Ok as Matt pointed out, it’s been a while since I reported anything on the bathroom front. My масиlast post was back at the start of November and nothing much has happened since then, apart from many many gigs in the several bands I had got involved in, Christmas, an arrest and court appearance.
I’ll give a quick status report now, and will start doing and posting more as the winter draws into spring.
On 16th December I was done with work for the year (we got lots of time off to compensate for the loss of our annual bonus as part of the company’s cost cutting exercises) so after I got arrested I called a few plasterers, none of whom replied to me, so I decided to hibernate for the full 3 weeks I had off. It was brilliant! I tidied, hoovered, grocery-shopped and cooked and et and slept. It was a really good recharging experience. I’m already seeing how much time off I can take next midwinter.
Further to the previous post, I did get the door on and a fully private bathroom by the time Bro and H visited, so that was nice! I now have plasterboard or cementboard on all the walls, and need to talk to a plasterer to see whether I need to improve some of the joins or whether the plasterer can work with what I already have.
But before I do that, I need to adjust the position of the shower elbow behind the wall. Which is fine because I also need to move the wall in by about 8mm so that it makes a good square corner for the bath to fit in. Right now the fit is JUST too loose to be covered by tile and grout and sealant.
I had been intending to adjust the wall over the Christmas break but didn’t get around to it, mainly because the work areas were in a terrible state, I couldn’t find my tools and couldn’t see the floor. And I was too fed up to tidy those because I was tired and hungry and I couldn’t rest or eat because the rest of the house was also a tip.
So hibernation was the best option. Slowly I got the bedroom, living room and kitchen back “on-line” over the holidays, and then last night, because I felt like it, I swept and tidied the work areas, and sorted most of my tools back into their proper boxes. So the bathroom itself has not progressed, but things are actually looking pretty rosy right now!
There’s an example of what I’m talkin’ about. The difference between NYC thinking and British thinking. I just went to the local chip shop for my customary Friday lunchtime fish & chips, and it was closed. Or rather it was prominently displaying two closed signs. I started off to the nearby shop to get something else, then noticed someone going in and someone coming out again. There was a handwritten sign next to the door that said “due to a technical problem we have no chips today. But you are welcome to come in for anything else.”
This exemplifies the difference. In NYC the signs would have said “open” and there would be a big sign over the fryer saying “NO [CHIPS] TODAY. Today is a good day to try fish and peas and a bread roll for £3.20. Or sausage and beans for only £2.50″.
Four years and a month after I bought my first jam block (like a wood block but made of plastic not wood (and not jam) ) to go with my first set of timbales, I met Adam, who mentioned on facebook that he was learning a bit of Afrocuban percussion. At the five-years-and-a-day mark, I played my own timbales (in the sense of ownership) in my own salsa band (in the sense of membership) in front of a heaving bar full of dancers. And it was great!
It took us half the year to get the very basics, and the other half of the year to accumulate the right personnel (the band has 8 members and will likely be 10 by the time it’s finished). By October we had a bunch of songs that didn’t sound awful, and we booked our gig for 4th December (which happens to be the day of Chango, the Orisha of virility, life and parties). About 1/3 of the band was sure this was a mistake.
It wasn’t.
Once the date was set, tensions were heightened in the band and everyone worked really hard to nail their parts. We didn’t quite make it to the point where EVERYBODY sings and plays at once, but that will come… it will come!
Some words got forgot, a couple of arrangements got … uh … rearranged, but there was nothing to get in the way of dancing and enjoying, and our four-horn brass section parped and tooted everyone’s hackles up.
We were lucky with the room and the sound engineers, a wonderfully bright and dry space and bright and polite engineers gave the congas a full and woody sound, counterpointing the toppy brashness of the horns and cowbells.
Last weekend was the Great British Salsa Experience.
I had Wednesday and Thursday off but didn’t really do anything at all on those two days. Friday I realised I was supposed to be meeting someone in Manchester at 7pm and didn’t have any clothes for the weekend, so a mad dash was had buying trackie bottoms and stuff ready for three nights’ and two days’ dancing. At 4pm I still hadn’t decided whether to drive or take a train.
Finally I jumped on a train with a small bag of clothes, a huge bag of drums, and a backpack containing dancing shoes, towels, and breath mints, and made it to Manc just in time to meet a bunch of folk from the SalsaForums (I had said meet at 7 for 7:30 departure to restaurant and I showed up at 7:28 so I’m not counting that as late :-) ) We all, relative strangers, piled over to a Chinese buffet where apparently we’d been warned not to go as someone who’d been there earlier that day was now getting very sick and worried about missing the whole pre-paid spectacular.
