Stand aside - the Foreman's arrived!!

WOW is it really Sunday again already?  I am enjoying looking back at our blog and seeing just how much we have achieved, not just since we arrived here permanently, but also since Mr M began the barn conversion.

This week we are really starting to feel that the end is in sight - just 6 more weeks and we will be there!

The shower is coming along.  We could have purchased a fibre glass prebuilt unit, that would have been much quicker and easier, however also more expensive.  As Mr M is a fairly proficient tiler and we aren't under any time constraints we decided to go with a mud pan, and tiles.

So the mud pan was started last week, this week he laid the shower pan membrane, no holes allowed..

Interesting fact about shower pans... did you know that concrete leaks? well it does, and so will tiles, well the grout will, so you put down the rubber membrane to fully seal the base, but wait, how do you know it won't leak?

Well you fill it with water of course, and to stop any water leaking down the drain hole you put a water balloon on top of it, or a variation there of....

Once you know it is leak proof you line the walls with tar paper, all the way to the floor.....

And then you put hardi (cement) board onto the walls, this is what the tiles will be fixed onto...

And to make sure that the step can be tiled, that also needs to be concreted, so a wire frame is built and the cement will be fixed onto this..

So this week he will finish off the mud pan, another layer of concrete, some more wire mesh and then a final layer of concrete...

We also took delivery of all the tiles this week... what a result that was!  We ordered packs of 12x12 inch white tiles to do the shower walls......

And then some smaller tiles for the floor.  Apparently the smaller tiles are ordered individually, so Mr M dutifully ordered 15 tiles, enough to do the floor of the shower pan.  He went out to accept delivery and the driver unloaded 2 pallets, hmmmm thought Mr M, I wasn't expecting this many! Turns out they had sent us 15 packs of ten, so 150 tiles, only 135 too many! but enough to tile the full bathroom floor now, so saves us having to buy linoleum to do that with! 

Turns out buying tiles is a VERY inexpensive event!

We are basically kitting out the entire interior in white, we don't have many windows and are aware that we need to keep it as light as possible inside.  So white tiles and walls in the bathroom, but just white would be a bit drab! I have found these amazing "Mexican" tiles that we will be adding to the shower in places.   This is just a small selection of what we have, we ordered 100 for the princely sum of $50 delivered to the door.  What a deal, what a steal these were - Thank Goodness for the internet!

It's going to be so pretty!!!!!

I might have to take over in the receivables department.... the delivery driver was only just pulling away from the kerb when Mr M managed to drop a box of tiles and of course some of them are now cracked, just 2 though, naturally we brought more than we needed for such eventualities, I kind of thought they might make it at least through the gate!

We got our pellet stove delivered last week, and so this week Mr M installed it, fitted the flue to the outside of the building..

And installed the stove inside, it is amazing, we are thrilled with it, heats the space up a treat and it is now snug as you like in there...

We had a pellet stove in our last house, and were extremely happy with it.  Most people round here have wood burners, however we believe that pellet stoves are more sustainable for us than a wood burner.  Wood pellets used in pellet stoves are tightly condensed, which makes burning them a low-moisture, highly efficient process. There are less harmful gases released into the air through wood pellet burning than with regular wood-burning stoves.

In addition, wood pellets are not a primary product of the forestry industry. Rather, they are a byproduct made with recycled wood from sawmills—usually formed from compacted sawdust and wood shavings, or the unused tops of trees that are cut down for logging.  As logging and lumber are major industries here in the Pacific Northwest it made total sense for us to purchase another one! Always 100% recommendation from us 2!

This weekend we have started on the big job of painting - naturally this is where I step in, I have always been the painter of the family and so after I had left Mr M in charge of the sanding I stepped in to take up the reins!  We are trying to get the ceiling completed - 2 coats of primer before the final white is applied :)

It is amazing what a coat of paint will do, makes it look almost complete....

Now that I am "paintbrush in hand" I think we are on the downhill stretch!

Lots of lovely beach walks this week, I am currently collecting beach glass, eventually we will be setting it into acrylic to make some shower shelves.....

So onwards and upwards, another busy week lies ahead of us!