Bye bye bathroom!

After weeks of inaction following the Big Quake, our mate Gary got back to us last week with a quote to sort the bathroom (re-tile the walls, resurface the bath, replumb the taps and replace the formica benchtop) and to build new skylights. We said ok, he said he'd be round to measure at 3pm the following afternoon....but never showed. Grmph. We threw our hands in the air - tradesmen!

No more contact, brief one-word responses to emails...then, I popped out for a coffee this morning and when I got back there wasn't one, but three vehicles parked on our driveway! With men everywhere - what was going on?

Turns out Gary rescheduled the measure-up to this morning, but didn't feel the need to tell me - heck, they just found an unlocked door round the back and let themselves in! True! Oh well, he is not a bad guy, and so I let him get away with it. I am a pushover.

So we are all on. Today I need to scrub the existing tiles with my old friend the sugar soap and then the tiler will apparently come and prime the walls tomorrow. So no more showers for some time (don't worry, we will be driving across town and showering at my parent's place so we shouldn't stink too bad).

So here's a few bye-bye photos of the bathroom:

Bye-bye icky lime-scaled grout and grotty shower door...


Bye-bye recessed soap dish and old worn out taps...


Bye-bye faded benchtop...


Bye-bye brown tiles (but I'll miss you)...


Bye-bye dark dark bathroom...


...we were wanting to replace the tiles with white ones of a similar size, but the cost was horrendous - it would have cost about $3500 just for the tiles!! We are not that rich. We are not actually rich at all. So we are going with a larger simple glossy white tile (there's one on the bench in the photo above but you can hardly see it as the room is so dark). We did consider a dark blue/grey too, to match the bedroom cupboards, but thought it might make things a bit dark, and neither of us is particularly good at committing to colour choices. So we went with boring.

However, we are sticking to the original with the benchtop and replacing it with another Valencia Orange one... ooh la la.

So watch this space for a flurry of excited, frustrated, despairing and entertaining posts over the next couple of weeks. For the record, we were told that all the work would be finished by mid-December....not feeling very hopeful of that, but we'll see.