The congress was in the town hall, which we had to enter by the side door on account of a wonderful Christmas market going on in the square outside. I nipped to my hotel which was about 5 minutes’ walk from the venue for a clean up and change to come out dancing at about 10pm. It was great to have a shower rather than having to bathe! But the novelty of showering soon wore of…
The weekend mostly passed in a blur for some reason, possibly related to the daily schedule, which went something like this: up at 9, shower brekkie, dance class at 10, another couple of hour-long dance classes that day before 6pm, interspersed with lunch, socialising, social dancing, shopping and possibly a shower, then at 6pm home for a shower and sleep, then up again at 9 or 10pm to shower, dress for the evening, grab grub, then dance until the small hours. Bed (after a shower) was 2, 3, and 5 am on the three consecutive days.
There was a show in the main hall each evening, mercifully short and high-quality (congress shows can tend to end up featuring EVERYBODY EVER and seriously eating into social dancing time). Friday I popped my head round the door and enjoyed a couple of them, but spent the rest of the time social dancing in the Cuban room. Saturday I got a seat and watched (and enjoyed) the whole thing. Sunday I saw a few acts and enjoyed what I saw.
I spent most of my time in the Cuban room (which had a bar serving mojitos) rather than the Mambo room (which had a stage and a lot of very spinny dancers). Actually I spent most of my time loafing around and chatting. It was excellent. I scarcely went into the mambo room before 2am.
On the Sunday there was a percussion workshop (hence the bag full of drums) where it was fairly basic but I still learned a thing or two, and the teacher invited me to bring my toys to the Cuban room for a jam, so I did, and it was fun… then the superstar New York DJ in the main room heard there was percussion in the building and invited us (actually he invited the percussion, he just got us with it) onstage to groove along to his tunes. And it was fun.
I had such a range of dances, from lumpy Cuban grooving to smooth lyrical romantica to hard technical mambo, and with lots of lovely women including two salsa crushes and an actual crush.
I then had Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off to recover. It’s now Friday and I should be good after a couple more nights’ sleep :-)
I finally decided I was spending too much time on things that shouldn’t be my priority. I have this thing about my word being my bond but I’m afraid that will have to be suspended until I learn not to promise stuff too freely. Tonight was jazz band but I managed to reason that actually I had been told that this was a one-off, and the same culprit who told me this was a one off I also let talk me into the drumming practice on weds that meant I didn’t get to fit the plasterboard that day.
So I figured if something had to give for me to catch up, it was tonight’s jazz band.
I texted that I was blowing them out and could they sort out their own posters too (I’ve had posters in my inbox for over a week and no time to look at them), and came home with my November curry. After scoffing that I decided to work until 9:30 (neighbour’s bedtime) on the bathroom.
Turns out that two hours was just about right for the job. After doing research with Mum on whether a full-size piece of plasterboard can get up the stairs, I knew that the trimmed pieces needed for the walls would go up. It was touch and go with the largest:
Getting plasterboard up stairs
Cutting aquapanel is easy. Cutting plasterboard is even easier, though it depends on the nature of the cut. I had to trim 20cm off one panel, which was dead easy with a square and craft knife, and cut the other lengthways into 49cm and 73cm widths, which was quite difficult, on account of not being able to stand on the thing to cut it, and on account of not having a square that would extend to 49cm nor a straightedge 244cm long.
As it was, I cut it slightly wrong and had to file about 6mm off the width of one piece over the whole length of it :-( that was dusty and tedious work, and meant that I didn’t have time to screw in the last piece before the 9:30 curfew.
The bathroom now has an outside and an inside!
But the size of the final piece was perfect! I just pushed it more or less into position for now. I can screw it in tomorrow.
That small piece where the gap is isn’t screwed in yet
Snugasabug
I also offered up the doorframe into the hole.
Door frame offered into position. Millimetre perfect!
Very exciting. I might even have a fully private bathroom by the time my Bro and his Fiancee come visiting!
I’m hopelessly oversubscribed. Three bands, salsa teaching and a bathroom project are enough to fill my time without housework and a day job.
I’m also a bit of a numnuts because I’ve got myself into this palaver.
In fairness I was sort of swizzed into the bands, being told that things were a one-off etc.
So anyway on top of all that I have been somehow agreeing to make posters and take photos and all sorts of nonsense.
Time to start saying no AND MEANING IT without being rude.
Tricky.
Yesterday I wanted to get two more walls done. I ordered the plasterboard on Tue and they promised delivery Wed. But I forgot to try to get a time of day. The result? I was bumming around in the house unable to go out and buy stuff until 2 when it finally arrived. Got a bit of tidying done, like.
Then I came to fit it and I found that the last piece of studwork that needed fitting was badly warped, like 30 degrees out along its length, so I went to B&Q and bought a straight one, then that was time up. So no material progress whatsoever. Boo.
