My DIY Week - Day 1

As you may have noticed from my calendar, I've taken this week off. After just over a year in our flat, we decided it's about time we finally got the bathroom done. I've taken the week off to do just that. Claire and I went out and bought a cheap basic bath suite on Saturday, to replace the horrible scalloped effect suite we have at the moment. We also bought some relatively simple white tiles. As we don't plan on living in the flat forever, we thought we'd go plain and simple. That way we won't offend any potential buyer's tastes - or if we do, it will only take a lick of paint to cure.

I thought I'd give a little diary of my DIY efforts.

In the beginning, the bathroom looked like this:

I got cracking today - literally. I started off by pulling off all the old horrible rose pink/painted blue tiles. It was a bit tough at first as I was using a puny little hammer with my flat head chisel, but once replaced with 1.8kg mallet, the tiles almost fell off the walls. By lunchtime, the bathroom started to look like a bit of a warzone...

One thing is for sure, builders in the 60's were just as lazy and excessive as they are today. I discovered that when the tiles were originally put on, they were put on with about 1cm worth of tile adhesive, directly to the tile instead of the wall - over kill big time and lazy too. So I opted to remove this with the tiles. Well, as luck would have it, the undercoat plaster came with it too. So that's tomorrow's job... filling in the gaps of undercoat plaster with new undercoat plaster.

After a hard day's work, with a couple of cuts and grazes, the bathroom is free from those horid rose tiles: