Day 1, bathroom

7 o’clock, the alarm goes off. A bit of a wooden head due to the bottle of Merlot last night.
Have to get out of bed as the builders are coming today to demolish the old bathroom. But first I desperately need coffee. Stumbling around in the kitchen, I need two attempts to open the blinds there. I’m pulling the cord but they are not opening, so I walk away and open the other side. Why did the first one not open? Oh, duh! Maybe it works better if I pull the opposite cord?

The workers arrive not far after 8 as promised. They park their trayler just outside the driveway and we decide to open Justus’ window so they can pass the rubble from upstair via the window. The receiver will be on the roof of the front with a wheelbarrow to chuck it all in the skip.

We’re kicking the day off with a large cup of coffee. The guys seem to be pleased with the size of the mugs *nowadays it’s always those little pissy cups of coffee*

The sink, toilet, showercubicle and radiator are removed within half an hour. We have been farting around with the watermain. Before the taps could be taken down, we first needed to shut this down and we found 4!! bloody taps. The one we thought it would be did move just slightly and the others were kinda ‘rusted’ in place.
We finally decided to use pliers to turn the one big tap and after turning it with great difficulty, finally the tap in the kitchen stopped running. We managed to find the correct tap. My stomach hurts due to the tension. Just imagen they brake the tap and we’ll be getting a flood. It’s gonna take ages to sort this with the insurance….

Ah well, this is solved and the taps are being removed. The water is switched on again.
Now the noise starts. The are taking the tiles of the wall and this is definately not done with a lego hammer and a nailfile. Big powertools are coming out and they start attacking the wall to get the tiles off.
I can understand Justus is oversensitive to sound, it is horrible and you can even walk away from it as it all happens above your head.

About maybe half and hour into the breaking part we do hear a loud cry and one of the guys comes running down the stairs.
WTF has happened!?
They hit a waterpipe and water is gushing into the room. He quickly switches the watermains off again and we’re assessing the damage.

That was the waterpipe which leads to the watercloset. They cut the pipe in half and seal it so it stops dripping. Not too much water has come out and the guy working on that wall caught most of it. His top is soaking. It’s going to be an extra job for the plumber tomorrow to fix this.
I have to admit for a second I did freakout a bit there, but they assure me this is not too uncommon.

As we’re also having a hanging toilet installed they needed to hack a hole in the floor around the soilpipe as this has to be moved further to the back of the wall. That was a rather a tought job though and it took them quite a bit of time to get this sorted.

When they left at around 2 the bathroom was completely gutted.
Tomorrow at around 9 the builder will be back and then the plumber will do the rerouting of the pipes. In the evening the electrician will show to add an extra contantpoint for the lights in the sinkcabinet.
I will keep you updated.
At this moment it’s pissing down and we even heard some thunder in the distance. We are planning on a bottle of wine tonight to celebrate the first day but for that the rain has to calme down first so Lee can walk over to the shops for a bottle.