Meanwhile, back at The Bat Cave

Hello folks,

 

We’ve had a very busy week here at the Clements’ Homestead.

Work has started in earnest on the en suite. After several DIY gathering missions, we established that we should have everything we need to finish the bathroom!

Even though we’ve completed the boiler room, because it’s outside, it doesn’t feel like we’ve really done very much to affect our actual living quarters. But a flushing toilet for night-time peeing! Heavenly…I won’t go into too many details but we currently have a camping commode in the bedroom…it’s so far to go, to the downstairs khazi, and who wants to disturb the nocturnal wanderings of the hordes of araignees, busy weaving their little webs across every door frame, so that the morning going-through-a-door ritual is like something out of a Jackie Chan movie.

Anyway, I’ve digressed.

Pre-DIYing a revelation from Simon! He usually isn’t the tidiest of workmen, he becomes so hyper focussed on the job in hand he forgets to move anything out of his way. For example, he once made a built-in closet, it was only when we’d dished up the dinner that we realised one of the children were missing…. not really but you get the picture.

So, imagine my surprise when he suggested that he wasn’t going to cut all the timber for the en suite cladding in the bathroom, next to our bedroom! Can you imagine the dust! But he was going to utilise his handy and fully operational workroom.

Otherwise known as The Bat Cave…

It’s actually not that dramatic or sinister but it does have some bats flying in and out of it occasionally. Two to be precise, whom we’ve christened Vickie and Chris or just, The McGhie’s, they know who they are.

Obviously, I’m not in the immediate vicinity of the little black flying furballs, cute though they might be. I’m slightly nervous around flapping, and as this seems to be their main activity, I’ll just view them from a distance.

And don’t get me started on the swifts that keep flying into the kitchen and then wheeling around like mini French Mirage fighter jets!

I’ve gone off the subject again!

So, let’s look at how the en suite was looking before we started…

Hideously rendered, concrete walls which just need covering up.

Simon got the wires ready and in place for the electrician that was coming to do all the hair-raising stuff.

He also plaster boarded above where the tongue and groove was going.

And the extractor fan was put in place. The cladding is coming along fabulously.

Pipes in and ready to receive the flexible tap hoses (see how technical I am).

Carlos the electrician came and did his magic and voila! We have lumieres!

 

I had wandered off by this point, as too many cooks and all that. I sat on the backdoor steps and had a chat with next door’s dog. He’d only come to see me because I was eating a ham roll, he’s quite mercenary like that. Plus, he doesn’t really do anything I tell him because he’s clearly not bilingual, neither am I though, so he just paws me when he wants a chin tickle and I say the only word he understands which is “aller”. This means come, go, or clearly, do as you like because he just wandered into the house. Sniffing out the source of the ham!

We said au revoir to Carlos and now we could start to really get going on the rest of the cladding.

Simon descended into the depths of…The Bat Cave

As you can see, it’s around 10 steps down into his lair. I’ll come back to this later…

Suddenly I heard his dulcet tones…

I promised the dog a lunch date later in the week and sloped off down the steps.

Simon explained that he had to cut a rectangle hole in the tongue and groove to accommodate the light switch and shaver plug. On first reflection, this seemed to be fairly simple.

There we have it, easy as pie.

That was until we took it up the cave steps, to the garden, then up the three steps into the house and then up, what can only be described as the Mount Everest of staircases. Apparently, and he knows because he’s built metal stairs, a normal stair riser should be 7 inches. Each one of ours is 8.5 inches. 13 of them. I know what you’re thinking, what’s in an inch and a half? Believe me, size matters…

By the time you get to around three steps from the top, the lactic acid in your legs is fizzing fit to burst. After the first two weeks of living here I discovered there were muscles in my arse that I never knew I had!

We made it to the summit and attempted to fit the beautifully cut out and sanded down piece of cladding, only to find that the tongue was not going in the groove but on the other side…oh dear.

Down the all the stairs we went…

Here is cladding number 2.

Up all the stairs we went…

Unfortunately, our brains were addled by the lack of oxygen and we’d used the wrong one as a template. So, this happened… 

It was a sensitive piece of wood and didn’t take kindly to being lobbed out of the bathroom window…

Down all the stairs we went, again…

Obviously, I gave Simon some sound carpentry advice and the next time we surmounted the peak of the en suite the piece of cladding fitted! 

Not really, I just was there for damage control, in case he got out of hand again.

Look at this beauty!

Next morning, a refuelled and bushy-tailed Simon, replete with yesterday’s success set about the rest of the cladding with renewed vigour.

“I reckon I’ll have that lot done today” he announced over his bear’s breakfast (porridge with chocolate spread).

Famous last words…

The cute floor window, as it has fondly been known, (please note the use of the past tense here, no longer does it go by this name) needed a wooden frame around it so the plaster board could butt up to it.  Luckily, Simon decided to tackle this job first. He took the measurements and built a frame. No problem. But when he tried to place it against the window it wouldn’t sit on the floor properly…. curious, thought Simon??

Upon investigation he realised that the floor of the bathroom was not level. He was more than surprised. He had laid that floor himself, with his mate Chopper. What could have gone wrong? Had the Dastardly Duo made a mistake? Surely not!

Up came the chipboard and low and behold, there was the culprit. Two of the floor joists had actually twisted. Maybe they had got damp between October last year when they fitted them and now. The house has had an entire Winter with no heating.

Trouble was, because Simon had already fitted loads of the cladding, he couldn’t completely lift every board he needed to. So, he slid a handsaw under the board and gradually sawed off the twist in the joists until the floor was level.

I think whoever invented the saying ‘there’s more than one way to skin a cat’ was talking about Simon, he won’t be beaten. He’s slightly mad but ingenious!

Next, with the floor now level he could get back to that cute little window.

 

Every. Single. Angle. Is. Fubar.  No, Ladies and Gentlemen, I know by now you’re used to his dramatics and wobblers but not this time, he was telling the truth.

The wall for the frame wasn’t level. The internal walls of the window reveal weren’t level and it wasn’t even square.

It will now, forever be known as the wanky wonky window. There were a few expletives.

But he sorted it out, really, I don’t know why he makes such a fuss, he always manages to find a way around it.

 So, there will be cladding up to the edges and plaster board above it. And no one will ever know that it’s like a fun house window. Apart from you lot.

 

At the end of play yesterday, the bathroom was looking pretty good.

We’re taking today off as we’re BBQing at Jan and Steve’s, I sure hope the goats have been behaving themselves!!

Meanwhile, back in The Bat Cave…