The Donated House

All cement board is in place, joints taped, bench seat graded for slope and all surfaces tanked with some blue goo Anthony gave me. Here we go.

First I transferred the patterns for the complex upper mosaics onto the walls with a sharpie, a ruler, and an indomitable sense of fuck-it, it’ll be fine.

I did a row around the bottom of larger tile pieces for ease and for better chances of success in the sealing of the bottom edge with silicone. I’m very paranoid about water leakage.

I was VERY lucky to have mosaic expert Sarah May Matthews visiting for a few days, so we shared the load of the lower mosaic work, which was rather back-breaking.

Luckily, although she’s more meticulous and generally better at it than me, she was able to ape my style and our respective sections look pretty similar.

The curvy edge was done in short sections of bars of tile cut on the tile saw, to avoid any pointy-uppy edges. After all, people’s bare bums will be testing this surface.

It all ended up passably smooth and it looks amazing so far.

Grouted up and with a line of blue to break up the two sections, this is the finished bit so far. I’m pretty damn pleased. That’s about 5 days’ work you’re looking at. 5 relaxed Grace-style days, but still.

Meanwhile, I’d done a bit of testing with the coloured tiles for the complicated bits up top.

And I’ve got started on it. From what I’ve done, I think the whole top bit will take maybe 80-90 hours. Better get a move on.

Working diligently to finish the shower before the end of August so that Julian has a working bathroom before autumn.

So much fear paralysis to overcome. Just do it, Grace. Nothing gets done if you’re too scared to even start. You know this…

I seem to be medium-resilient lately, so I’ve managed to do a pretty good amount of scary, difficult work that I have no clue how to do. It’s almost like the old me is coming back.

And then there’s my comfort zone stuff:

The handles for gate valves apparently only come in red. I thought of buying old steampunk looking ones on eBay, but then it occurred to me to paint the ones that came with the valves.

It is fair to say I am chuffed with the results.

Watch this space for news of the shower mosaic, hopefully coming soon.

Right, here’s a long awaited update. I mean, I’ve been waiting a long time. I don’t necessarily flatter myself that you have. You may have just dropped by because you were bored.

I made some taps!

I don’t know if they’re watertight yet, because I’ve not quite got round to the actual plumbing yet. But they look really pretty.

And I assembled and cut and fixed and oiled and sanded everything in readiness…

And it’s looking pretty fabulous, albeit without any of the actual functioning parts yet. Nor any mirror, tiling, plastering, sides and doors on the cupboards, but progress is progress.

This sink is so effing cool.

Meanwhile, Julian turned 30 and we had a party, some of which was harry potter themed and all of which was food themed.

Birthday pies replaced birthday cake.

I borrowed this awesome dress from REx costume hire, and I am definitely finding the pattern and making myself several of them. Except maybe not the impractical sleeves.

How many times do you find Newt Scamander, Lucius Malfoy (minus blonde wig) and Scabior nattering in your kitchen?

And next on the birthday hi-jinx list, a boating trip on Coniston Water in the Lake District.

This day was amazing. I cold emailed the Arthur Ransome Trust to ask if they could point me toward somebody who might be willing to take me and Julian out for a sail and the absolute nicest guy, Geraint, who answered my email, gamely volunteered his services and that of his wife and their beautiful boat Peggy Blacket, which is a replica of one of Ransome’s own boats that appears in some of the books he wrote.

Now then, I am not a super-nerd about Swallows and Amazons, that’s Julian’s department, so I will not go on about that stuff. Instead, I will go on about HOW GREAT OUR TRIP WAS because it was truly magical.

These two fabulous people took us for a lovely sail, taught Julian how to steer and turn and tack and all sorts of genuine sailing skills while I was allowed to just be ballast which suited me fine.

Geraint and Helen are just the best kind of folk, were truly welcoming and enthusiastic about the boat and the lake and the books. The whole experience was ten times better than I could have imagined.

I earned many, many girlfriend points for this.