Time was up because I’d semifoolishly agreed to go for a rehearsal with a new, temporary drumming project being formed to play support to other projects I’m involved in. Cor, THAT was a lot of fun! Then off to Leeds for some salsa singing and songwriting (better known as stumbling around with a few Spanish phrases and thinking oh shit this is hard!)
Here’s the revised spout mount (much simpler than the holey version before) and painstakingly-crafted divertor mount.
Spout, fixed
Then I drywalled, but noticed that the divertor is too deep into the wall to be able to screw onto the threads.
Plus Drywall
So I took the drywall off again and simplified the divertor mount. Cor, if I’d realized this in the first place, might have saved weeks of faffing. Ho hum.
Divertor, fixed
I have to leave it like this for tomorrow’s bath because I undid the spout to make the change, so once it gets through being used tomorrow with no leaks, I can refit the drywall. Then I can begin the battening over the breezeblock wall behind.
If I turn up my optimism dial to “dogged” then I can see the positive side of yesterday. I learned about correct setting of a plane and used it to good effect.
I dry-lined the wall behind the bath and seem to have done a pretty good job of it. Before doing that, I double checked all the plumbing, and found the bath spout was not level. Not only that, but it was not levelable within the leeway I had made for myself in the framework I had concocted back in July.
The problem was that, where I’d drilled a 22mm hole and made wooden bracket for the spout, as I tightened up the nut on the back the wood had compressed unevenly, so the spout was not at rightangles to the wood. Having used a wall plate elbow for the shower with good results, I decided to re-do the spout in the same way. That left it more visible / maintainable so it’s all good.
Then I dry-lined the wall. All my cutting was good, I planed the noggins to make a flat wall (the noggins had been inaccurate probably since the house was built, to a tolerance that would be forgiven by a large sheet of platerboard but not by two smaller sheets of aquapanel.
And found that the divertor was set too far back to be able to fit the faceplate.
This was pretty crushing thing to discover because
1) it’s embarrassing that I did the sums wrong in the first place
2) I now have to un-dry-line the wall (thankfully I had not put on any goop to seal the joints)
3) all the figuring out of how to fit the divertor deeply enough into the wall (it took me several weeks of working out and prototyping) was wasted, as the new answer is to simply go back to plan A: put a piece of wood in the wall and screw the divertor to it.
Turning up the optimism dial to “rabid”, at least in the final configuration once I’ve done all that, the divertor will be much more accessible for its annual filter-cleaning.
At our workplace we effectively got a reduction in hours what with it turning out that most of the world’s money was imaginary. Because of British employment law it would have been too expensive to reduce hours and pay because they would have had to engage in consultation exercises etc; so instead the company exercised its discretion over our discretionary bonus to create effectively a 20% pay cut, then gave us loads more holiday to keep us sweet. It’s a bit annoying when you need to get something done and you need two people’s help to do it and one of them is off today, the other is off in two days’ time and you’re off tomorrow, but it’s nice to be able to spend time with the kids (for those of us who have them) or on bathroom projects (for those of us who have them). I basically took off every Wednesday for the rest of the year.
The bathroom project had stalled for three significant reasons:
1) I now had a bath, so the urgency was removed
2) I was on holiday then tired then ill then overwhelmed and having trouble keeping up with the housework let alone major projects
3) My diary had filled up
The diary thing was due to being in 3 bands. The first, I had been told met every couple of months, but over the last fortnight we had two gigs and several rehearsals. The second had been called a one-off but became a weekly rehearsal and actually was the first one to gig out of all the projects. The third is the salsa band that I have been trying to make happen for about 4 years, and finally all the elements came together so there was no way I was going to defer that. That had been taking one weekday evening and all Sunday, every week for several weeks.
So Sunday 4 Oct was all day hosting an open session with the salsa band, Tue was straight from work to salsa practice, wed was spend doing the ceiling with Mum (yay!) thur was straight from work to Leeds for fusion band practice, Friday was straight from work to gig in Otley, Saturday was gig in York (for some reason I was tired in the morning) and Sunday was 4.5 hours rehearsal with the salsa band followed by pub dinner and chatting till about 10:30pm. Sunday night I was starting to feel stressed having not even had time to check my diary to see what else was coming up. When I finally did, what did I see?
Nothing!
Monday to Fri, all evenings clear, and Wednesday off work!
So this week I have been mostly enjoying pottering in the house, cooking grilled salmon with tasty salad, making thai chicken curry, tidying up, fixing my computer, reading and sleeping! I don’t know if these simple things are only so wonderful when contrasted against the mayhem of the previous week, or if I could simply make a lifestyle out of them…
Yesterday, weds, my day off, I went to Leeds to buy some percussion bits, stumbled upon a posh tile showroom, checked out a non-posh bathroom showroom and carpet warehouse, tidied upstairs and plumbed in the shower elbow. I’m pretty sure that’s the end of all the plumbing work now so the pipe bending spring and pipe cutter can be banished to the loft!