Forgot to mention yesterday that I owe all my plumbing skills (such as they are) to my late dad, who gave me the confidence to go ahead and try it, and also showed me some of the tricks of the trade. He came up and moved our kitchen sink for us, and opened up the world of delights of soldering copper pipes together. As a result of this I undertook the bathroom plumbing on my very lonesome (except for the loo, which I (a) didn’t fancy and (b) really didn’t want to get wrong!)
Never-the-less, the bathroom involved removing the old sink and bath and shower, and plumbing in new-uns of the same, with a minimum amount of disaster, actually. The stuff that didn’t go entirely right included
- Melting the (plastic) waste pipe for the bath with the blow-torch (oops – but easily fixed with a new bit ‘o’ pipe)
- Leaky taps on the sink (this was a huge pain in the bum to fix, as we’d already sealed it in before we noticed the dripping)
- Rotating/wobbly taps on the bath
Not actually fixed this last one yet – not a huge problem, you just have to hold the tap when you turn it on/off, as otherwise the whole body rotates. This is an even bigger pain in the bum to fix, as I fear taking the side of the bath off will mean never getting it back on again, plus I’m not sure exactly how to tighten the buts in any case. Sorely tempted to whack a bit of clear super-glue onto the base of the tap…
Oh actually one other thing that went wrong was sealing in the bath, where I used ivory sealant by mistake (instead of white) – but it’s actually peeling away anyway, and in places it’s gone a horrible black colour, which I assume is mould.So that’s got to be taken off, and the correct stuff applied instead, but that can wait for another day.