Good Job He’s Handy

And indeed it is a good job I’m handy as I’ve been doing a spot of D.I.Y. these last few months. Not your little have-a-go magazine article project bookshelf or house sign though. No, this one’s been a bit more of a major undertaking. First, there was the conversion of the loft space above the garage to create a room for the youngest two girls, then there was the complete renovation of the bathroom. Coming up there’s a minor fit-out to convert some garage space for the eldest teenager who’s joined us and my personal favourite will be a deck on which to sit and enjoy a cold beer or two.

Suggestions were mooted about someone else to D.I. but the only fool to show his face didn’t even submit a quote, I probably scared the living daylights out of him when I showed him what I wanted in the loft and then said “I’m a little fussy about the finish…”

There’s an understatement. Anyway, we never heard from him again. Then the Tradies came trooping through the door with fancy quotes, groovy DVDs and three-D animated drawings along with lists of conditions and 5 figure prices to boot. So they were promptly dismissed and I ended up D’ing It M’self. Would’ve been nice to support our local cottage industries but I’ve seen some of the waterfront three-storey glass and marble cottages with boat-houses they occupy along the Hacking River and I don’t think they’re struggling. There’s also something of a question mark over whether they represent good value, although I will now concede that the inconvenience factor of an outside loo and sleeping on the lounge room floor could have been worth the premium.

The loft was a test of endurance more than skill or ability, simply because there was so much of it to cover in gyprock plasterboards. First the stud work had to be fabricated around the bare brick walls and open raftered ceiling as well as removing some old paneling. Around 45 square metres of boards had to be screwed and glued, then joins taped and the whole lot filled and sanded smooth so as to appear as one heavenly flat surface with no bumps, lumps or ripples. And it does. Then there were new electrical sockets to wire and fit, a new loft access door to make and the final skirtings and architraves to finish off. Painting it was a doddle as I had little paint-covered helpers for that bit.

Then all of a sudden just as I was fitting the lights to the sanded exposed roof beams the carpet fitters were throwing me out to get going with their bit. An hour later and the whole lot was fitted and finished, just like that and we could move the girls out of our room that they had temporarily taken over into their brand spanking new bedroom.

More disruption than just having to pull out our mattress of an evening to watch telly was to follow for the bathroom. In my heart of hearts I knew it would take more than a week or two or maybe three and even I was fed-up after almost two months but it was a complete strip out of all the old fittings and redesign of the space. Again, older paneling needed to be removed and for more space we took down the wall separating the loo and the bathroom, (although separate toilets and bathroom are usually a must with multiple kids) and it was then that I hit my first hitch. It was a Thursday night when I decided to get the removal of the stud partition wall started and so I took out as much as was needed to make a door sized space, leaving the ragged edges of the tiled bathroom wall until I could remove the whole lot the next night or the weekend. And therein lay my mistake as someone in our family likes to fiddle about with things he shouldn’t. No amount of telling, explaining or instructing can tell Ted not to do something he shouldn’t. He only learns by doing it himself, something I would probably attribute very much to his father…

The very next night he came through to the table having just brushed his teeth for bed, all white faced and peely-whally holding up a sore looking arm and saying that he’d caught it on the sharp tile edges in the bathroom. My heart sank, I knew I shouldn’t have left it half finished. But upon further questioning it became clear that he hadn’t just brushed against the edge, nor had he fallen accidentally onto it. He’d been trying to pry off the edges of the tiles and with all his little weight behind it slipped and snagged the back of his wrist on a sharp tag of fixed tile. I worked all this out later when I found the shred of his bloodied skin. But here he stood with a two centimeter wide and almost as deep cut in the outer-most awkward part between hand and arm, quite clearly in need of hospital attention. Off Mum took him to A&E and some hours later returned a sorry little boy with some sticking plasters type stitches across another little badge of honour.

The entire dividing wall had been removed and made Heatley-proof before the new weekend started the following day. Perhaps I don’t see that living in a house with “ongoing DIY projects” is potentially dangerous, after all I grew up with brick chimney breasts being knocked down, walls forever being built, rebuilt and moved, plasterboards here and there, carpets up or down and a whole host of other projects; it was all par for the course really.

Dismantling the old bathroom was only held up for a short while when I stopped to think about how to remove a 250kg cast iron bath single handedly. With some advice from my plumber I cut around the plug hole with a grinder so as not to break the waste pipes and then merrily smashed the little bath tub to pieces with a large sledgehammer. Controversially we’ve elected not to refit a bath in the somewhat small bathroom, preferring just the large walk in shower but it’s only taken one shower with the kids to realize how much they enjoyed playing in the bath! So they now play in the wide shower tray but somehow I don’t think it’s as much fun.

If the loft conversion was a strong test of my staying with a project then the bathroom was the mother of all those tests. Tiling all the walls, window sills, returns and then the floor was never going to be easy but because around seventy per cent of the tiles were cut ones with the rest being whole tiles it took forever to finish. And pretty much every single tile I had to cut was a different size to the one before and the one after! Says a lot for timber framed 70’s brick houses and the squareness of their walls and floors. Then they had to be grouted and finished off which just seemed to never end. Fitting the vanity and sink unit was easy enough and would’ve stayed dry if I hadn’t mistakenly left one of the system cocks open for the sink cold water feed when I turned on the mains… Talk about water everywhere! I heard it as I approached the front door and broke into a sprint, it was spraying from the open tap in a graceful arc across the room just like a geyser in Yellowstone, and a fair bit of drying out was required after the swearing died down. The toilet installation, which I had thought might be smelly at best and downright disgusting at worst turned out to be the easiest of the lot, didn’t even get a waft of poo when that went into place. And then it was all of a sudden in service. Sink worked, toilet flushed, the shower’s just great and the heated floor works perfectly. The final touches of glass shower screen and polished edge mirror were installed just recently and the whole project is a day short of its finishing snags.

Of course these things tend to take a lot longer due to the interruptions encountered throughout the working days so my predicted finish times for any of these projects are never very accurate. They usually happened at the most inconvenient of moments too, like whenever I had a full size plaster board balanced against a saw horse and box, with dobs of stud adhesive placed along the wall batons ready to go someone would call out from the loo that they needed help. They didn’t really need my help but it was such good fun to have Daddy’s attention they just couldn’t resist, nor could they stop calling. So, still with pencil in mouth I’d leave the workpiece balanced precariously and rush to the little damsel in distress (always Lottie) with a drill in one hand and screws in the other and I’d have to put something down to help her out. There she’d be perched all smiley and happy just handing me the scrunched up ball of loo roll. Once we’d finished it’d be touch and go as to what I was still holding and whether I’d put the pencil, screws or used wet-one behind my ear!

Coupled with the regular breaks for preparing lunch, snacks, drinks and refereeing for those frequent playtime issues the little sidetracks were a major contributing factor to my ever growing love-hate relationship with D.I.Y. But summer’s arriving, the deck now beckons and I can feel the need for some new tools coming on…