After the sail, they gave us some tips on finding this cute little hut in the woods, which was the model for something called the Dog’s Home in one of the books. I have been unable to figure out why it’s called that, I don’t think there was a dog involved. But anyway, it was a nice walk and a pretty little forest hut to imagine camping out in for a summer adventure.

The rest of our time in the Lakes was spent gawping at lakes, unsurprisingly, which was relaxing and delightful. Below is a view of Peel Island, which was Wildcat Island in the books.

And then we went and walked the pretty, less-touristy bits of Windermere.

And had a picnic on a rocky point near a castle.

So that 48 hours in the lake district immediately made my top 10 short breaks ever. I am going to arrange my life from now on with a view to having time for more of that!

Anyway, gratuitous cats:

He’s just adorable.

And finally: you know that cherry tree, the Montmorency I practically killed myself trying to source in England and planted about 6 years ago and it never really did anything and was to bushy and vigorous for where it was and really wasn’t pulling its weight in terms of output? Well last winter I ring-barked it to kill it so I could grow a climbing rose up its carcass. It not only survived my botched murder attempt, but it’s finally putting out fruit (as a result of my botched murder attempt? Who knows…) so we will have a cherry pie tomorrow and the tree may well live to try this again next year.

Here’s a pile of all the news for the last… how long has it been anyway? Seems like months…

I saw a couple of fawns on the lane on the way home one evening. No mum in sight, haven’t seen them since. Hope they’re ok.

We had a caravan destruction party, invited Rich with predictable results. Nobody destroys things quite like Rich. Good to have you back, mate.

Managed to lay waste to one of them and strip the other. Everyone worked very hard and hopefully had a good time. Several people suggested I could charge for the right to come and hit things with crow bars.

Always with the fire and sausages.

And back to work. Having shoveled a ton (literally) of quicklime into buckets and wrestled it up the hill, I set about making hot mix render. I got good at it by the end. A scholarly paper will follow just as soooooon as I get around to it.

I had trouble finding much instruction on the subject when searching, so I am going to be one source of a detailed what-we-did-and-how-it-went article, at least. Thank every god and Anthony we had a cement mixer. I would have died mixing it by hand.

Here’s Rae getting at the awkward bits.

And Miki getting at the only slightly less awkward bits. The whole site was awkward, but they did a beautiful job. It all went as well as one could possibly expect right up until the last day when it all went a bit to hell.

We ran out of the good sand, ordered some more from a different supplier, it was crap, tried to remedy it with some other sand… hose exploded about 20 times… it was all a bit dire. So we sacked off the last bit and will do it when I’ve had a chance to get some more decent sand.

Anyway, reasons to be cheerful: the roses are all in glorious full bloom.

And we had a lovely visit from Julian’s brother Paul, visiting from Croatia, hopefully the first visit of many.

And the weather has been at least occasionally glorious, which Jack wastes no time in exploiting.

Nor do we. We spent Saturday morning wild swimming at the best place for wild swimming that I know in the whole world. Not telling. You’ll have to get yourself invited to come with us if you want to know.

And finally, a gratuitous plug for my other business: I Make Everything. I made my own swimming costume after being unable to find anything that a) I liked, b) could keep my considerable assets where I wanted them and c) didn’t cost, like, £400. Go read all about it at my other blog.

I got given a lovely old Belfast sink by Steven years ago, and kept it, I’m embarrassed to say, in the garden. Obviously all covered in weeds. It needed a good clean.

And it needed hauling to the first floor, which I did with Julian’s help and without incident, thank god. It’s bloody heavy.

Also, countertop fits and is nearly fixed in place (thanks Nic and Rob) on the carcasses I made out of the old sauna interior cladding (thanks Anthony).

All in all it’s going rather well.

Except for the hateful, hideous task of rendering the rest of the building, which is luckily going to carried out more by Rae and Miki than by me, but unfortunately, I can’t just go spend two weeks on a beach in Tenerife and come back to find it done, I’ve got to actually help.

And also do all the prep, so today Julian and I put up four bays of the dreaded quick stage scaffolding. Soon be over.