For the early part of the week Dane and I were still out at Castor helping to get things finished off prior to the client’s carpets going down on the Wednesday.  On Wednesday we were back off to Cambourne near Cambridge to do some bathroom and en-suite refurbishment works for a new client, getting the work on the basis of a recommendation from a previous client.

We only did a half day as we put together a shopping list and went off to do a tour of the various merchants getting our required materials, while in the afternoon I had the joy of putting together my end of year account paper work and taking it over to my accountant.

On Thursday we took out the toilet and sink in the bathroom, took up the old carpet and put down a new laminate floor.  While I put back the original toilet and plumbed in a new smaller space saving sink and pedestal, Dane was in the en-suite taking out the carpet and putting down the under lay ready for some more new laminate flooring.  Dane had a new site survey to carry out on the Friday so I was all on my lonesome with only the radio for company; it’s been a long time since I worked solo.  My first job was to remove the existing bathroom radiator and plumb in a new chrome effect towel radiator.  Once that was completed I provisionally removed the toilet and I made a start with putting down the new laminate flooring in the en-suite.  Unfortunately as I got half way across the floor and moving onto the last pack of flooring I noticed that several of the flooring pieces had rough finishes to the edges which wouldn’t have produced a very good finish.  So with the client having to make a return trip to Cambridge to get three new pieces of flooring which would have taken over an hour, and with me not having anything else to get on with we decided it best for me to have an early finish, the client going to get the flooring over the weekend and me returning on the Monday to finish the job.

Apologies for the delay in the weekly blog.  I think everyone has come back off their holidays and decided they want some sort of work doing in time for Christmas.  So I have been busy nearly every evening the last two weeks doing client visits or putting together the paper work prices and quotes.  So it’s good to be busy but it doesn’t leave much free time in the evenings at the moment.

Going back a few weeks to our bathroom and cloak room refurb in March and the job was moving along nicely after the shock and horror of the cut and shut timber joists we found hiding under the floorboards.  While Dane was finishing off the snagging bits in the cloak room I was upstairs tiling the bathroom walls, while on the following day Dane was grouting up the wall tiles while I pre-assembled the sink and toilet.  By the end of the day we had the sink all fitted and plumbed in, with a little fun and games thrown in with the sink waste being its usual pain in the bum.  On Wednesday we got the toilet fitted and plumbed in, shower screen and bath panel fitted and ran in the extractor ducting and face plate so all we had to do on the Thursday was give the bathroom a good clean, tidy the site up and pack the tools back on the van, job done.

Last week Dane and I we were back out to Castor near Peterborough where we had previously carried out the loft conversion with our old amigo Stu.  This time we were back to assist in getting the main house refurb finished, and it was all hands on deck as the client is having their carpets fitted this week.  John and J were back making good some plaster work and Danny and Martin the electricians were back putting in some new lighting.  Dane and I had the joy of fitting the largest Velux roof window they do close up to the roofs ridge and it was a four man lift to actually fit the window!  We then finished the week by installing a Velux sun tunnel into the master bedroom en-suite.

After our week of exterior window painting, Dane and I were over in March doing a bathroom and cloak room refurbishment.  Our first job was to get isolating valves on all the relevant pipe work so we only had to drain down the system once.  Once that was done we stripped out the cloak room and then went on a shopping trip for materials.  On Tuesday Dane stripped out the bathroom while I set about tiling the cloak room walls, and then the following day Dane re-plasterboarded some of the bathroom walls and did some making good while I grouted the cloak room tiles and then got the toilet fitted.  Danny and Martin the electricians were on the job Thursday taking out the old electric shower unit and other fittings and then putting in some new spot lights and a new extractor fan.  While they did that me and Dane fitted the sink and ran in new waste pipe work so the cloak room was all finished off. 

We had some concerns with the bathroom floor prior to tiling it, mainly that it wasn’t very level and there seemed to be some other raised areas.  We decided to take all the flooring up and put in new floorboards so we could resolve the level issues and have a better surface to tile onto.  When we took up the floor boards we couldn’t believe what we saw, especially Dane as he is fairly new to the site work as it were.  The timber joists that support the floor area should be one length of timber running from one wall to another, but for some reason someone had cut out pieces of the original joists and inserted new timber, and then bolted more timber alongside the joists to act as a support and trying to strengthen them! It was basically a cut and shut floor, and a poor one at that.  If left as it were it could have become a serious issue one day.  Unfortunately we had to raise this issue with the client and they decided to meet the extra cost to have things put right.  On our return from the Bank Holiday weekend Dane and I set about putting in the new joists.  We carried out the work at cost as we didn’t feel it was right to profit from the client’s misfortune.  After a couple of days we completed the work and had new floorboards down and a nice level floor to work off.

On Thursday we laid the new floor tiles and had an early finish as we let the tile adhesive set.  On Friday we got the new bath fitted and all plumbed in.  In the pm I got the main wall tiled while Dane did some making good of the walls prior to us fitting the skirting and we then finished off the day by grouting the floor tiles.