The House Renovation Saga

Things are definitely moving along. Glen was over today to help Alastair with the tiling of the ensuite. They finished tiling the walls and made a start on the floor. Some of the reasons for it taking this long include:

• Making the decision a long time ago to tile the entire bathroom from floor to ceiling (rather than just the shower recess)
• Using really large (and heavy!) wall tiles that are quite tricky to tile with
• Lots of cutting of tiles, which was where the majority of time was spent

Hopefully we'll be able to finish the floor this coming weekend (elections and all!). There's still a fair amount of tile cutting to do as we have a curve shower base.

After a very long hiatus, renovations on the ensuite has started back up. We now have a deadline, thanks to the new town house we've purchased (currently getting built).

Glen is a major help! He came over on Sunday and today (which is our new public holiday, thanks to the Melbourne Cup). He and Alastair made good progress on the bathroom. Pictures below! Hopefully Alastair and I can complete the rest of the tiling over this week.

Looking into the ensuite

From the ensuite, looking towards the door

Glen came over to help us out with the tiling of the ensuite. Glen and Alastair were at it for a good number of hours. I helped out at the last stage, with removing excessive tile adhesive from between the tiles, and wiping down the tiles.

Here's a picture of the progress:

We stopped at about 4pm as we had to get ready to head in to Tropfest.

I've said it before, and I say it again - this ensuite better be the last tiling that we should ever do! I personally would rather pay someone to do the renovations work then to do it myself! ;)

After all this pain of renovations, I don't think I EVER want to go through it again!

Now saying that, we have been making some very very slow progress on the ensuite. It has been waterproofed (a lovely blue colour every where!).

We finally got to the part we were waiting for - tiling! You can see Alastair in the following picture, putting up some of our large white wall tiles (this happened last week).

Being our first time that we tried our hand at tiling, we picked up a few tips:

• Plan the layout of your tiles, and mark it down clearly some where! (We planned the layout, but I happened to mistakenly scribe the layout for the left wall incorrectly). Don't forget to plan the layout for ALL walls, including the floor. This helps to deal with what tiles have to be cut (including cutting around toilet, taps etc) and to make sure that you don't get funny proportion of tiles.
• Heavy wall tiles are very tricky. As we learned. Multiple times.
• While on the subject of heavy wall tiles, note that they will creep down the wall due to their weight, despite adequate adhesive on the back of each tile.
• One way to deal with the heavy tiles is to tile from the bottom upwards (with enough spacers between each tile) or to have some form of support or brace holding the first layer of tiles.
• Start with small tiles if you can (easy to hold, easy to place, and they don't slip).

We plan on laying more tiles tomorrow, before Tropfest. I can't wait to get this ensuite completed. Hopefully it will be done before my relatives arrive from Perth!

I didn't realise how long a break we took with the house renovations, until I checked the last entry in this journal. But....we're back in the business of renovations!

After getting married last month, we're back in Canberra, highly motivated to get through renovations on our home. First stop is the ensuite. We have the most disgusting ensuite in the world. The paint is peeling off the walls, the tiles look filty no matter how much I scrub them, the mould will not come off the tiles and the shower screens, despite numerous applications of Exit Mould and scrubbing with Ajax....basically, it's a grotty disgusting bathroom and I'm scared of it. Everytime I go into our ensuite, I wear house shoes, or tip toe, as I want to minimise my skin contact with the floor!

So what better thing to do yesterday, on a lovely Canberra autumn day, then to visit the auction houses. We got an idea of prices, and of various items we would like in the ensuite. Unfortunately none of the auction houses were carrying tiles that we wanted.

We stopped by the Capital Tile Centre in Fyshwick, and discovered the sale that is currently going on! Popped next door to the other tile centre, but was put off by their snobbery. So back to Capital Tile Centre we went. We choose our tiles, placed the order, and paid for it as the shop was closing. We get to pick up the tiles some time this week.

We're going from a blue/white scheme to another blue/white scheme, but this time, it's going to be modern and simple (none of that flowery stuff that exists in our current house!). Because of the sale, I'm quite happy with the pricing.

Alastair has started the demolishing of the ensuite. So far, the following items have been removed:

• Some fittings
• Shower screen
• Cabinet mirror
• Part of the vanity
• Some tiles

The ensuite is a mess, but that's ok! We're going to have a new one soon!