Day two of the bathroom refurbishment

Recovering from a highly productive visit to Ikea I was out for the count when the alarm went off this morning at 7am. Coffee was barely drunk when Sergio knocks on the door at 8.15am to get started. He is the Lithuanian plumber and his job is to sort out the pipework.

Today however is mainly tiles and tiling which means that half of the boxes narrowing the hallway will be gone. Interesting and possibly boring fact is that they are tiling the whole room before they put in the fittings and we are very happy about that.  I am also able to decide how many shelves I would like and am like a child in a sweet shop.

No sign of the new bath, did I tell you about the upla moment yesterday? The bath turns up and we all stand with our hands on hips admiring it. Sergio asks me where I'd like the taps, I say half way down the side. We are all happy.

What he omitted to do is tell Davis who does what he does best, gets on with any job in hand and proceeds to drill holes in the bath where he thinks the taps will go - at the top. I only know about this when there's a knock on the door and Sergio says "umm, we have an issue with the bath".

Well what could I say when I saw where Davis has drilled the hole, but say sorry that's not going to work, we agreed the taps on the side. That was yesterday and so far today Davis has not turned up for work....

Today should be even more exciting in that I am expecting a delivery from Ikea of two Billy bookcases + two armchairs & a foot stool plus some boxes from the UK of "stuff". How easily one is excited these days, I remember when it used to be booking exotic holidays abroad that got my juices going.

For elevens I made them coffee and gave them the cake. I didn't bother to ask if they wanted any, cos I figured that they are being polite by saying no and at this rate I'll be taking the cake home. Smiles all round when the plate came back empty.

By mid morning the electrician arrived to install the wiring for the underfloor heating. I know, so far the temperature in the flat without the heating on has never fallen below 18degrees but we felt that need to prepare for the arctic conditions and install underfloor heating. Also they started to take out the fittings in the en-suite which means that & I'll cross my legs as I write this, we have no toilet in the flat!

Tiles have gone onto one of the walls, the rubbish is slowing moving out of the guest room into the skip and the en-suite is empty. Except and most importantly for a toilet although I have to flush it with a bucket of water no less! So a good day all round.

Oh and we have a bath but Sergio says not to use it as it is not plumbed in. Sergio has very quickly become my new best friend, clearly won over by my amazing cake baking skills. He helped me lift in the two armchairs from the corridor that the IKEA delivery men left out there.
Also helped me dispose of the humongous cardboard boxes that they came in and even filled up the bucket of water that I would use to flush the toilet.


Finished up the day by attending an author event in Dubray Books in Grafton Street to meet up with Jess Kidd - author of Himself, you should read it, it is excellent. We then went for a bite to eat and a glass of wine, first author event I've attended since leaving the bookshop. It was fun, I think I now get why they are so popular when you are a punter.

Early night as the tiler want to start at 8am! In his broken english - he is from Moldova - he try to persuade me that it really would be 9am if the clocks had not gone back. Picture the scene my friends, a Moldovan with broken English trying to make a joke in Ireland...