Wetroom progress

The black floor tiles have been laid and the wall tiles are on their way. The pipework has been installed, including a nifty thing that allows us to heat the back of the cabinet mirror - leading to a fog-free experience. The silver thing on the floor is the base of the shower drainer, and shows the line where the doors will open to. Did I mention this was a teeny tiny room?

I was having trouble with the idea of a regular shelf in the shower to hold shampoo and shower gel, but the builders are going to create an alcove in the wall instead. The power shower unit will sit next to the alcove, but can't be boxed in or it invalidates the warranty, boo. The sink arrived really quickly but must've been dropped as the entire corner was smashed. A replacement duly arrived the next day, but on closer inspection was designed to sit on a pedestal rather than being wall mounted. All sorted now, though I have to somehow get the wrong sink back to the Post Office.

Today the loo has been plumbed in and the heated towel rail has arrived. At this rate the whole job might be finished before Easter!

Laundry room taking shape

This will post will feel as dull as dishwater, unless you're about to make a laundry room (aka utility room) too? If not, then I'd have to agree. Probably the least exciting room your home will ever have. If like me you're from New Zealand this will seem like a totally normal thing to have in your home. London flat dwellers don't usually have the space to put in a laundry room and the British are fond of sticking the washing machine in the kitchen (why not the bathroom?! Who gets undressed in the kitchen?)

These photos show the former end of the garage, well, middle really as the end was used to make our kitchen. The space was gutted, a wall put up and behold - insulated. Amazingly the wall between the garage and kitchen was never insulated, which goes a long way to explaining the glacial blast which came out of our cupboards in winter. On the upside, our cupboard items remained fresh for ages. At least with an insulated wall our gas bill should be less of a fright next winter.

The room now has it's own (eco) light bulb and a separate switch to run an extractor fan. This means we can shut the door and leave the dryer on and the humidity won't get too crazy in there. Guests will be pleased they no longer have to climb over an airing rack in order to sleep in the spare bedroom.

A trip to Ikea is on the cards so we can buy one of their wall-mounted drying racks. The selection of such items online is pretty bad, and the so-called specialist websites that deal with such things are overwhelmingly awful. Definitely a gap in the market for anyone who can be bothered. The flooring is en route and then we need to think about how to house the mountain of stuff that used to be in the garage into this little space.

Cloakroom: before photos

For FOUR YEARS I have endured our 2.5 ghastly bathrooms after writing this naive post back in February 2008. If I'd known I'd be putting up with the status quo for so long I wouldn't have believed it. Turns out you can smile through aesthetic compromises when your circumstances are wobbled (refer redundancy, recession, unemployment then eventually catching up on many, many holidays...) Anyway. Here we are. And this is the first of the three bathroom spaces to get an overhaul. (The other two will be knocked through into one space at a later date, probably another four years at this rate).

I mentioned the space was quite tiny in my last post, but here you can see it with your own eyes. And yes, I am still keen on black tiles.

Here is the garage, with the washing maching and dryer hidden under an avalanche of goodness knows what. Probably the best news about having the builders in is the skip, which means we can have a proper chuck out of misc items. Especially the items left by the previous owners.

This is the view with the door to the cloakroom on the left and the door to the garage on the right.

This is the same view once the builders got stuck in.

And here is our old cloakroom space - one day of demolition means there's no going back now!

Phase 2 has lift off!

Right now there are two builders moving stuff from our garage into our dining room, prepping the spaces and organising the delivery of a skip. I can only compare the excitement to the feeling of anticipation one gets when pregnant: the unknown but ultimately thrilling possibility of something amazing is around the corner. But before then, will come a lot of mess, pain and money.

Last night I took some 'before' photos of the current spaces which I'll post here soon. It was difficult to get a good angle as the cloakroom is so small. Like, really really small. When we were imagining putting a shower in there we were originally going to steal back some space from either the outside storage cupboard, or from the under stairs storage. Neither of these options is happening now due to the cost.

The shower door will have to be made bespoke for the space so that it can fully open, that way when you're on the loo your knees won't be knocking against it.

At the weekend Rob and I went to Topps Tiles and chose the tiles which will end up on the walls and floor. I chose a 20cm square satin black tile for the wall and Rob chose the same tile in white for the floor. Me black, him white, it's kind of fitting. On reflection though, worrying about making the room look small when it IS small seemed silly - so we've ditched the white in favour of a dark grey. I'm guessing the size and colour will end up similar to the photo at top (via http://www.ffffound.com).

