Highgrove living; a bathroom demo day full of surprises

As the kitchen is reaching its completion, we are starting with the bathroom renovations. Yes, we are motoring on, might as well get it all done now.

The main house is a two bed two bath cottage, and both bathrooms need renovating.

One is in a lovely looking but quite impractical heritage style. The bath needs resurfacing and the area around the window waterproofing. We both prefer walk-in showers, having lived with a bathroom like this in our South Fremantle house.

I have managed to find new owners for the clawfoot bath and the marble vanity, so they don’t go to waste.

The other bathroom is straight from the early nineties, and has few redeeming features. As we discovered during the demo, it doesn’t have any waterproofing either and the shower plumbing was definitely a DIY job.

So it is Builders Central again from 7 am this morning, and we are without water and power again for most of the day. I keep on forgetting to top up the kettle and my water bottle.

The kitchen is looking great, we should have a fully working gas stove top today. All appliances are in and working. The new lights are up, and we have just the tiles for the splash back to go.

We are very happy with the look and functionality!

The bathrooms have started with demo day. Graham is a cheerful renovator, and part time life coach, originally from Essex. Demo day here had Graham and his sidekick Julian, plus an electrician and a plumber. The drive seemed like a parking lot, and the sound of power tools filled the air.

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We are still living in the loft, it is comfortable and Meisha finds it a safe bolt hole from the noises and strange men around the place.

We had a couple of surprises; the wall around the window next to the shower was soaked through and the wood had rotted. Our replacement window was designed to fit inside the original frame, and now has to fit into a larger space. It means some more building work.

We also found a mummified rat, this is the second one during renovations! This time I managed to snap a photo before he ended up in the bin.

We had to change our lightning plan for the spare bathroom on the go. Nothing like creative thinking under pressure.

We also discovered that we were missing one mixer tap from our order, but on reflection decided to change that to a spout and tap for the outside bath. So another quick call with Highgrove bathrooms.

And we had bought the wrong bidet hoses, so an online order to Bunnings to click and collect.

We are now heading into another three day lockdown. It was announced late this morning, as of 6 pm. We had a good chat about what we think we can and cannot do. We may have to delay the collection from Bunnings, and I shouldn’t go to Brisbane this week.

Thankfully the builder can continue for the moment as it is dry wall and tiling next. It will be another week and a half before we see the electrician and plumber back for the final stages.

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