Thursday 18 October 2007

Bathroom renovation days 6, 7 & 8

Slowly getting there...

Our walls have chicken pox!


Well, our lovely plasterer sealed up all the cracks and crevices beautifully, but then the tiler popped around to see what had to be done and I began to think my good luck with tradespeople had run out. First of all, he grumbled about the size of the room, told me he charged more for the floor tiles and mosaic feature tiles, then proceeded to tell me how difficult it would be to do my feature tiles. Um, are you or are you not, a TILER? Seriously, all I want is for a few mosaics to be placed between the top of the vanity and the bottom of the mirror. Now, you'd think this was a common thing, but obviously not. He didn't get it "you want the tiles as a border around the room?" NO "You want the tiles as a border around the mirror?" NO! Gosh, I had to find a picture from a catalogue of something similar and then he told me "well, that's going to be a real pain and will just have to fit in with my rows." Hmmm, I think he was the real pain...

My builder and I rolled eyes after he left - he hadn't worked with this guy before and apologised, saying he hoped he wasn't going to be a problem. He couldn't believe his attitude and said I should be able to get what I want. I agree. The most annoying thing about all this was I spent the whole weekend attempting to work out how I could possibly make the feature work around "his rows" and even did the one thing I hate most in the world - maths - to try and make it as easy as possible for him.

So, Grumpy turns up on Monday morning and proceeds to waterproof the bathroom. He doesn't make eye contact with my husband, Steve, refuses to even look at Zak who is doing everything in his power to get his attention, and finished off saying if he doesn't turn up on Wednesday, he's dead (he was having minor surgery on the Tuesday). After he's gone, Steve mentions he doesn't trust him and I nod. I think Zak has good sense of character too, because the whole day he was whingy! Quite a contrast to everyone else who's worked on our bathroom - most of them have even scored extra work out of us. I spoke to electrician about a couple of things, the plumber is going to fix my leaky kitchen taps and the plasterer smoothed out a few other walls we messed up when moving windows around. So to have Grumpy so, grumpy, is quite the change...

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