Phase 2 is imminent

Stardate: March 2012 - and I finally have some actual renovation to write about! This is in relation to the downstairs bathroom update and the implementation of a utility room. The builders came back with a quote, which was quite high, so we revised the plans to make it as simple as possible.

The quote was still too high but after some to-ing and fro-ing it looks like the building work, building materials and a separate water heating unit will cost £6,500 + VAT. We have to buy all the sanitary ware, tiles and extras (heated towel rail, laundry shelving etc) but it looks like the builders can start work next week.

I'm quite liking black tiles - not sure how they'll feel in a small wetroom, but after years of looking at white tiles I feel like a change.

In other news: there was a weird sound coming from our Samsung side-by-side fridge freezer. Turns out it was the fan hitting ice. It took less than 24 hours for the fan to grind to a halt and start overheating. Luckily (?) this happened while we were hosting a lunch at ours rather than say, the middle of the night or while we were away for the weekend. Rob quickly defrosted the fridge with our handheld steamer, and viola, the fridge is working fine again. The fridge is less than four years old and I had no idea it got icy - and we know a few people with the same fridge. Let this be a warning to ensure you defrost yours from time to time...

Let it snow

It's old news but I'm going to document it to save arguments down the line. It finally snowed properly in London two weeks ago. It was the first time we've had a substantial snow fall in 14 months - I know this because the the last time we had one I promptly bought a sledge, which then sat in the garage gathering dust until February 5th, 2012. Fortunately the snow fell overnight on the Saturday, so Sunday was spent sledging, the kids built a snowman next door (cheers Simon) and then I slow roasted an aromatic five-spiced shoulder of pork. I can't believe I was a vegetarian for so long.

Our local park looked like a massive expanse of apres ski and everyone was beaming from ear-to-ear. Great how inclement weather gets the Brits in a good mood.

The snow of course affected our boiler - the condensation pipe was hanging away from the brass pipes, and water was steadily dripping into a saucepan. Our gas fitter was busy until Tuesday but duly came around (on time too!) and declared the pipe OK. It's meant to hang. Of course by then it had stopped dripping. Turns out the outside pipe had frozen so the water was coming back down the condensation pipe instead of draining off. The solution is to insulate the outdoor pipe with something. The gas fitter wouldn't accept payment. I love that guy. If you need a gas fitter/boiler man in London I'll happily pass on his details. (Contact me via Twitter)

The snow also affected our Volvo - turns out 7 onboard computers (?) use up battery power in a month, and not driving it drains the battery, especially in the cold. I'd have thought Volvo of all cars would be OK left in the snow but apparently not. Maybe I left the heated seat thing on. Oh well. Another thing to deal with.

Finally, the snow meant we were stuck indoors gawping at our walls and we decided to hang some artwork up. Only we didn't have all the bits that you need so had to order a bunch of supplies. Three framed pictures are up, but the rest were left leaning on a cabinet. Which unfortunately wobbled when I put something away... causing the largest unhung picture to topple forward, bringing down another 3 like dominoes. The smash was extraordinary and the shower of glass was something else. I now have to take 4 pictures to the local framers and sort them out, and then get them hung before anything else happens to them.

Enter the dragon

Chinese New Year came around quickly - January 23rd, the last two years it's been in February. Serves me right for suggesting we launch a work project to co-incide with Chinese New Year, but thankfully despite the the tight time frame it launched OK.

Another project I want dealt with before the Chinese New Year is out is our downstairs bathroom/utility room, but it's early February and still not much to report. The builders came back with a quote of £8k but this could've escalated depending how difficult it is to find waste pipes under the concrete. We've decided to go back to Plan A which is to expand the existing downstairs cloakroom to accommodate a shower, and separate the utility room from the garage. The builders popped round last night and discussed plumbing some more, and suggested ways of improving the water pressure so now we're waiting on a revised quote.

In the meantime, winter has finally kicked in with the current outdoor temparature at -3 degrees (Celcius). It might even snow at long last. Great time for the boiler to start leaking everywhere - it's got a condensation pipe that's not attached properly any more (deteriorating sealant or something?). I've been texting the guy who installed it all day but he's busy. And it's Saturday tomorrow, eep. (Pictured: the canal near our house, with ice!)

