This past week included a partial bathroom demolition, all part of the legacy of a the previous owner of our house.

When replacing your bathroom flooring is like running an archaeological dig, you know something has gone wrong. You can date the flooring by the layers. Plywood, followed by tile adhesive, followed by tiles. Yup, straightforward enough. Followed by tile adhesive, followed by tiles. Tiles over tiles. Easier at the time, but a nightmare when things go wrong. And wrong they have gone. A dodgy shower tray job by the previous owner left us with a slow leak into the walls and flooring that eventually came through the kitchen ceiling.

I liked the style of the old tray, but the open end was impractical and allowed water to pool next to the skirting which was rotten as a result. The tray had been sunken into the floor for reasons unbeknownst to us, and was a cheaper plastic one rather than a solid stone resin option. The plan was a straightforward extraction, replacement with a smaller stone resin tray, replacement shower (it was integrated into the screen and had to go too unfortunately), and flooring repair and replacement.

Tiles are the only choice I had considered for a bathroom, but to expedite the job and keep the cost down, we opted for LVT instead. This is an area I knew nothing about so I was straight online to order some samples. Shout out to Luxury Flooring who not only send out as many samples as you want, but include some Yorkshire tea bags and Biscoff to help you in the contemplation phase.

First the tiles came off so the floor and wall could be repaired, then the tray was fitted, and the recess was cut for the shelf in the shower boards. Shower boards were another item I wasn’t really aware of but offer a quick way of making a wall waterproof while saving on the hassle of tiling. The electrician also did his magic on the first install day so the shower processor could be fitted in the loft. Yes, it’s a digital shower. The Mira Platinum, to be precise. The old shower piping was routed up to the loft for the purpose.

The plywood went down, then the shower cubicle was installed, and the flooring and trim was all there was left. There is still a little work to do around the door thanks to the difference in height between the new and old floor. The floor is not level across the threshold, nor is the wooden flooring level with itself. This presents a unique challenge which I am still working on. I also need to replace part of the door frame that was damaged by previous water leakage which may have been a harbinger of what was to come.

For now the skip is in-situ for removal of the waste from the job (mostly tiles and rotten wood), and the rest of it will be filled with junk from the garden. The shower is a tremendous job, allowing precise control over temperature and flow rate. We waste less water in the process, and both the overhead and handheld bits work well. Best thing about it, you can haunt the shower using the phone app…

It’s time to sit back and take a well deserved rest from garden toiling. Although less restful than it could have been, given the challenge the Francesinha presents (pictured at the Lisbon Bakery, much like my Porto encounter). The Portuguese certainly know how to eat.

Storage Woes

Opening the PS5 and getting it started was an immensely exciting experience. So many new games. So many older games with enhanced performance. I better just get downloading…

…or so I thought. Turns out that storage lasted for a few choice games, and that was that. It got so bad that I couldn’t install updates for games, and installing a new one meant choosing another to go. This wasn’t the experience I was promised at the outset. I thought about getting an SSD then and there, thanks the expansion slot, but never pulled the trigger. Now I finally added 4TB additional storage and gave the console a new lease of life. It’s really easy to do, but make sure you get heatsink (or stick one on yourself) as there are concerns about overheating with stock non-heatsink modules.