Back to Biganos

After having done the long drive to Biganos on Sunday I did it again yesterday to pick up another 6 cartons of Frosty ‘wave’ pattern tiles.

The reason was that I’d been thinking about my wall design. Previously I’d settled on having a single row of ‘wave’ pattern tiles right around the bathroom as Leroy Merlin showed in one of their promotional images, below.

This was OK for the bathroom and the separate WC but as I want to have the same theme in the kitchen and a part of the ‘cellier’ as well, I was always less sure that it worked in those spaces. In both the kitchen and the cellier I will have worktops with storage underneath and wall cupboards above. The space between the worktop surfaces and the bottoms of the wall cupboards will be exactly the height of two tiles only one of which was to have been ‘wave’ pattern.

The more I’ve thought about it the more I’ve leaned towards having the whole space between the worktop surfaces and the bottoms of the wall cupboards tiled in the ‘wave’ pattern as shown in the following image.

I think it makes more sense and I didn’t have too much time to make up my mind. There’s no stock of the ‘wave’ pattern tiles in any Leroy Merlin store locally, which is why I had to go to Biganos, and I’m of the opinion that the product is going to be dropped. When I went to Biganos last Sunday, the stock there was over 80 cartons and as I write this the figure is down to just over 40, so it looks as though others are doing the same as me and going there especially while stocks last.

The decision means that I will need twice the quantity as previously. It also means that I’ll now have too many plain tiles, but that doesn’t matter as I can return those afterwards for a full refund. On the other hand, if I’d dithered over the ‘wave’ tiles, I think I could have ended up being disappointed. Anyway, the decision is made and that’s it – I’ve other things to think about!

I timed my departure yesterday until after a delivery I was expecting had arrived and sure enough the local postman drove his little yellow van down to my caravan and beeped his horn right on cue. The item I was expecting was an airless spray gun.

I didn’t even know such things existed until I began to research wall and ceiling painting on the internet when it became very clear that with the amount of painting I’ve got to do, not just walls and ceilings but all the shutters as well, I really needed one of these as it’ll probably more than halve the time that I’ll need to complete all the work.

These machines work at very high pressure, so high that if you put your hand in front of the nozzle while it’s working, the spray can penetrate your skin.

They come with a pistol and an extension tube, at least mine did, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to spray all of my ceilings using it from floor level without the need to use steps.

I’ll write more about it when I actually get to use it, but the principle is fairly simple. You dip the ‘supply’ tube into the container of whatever it is you’re wanting to spray together with a ‘return’ tube as the pump delivers more product than is sprayed out of the nozzle. Then you just switch on and start spraying until either you’ve finished or the container empties.

I just hope that it will be easier to use and more successful than another tool that I’ll be using to prepare the walls and ceilings, a Stanley sander on a long pole.

The concept is simple. As it’s on a pole, you can reach up to the ceiling without needing to balance on steps or whatever and then you can just use the sander like a floor mop to get a smooth surface ready for painting. Or at least you’d think so. But no, what they don’t tell you before you buy it is that the wizard designer at Stanley has given its head a universal joint.

So what’s wrong with that you ask? What you find in reality is as you’re ‘mopping’ from side to side, the joint flips over and you end up dragging the back of the head on the surface that you’re trying to make smooth, with the real danger of digging into it and making tram lines. Crazy. If this isn’t the worst, most over-engineered, tool that I’ve ever bought, it certainly must come pretty close to it.

My collection of tools and materials on the floor of bedroom three is growing by the day. Now that the floor screed is down, I was looking forward to being able to empty the storage that I’m paying for monthly and bring all of its contents into the bedrooms. At the rate things are going, though, there soon won’t be enough space.

In order to use the airless sprayer, things have to be carefully masked up. I’m going to fit coving around the tops of the walls throughout the whole house that will be painted white, the same as the ceilings. The walls, though, will be mainly coloured differently and so the coving and edges of the ceilings will have to be masked up before the walls are sprayed. This would be a tedious and time-consuming chore and in the hope of making the process less so, I’ve treated myself to a 3M professional masking machine.

The machine comes with a ‘starter’ roll of plastic film but I’ve already purchased extra rolls of masking paper to use with it as I imagine that I’ll be needing quite a lot of it.

Also shown in the above pic is a Stanley hand plasterboard sander that I purchased at the same time as the version with the extension handle. Luckily it’s so simple that apparently the Stanley design wizard couldn’t think of any way to over-engineer it and make it as difficult to use as the other one 😐