This morning this fluffy fox was right up against the glass doors peering in. I showed him my (vintage) rabbit fur coat and mouthed 'You're next' and he promptly walked to my rosemary bush, lifted a leg and pissed on it. I feel a fox war coming on.

Ringing in the New Year

The London winter hasn't really eventuated, so maybe we were being a little pessimistic booking a week in Lanzarote. At the time we were motivated by my friend's recent visit which involved tracking down a Famara beach house bungalow, as seen in Broken Embraces, but we'd left it too late as all the good ones were booked out. Plan B was an all inclusive resort, the Costa Colero, which turned out to be pretty awesome (review on Trip Advisor to come...).

Anyway, it was a balmy 12 degs celcius in London over most of Christmas - and since we've been back - vs 24 degs in Lanzarote. Warm enough for the kids to swim, well, one kid as Marlo had a burst ear drum and was on antibiotics all week. The true highlight was the bonkers public art and architecture mostly influenced by Cesar Manrique - prolific and jaw droppingly awesome. You can see his work all over the island as shown here...

On a roundabout.

In the Jameos del Aqua (yes that's a bar inside a cave).

At the Mirador del Rio...

And most impressively (to me) at the Lag-O-mar residence... (also pictured top):

90% of guidebooks say the residence was designed for Omar Shariff, but a visit to the site reveals that he owned for one day having stupidly lost it in a game of Bridge to the European Bridge champion. You'd think he'd have not honoured that bet given the unfairness of the situation but no, he paid up and left it. Shame as it would've been an unbeatable party house.

If you do go, eat elsewhere first as the restaurant onsite offers up the most over-priced and pretentious food I've had the misfortune of wasting money on in ages.

Burglary a year on

(Wow that photo is a bit dark - it's taken from upstairs looking into the extension, to show the Christmas lights)

This time last year a burglar was settling in for the night somewhere in East London. It's a busy time of year for burglars, with lots of booty up for grabs and merry revellers not being as cautious as they should be. This week we heard of a local policewoman who had her door kicked in at 3pm and had everything taken from her home - presents included. In hindsight we got off lightly as our burglar only took electronic items and cash.

Only yesterday someone asked what the outcome of the burglary was for us - and I had to explain that we didn't get a penny of insurance because MoreThan are an unfair company. According to them, I should have double bolted the doors and slept with the alarm on - even though Rob was still out. Actually he was out til around 4.45am, and I would not have been a happy camper being woken up by him unable to get in. We have switched to a more ethical insurance company who mention that 'reasonable precautions' are made but none of the nonsense that MoreThan say we should have done. It has to be said, if you do happen to double lock your doors and sleep with your alarm on you probably won't need insurance against burglary, or fire for that matter as the chances of escaping in order to claim would be fairly slim. (Ok I am officially in a bad mood about this now - but thinking about losing £2,000+ worth of stuff that we had to replace despite paying premiums for so many years because of a ridiculous clause is irkesome).

Anyway - in other semi-related news: earlier this week the car alarm went off at 4am, repeatedly. It could only be reset by locking the door with a key and Rob gallantly made me do it. The same week one of the sensors in our security system decided it needed a new battery and it took 3 days of waiting for an ADT engineer to come round to replace it. Also in the same week, one of the wires on the garage door wiggled free which meant the entire mechanism wouldn't work (thankfully Rob has fixed it, for now). The theory that things happen in threes seems to hold true here!

Pictured above: Church Street in Stoke Newington, great way to spend a Saturday FYI.

Happy Festivus

Yowser, it's the middle of December yet I still feel in denial about the impending festive season. I blame the weather - this weekend kicked off with slight chill and a massive full moon rising (pictured top) which was visible through the night via our glass roof (yay), or rather it would have been if we were at home instead of raising all kinds of hell at a terrific party (cheers Tubbs! Happy birthday!).

The next night started with an impressive sunset, a dinner for 10 to watch the final of the X Factor and then out to another terrific party, where I DJd for the first time in public since June. Just goes to show that being jaded makes you play better as there was no shortage of lovely people coming to hi-five me mid set (that's never happened before).

And so, onto Sunday, where we hosted some Christmas drinks and mince pies and sat around our fake fire (yes it's a DVD)...

...and marvelled at the Christmas tree which now the kids can decorate by themselves (Result! And that's why you have kids)... so I guess it's time to start feeling festive. If the rumours are true and it snows this weekend then I'll be truly out of denial. Until then, I'm in an extended autumn frame of mind...