring. The cistern cabinet I have made myself from Ikea parts.
Still to get are the matching countertop and cabinet plinth, which will be in solid Iroko, so we have not really worked to a budget, but rather purchased what we liked!
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We also have Artex on all ceilings, it was the fashion back in the 80s. We are used to it so do not mind it, but we know it does not contain asbestos so decided to have the bathroom ceiling replaced as we are swapping 2 large recessed light fittings for 6 recessed downlighters, so needed access to the wiring. Otherwise we would just have had it skimmed.
Our original thought was to replace all the bathrooms as coloured sanitary ware is just not fashionable, also removing 2 of the 3 baths and replace them with large showers. Once you start removing baths, you are into either expensive removal and replacement of tiles, or using the Wet Wall.
Having found out that often the first thing people do when they buy a house is replace perfectly good bathrooms and kitchens as they are not to their taste (one does wonder why they bought the house in the first place!), we decided not to bother unless it was necessary for our comfort, so are now only changing our en suite.
Later, we might do the small upstairs bathroom, builders have suggested using Wet Wall on the3 areas round the current bath position as we would want to replace it with a shower, but leaving the rest of the tiles. This is something which OH had also been thinking could be a solution.
We would also need to change the WC and basin, everything is pink, but could probably find white sanitary ware in a similar size. We do have a few spare tiles, so could fill in any small gaps.
That would probably be a project I could tackle myself, with some help, so we will keep that in mind.
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Thankfully I redid our bathroom and shower, put in a firewall and plinth for the resitting of a new oil tank 11 years ago. I could not do it now.
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Our daughter's home has solid walls but OH dry lined the tiled areas with waterproof plasterboard before doing all this tiling! A bit too grey for me but he did what the "customer" wanted.
We looked at wet wall panels too but decided against. Due to tile shortages these were not the original choice...you can see why OH has gone off doing our bathroom, it's very hard work as you get older!0 -
KjellNN,
5 years ago we had a big extension. Along with this we had the bathroom refitted, we also have a timber framed house. Plumber took one look at all the tiles and said, the same, that all the wall would need replastering after he took the tiles all off only to then put others back up. He suggested we use ‘storm boards’ and just get the builder to put them over the existing tiles. We agreed and all done in less than a day. It’s great, no cleaning tiles or grouting, always looks fresh and clean. We liked it so much we had it put around the shower cubical in the en suite. If we do move we wouldn’t hesitate to use again. It saved days of work and was so much cheaper.
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So sorry to hear about your friend's husband brue. Even worse that it was so unexpected. Best wishes.
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I used a product called Altro for our bathroom walls, comes in a variety of colours. From measuring up to.final installation it only took 1.5hrs to complete. We used this product a lot in the offshore industry for flooring and lining all the en-suite bathrooms
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Arrived at Troutbwck Head and now just sitting with a glass or two waiting for dinner. The service pitches are nearly full with only four pitches out of 38 free while the rest is about two thirds.
A warm day but persistent showers. Still who cares back on site.
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That looks very good brue! Also a bit grey for us, but DD has matt grey tiles in a similar format, but a bit bigger, in one bathroom, with mosaic instead of one line of tiles all round at about 1.2m height, and it does look good. That was the bathroom the builders did.
Her other bathroom has similar tiles but in a nice turquoise colour, again with a row of mosaics to break up the solid colour.
We contemplated some mosaic inserts, but decided against it in the end as it did not really work with our wall mounted cupboards and big mirror. Our new tiles are matt white, 400x200mm, we decided on larger tiles so we had less grout.
DD's en suite was the first (part) large bathroom I have done, moving the door to make more space, fitting a freestanding bath and wash basin on a unit, 2 cabinets, a towel warmer and a radiator, then the tiling. At that time she could not afford to pay a professional. (Previously I had put in a new bath with shower, and done the tiling, at her flat near the University, but that was back in 2005.)
She had bought enough tiles to finish the WC and shower area too, but that was done later by the builders, when she could afford to pay someone to do it, and buy the rest of the bits! Once we had seen how the units to hide the cistern were built, I made one for her and now one for us, as they were otherwise quite pricey in the finish she/we wanted.
She did do quite a lot of the work herself, she likes to learn how to do things, but I was glad she decided to pay someone else to do the other bathroom as it was a lot of work, more than at first thought, and as you say, it gets harder as we get older!
When we had our house built, back in 1987/88, we did quite a lot of things ourselves to save money, we could not have afforded it all otherwise. I made and installed all the bathroom units, the plumber installed the bath, showers etc, then after we moved in I did all the tiling.
We also fitted the kitchens and utility room ourselves, and again did all the tiling after moving in. Having also tiled a kitchen and bathroom in MIL's old house, a kitchen and utility room in the guide hall, a kitchen in our previous house, and the kitchen and utility room in DD's previous house, I have done a fair bit of tiling in my time, but I cannot say I enjoy it!
Much prefer woodwork and fitting kitchen units.
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The web site is very slow!
Looks like you will be having a calm crossing David.
KJ it seems bathroom renovations are going on everywhere.
We were out last night at our garden club but it was a bit doom and gloom. Even though Covid has increased an interest in gardening we can't recruit enough younger members to keep our club going. I suppose this is happening in many places.
Still nice and mild here, a day to get outside.
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We have allotments accessed via footpaths behind some of the houses in our area, many are overgrown now ,as the older of us can no longer carry out whats needed ,they belong to the LA who advertise them ,but the younger generations, it seems are to "busy" to spend the time on them
Many if not most are looking for anything that is less work
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Long waiting lists for allotments here. I’ve had 3 in different areas around here. Gave the second one up for a more local one. Though the problem with this local one is it is behind a very large hedge and very private, many of the female tenants give them up as it is just too quiet and they feel vulnerable as to who might just walk onto the site, when they might be working their allotment alone. We did have times when two or more women went together, or with one of the men being there but it didn’t seem to work. I gave up when I was looking after my Dad when he developed dementia. Although the issue of being alone there was always also a concern.
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It may be a problem being the only one working , when we had one in the past ,it was a way as with many ,of helping to make ends meet with growing a lot of our food , and there was always others also working on their plots
That was before as some children think. everything comes from the Supermarket these days
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What a lovely warm morning, tee shirt weather. Had my usual walk into matterdale forest and now breakfast.
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Yet another 'confusing day' today
Tried to access CT yesterday but more " Essential Mtce " so gave up & opened a Jack Reacher book on Kindle -- took some time to get back into Childs style but I seem to be settling down to him again !
Logged on here this morning and got even more confused 'coz the ' page numbering ' has swapped over so the page in use is bright & stands out, while other pages now are faint and grey.
Too early for me I am afraid -- logged out & back in twice, then changed my reading glasses too -- ended up singing (
!) an old Max Boyce number { Dieu its Hard, it's harder than they will ever know } [ howling woke the neighbours 
] May you all have a pleasant day whatever you may be doing - hiking, biking, getting plastered whatever
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