The problems continue

I’ve just received an email from my builder saying that the floor tiles for my house will be arriving this week but that the mosaic tiles for the floor of the walk-in shower will not be available until the beginning of July. I would think that this will more likely be mid-July based on my experience to date, which poses a problem.

As I’ve explained in previous posts, until the floor tiles are down nothing more can be done inside the house – plumbing, electrical, heating – and unless work on the house restarts very soon we will end up running into August. All work will then stop and will not resume until the autumn which I’ve already told the builder will be unacceptable.

I’ve therefore suggested that the floor tiles are laid throughout the house as soon as possible but excluding the shower area. This will allow for partial tiling of the area of the bathroom wall on which the WC and washbasin are located together with the wall areas in the separate toilet on which the handbasin and WC in there are located, which will allow for all of the plumbing to be installed. This will in turn allow for the heat pump to go in and the electrical work to be completed.

I’m now waiting for a reply but while I’ve been waiting I’ve not been sitting on my hands. While no other work is going on I can be pressing on with internal work of my own, namely the ceiling coving and even the painting of the ceilings. I’ve been hampered in this by the builder playing games by taking away the keys to the double doors in the living room preventing me from opening the shutters. To overcome this and with the aim of also allowing me to work inside at any time, daytime or evening, I’ve today acquired a very useful new tool in the form of a site lamp. It’s very effective as can be seen in the following shots.

It uses high power LEDs as can be seen below.

I’m looking forward to trying it out by getting cracking on the ceiling coving as soon as possible this week. I’ve also got some other stuff going on. I found a supplier of very inexpensive wooden trestles and have ordered 8 of them to be delivered in a week or so’s time. These will allow me to remove the shutters from which I intend to remove all the fittings and lay them flat for spray painting using the high pressure machine that I purchased a few weeks ago.

This should make short work of them and I’ll also be using the machine to paint the interior ceilings and walls, as well as to eventually varnish the interior doors. That way I’ll not be wasting time and be getting jobs done that I’d normally have done after moving in. But the key is to get the main floor tiles down as soon as possible. I can live without a shower for a short while – after all, I’ve been in the caravan without one for two years – but I need to install the kitchen and the floors in the bedrooms so I can get all my stuff out of storage which is ticking up additional cost month by month.