the mayhem continues

Renovations on Croick Cottage continue unabated. I was only going to do my next post on Monday, because it is so expensive connecting on my cellphone from home, but a) the addiction to blogging is really bad, and b) I am so excited about all the changes and wanted to share them!

We have turned our attention to the bathrooms, where chaos reigns!

This is Andrew, who should be declared a National Treasure, but don't tell anyone because he will get too busy, and I plan to keep him working for the rest of his life! He can turn his hand to anything, and loves these old houses with a passion so he does his work with care and flair! He makes the most wonderful funky furniture using sticks, reeds, seashells, driftwood etc, which could be kitch and awful, but in his hands the pieces become works of art....I'll ask him if I can post some pix so you can see what I am raving about!

He walked past when I was weilding the angle grinder on the outside wall, and asked if I needed a builder. Normally I would have said "no thanks" but I was tired and not looking forward to battling with the pillars, so I asked him to quote. When it was so reasonable, and we had chatted for a minute or so about options, I could tell he was so on the same page as us, and hired him. (I first had to run it past our fierce and determined project manager, Karen, aka Mrs Mouse, who keeps a vice-like grip on the costings of the project!) But, as usual, I digress!

He is helping with the plumbing too, so I'll show you how the bathrooms look now, but then you are not going to see anything more until they are complete, the great unveiling should happen towards the end of next week!

The basin in the downstairs cloakroom is the first thing you see when you come in the front door, and Mrs Mouse made the great mistake of letting me loose to go shopping, with the credit card. :) hee hee, so I came back with a STUNNING new basin and taps for down there, and got Andrew to rip the old grotty one out, watch this space!

The basin in the upstairs middle bathroom was so awkward, right in the doorway as you enter, so out it went, and we will fit a new one in the corner next to the new loo.

Jason found us a nice compact loo that will fit in there much better, and anyway the old one had to go, as you can see, it had a bad crack, which contibuted to the "je ne sais quois" that the aroma of the house had. Seriously, one of the biggest changes to the place is one I can't show you on photos, it is the smell! The dog who lived there must have had serious issues with its urinary tract, psyche or both! the place REEKED of stale urine, and as we removed old carpets etc we hoped it would ease up, but it didn't. It had been left to soak into the floors, so we ended up having to replace all the bathroom flooring too, and the smell as we were sanding the floors yesterday was unreal! But it has definitely made a difference, so once everything is varnished and the new bathroom floors are in, we will be able to breathe freely.

Sanding the old glue and underfelt from the stairs has been a mission, it clogs the sandpaper in no time, but we will persist today.

Ali, I hope you notice I took your comments re safety gear to heart, and am wearing the dreaded face mask!

Look who popped in to visit and ended up helping with the sanding of the floors!

And the building inspector came to check that his mom was doing a good job!

Mrs Mouse and I swung from the rafters to get the painting done, why did they put such high ceilings in these old houses?and we continued to mess up the walls, removing picture rails that were in arb places.

So, back to the grindstone.....more next week.