Nightmare on Swans Lane!

The newly-finished bathroom - 6 years ago

 After the abortive attempt to sell 'Millstone Cottage' earlier in the year, my letting agent became quite concerned about the 'damp problem in the bathroom' highlighted (along with the roof) by the guy's surveyor. I didn't want it to become such a problem that my tenant would decide to leave so thought I'd better send the boys round to see what was going on. In the event, only one member of the building team of 'Bodgit and Scarper' was able to attend site and what he had to report was not encouraging! The tiles at the tap end of the bath appeared to be held on by gaffer tape and moved at the slightest touch, and the floor area next to the bath was so rotten that you could push a finger into it! My ex (I have never worked out if he is 'Bodgit' or 'Scarper') offered to help me get the bath out but could not help much more as he was busy on other jobs so, on a Monday morning three weeks ago, I loaded up my little car with my toolbox and several other boxes and bags of equipment and drove over to the cottage.

The sight that met me was daunting to say the least and became more so once we had removed the bath. Left alone in what had once been a nice bathroom, I set to work to find out the extent of the damage. As I removed tiles from the walls I was confronted by plasterboard walls that had turned to soggy porridge and which collapsed at the slightest touch – in the end I took all of the plasterboard off to a height of about 4 feet, and 5 feet at the tap end of the bath. Behind the plasterboard and between the stud walling was expanded polystyrene insulation which had soaked up the moisture like a sponge, so that all had to come out too. Although very damp the timber of the stud walling had not got any rot in it and, after three days and nights of running the dehumidifier, had dried out quite well, so that was one good thing!

Devastation!

Once I had removed all of the problem walling and deposited it outside, I could turn my attention to the floor. Using a jigsaw, I cut across the chipboard flooring boards and removed the soggy, rotten pieces. As this was trial and error I ended up having to make a second cut to get rid of all the rot. Under the chipboard flooring was more insulation – luckily, this time it was the type with dense foam sandwiched between two foil skins, and did not appear to have been affected by the water, which was just as well as beneath that and on top of the DPM (Damp Proof Membrane) was a sizeable puddle! I was still none the wiser, at this point, as to where all this water had come from as there had been no leaks from the pipework under the bath. At first I thought that my first ever attempt at tiling had been so rubbish that water from the shower had been seeping through cracks in the grouting over the last five years and soaking down the walls but, as the days went by and I exposed and treated more areas of damp, I became convinced that the water had actually been soaking up the wall not down and this would suggest that a large amount of water had been spilled over the bath and found its way through the flooring to the DPM and then soaked up the plasterboard, which acted as a wick. Whether one of my previous tenants had allowed the bath to overflow or had a shower without using the shower screen, I will never know, but that is what I suspect.

Re-instatement begins

Armed with some basic measurements, I went off to see the wonderful lads at the local builders' merchants. They are total stars and never fail to come up with workable solutions to my many and varied problems. I ordered new flooring board, a cement board instead of plasterboard (unaffected by damp conditions) and new insulation for the walls and it was all delivered and off-loaded into the cottage that same afternoon! There then began the arduous task of re-instating the bathroom. I must admit I would rather work on a completely new project than try and do remedial work!

One of the biggest headaches was the tiling – six years ago I bought standard 6” x 6” white tiles from B & Q and some border tiles with a blue 'bubble' pattern on. I had put one border about three tiles down from the ceiling and the other one about three tiles up from the bath and this border had had to be removed. There was no way to successfully remove the tile adhesive from the back of the tiles without breaking some and I had no spares so Jeni and I headed off to B & Q at Yeovil (first time I've been to Yeovil in decades!). Firstly, the border tiles that I'd seen online and thought would look OK with the upper border, looked all wrong and were thicker too, so would have stood proud from the surrounding tiles and secondly, the standard white tiles were a different white! I had already tried three other outlets and all three had different shades of white so, at this point I gave up and resigned myself to having white tiles that DID NOT MATCH! Aaagh – my OCD-side was considering ripping the whole lot off the wall and starting again from scratch but, in the end, I managed to quell my revulsion, bought the white tiles and some blue mosaic tiles to cut up for the border and we headed back.

My friend (and landlady) Mary came to help me do the tiling and we were getting on brilliantly – she was putting adhesive on the tiles, handing them to me and I was slapping them on the wall – until we came to inserting the border tiles. It was at this point that we realised that, although we had carefully fixed a batten in a horizontal position from which to get our datum line, the original tiles ran slightly downhill towards the tap end! (I had obviously tiled to the line of the bath originally and not to a measured horizontal) With a resigned and defeated air I prised all of the tiles back off the wall and we cleaned them and the wall – an entire afternoon's work wasted – we could have cried. The next day I went back and had another go and eventually got the spacings correct so that it didn't look too awful (I'll definitely never be able to live there again, now!)

My ex kindly came back and helped plumb the bath back in so that I could finish the tiling, seal the edges, put back the shower screen and seal that and then repaint two walls that had become stained/damaged by the damp, re-box in the pipework and lay carpet tiles! Phew!

It took two weeks of almost daily visits to complete the project and although I could appreciate the glorious view from the cottage once more, I was heartily sick of the place by the end. I hate working in a confined space, especially with someone else's belongings around and no space to manoeuvre materials and tools. I was just relieved that, on the days when I had to cut flooring board and wall board, the weather was dry enough for me to work outside. During this time my poor tenant became a displaced person and was camping on friends' floors, I think. Needless to say I've let him off the rent for those two weeks.

On the last evening that I was there, desperately trying to lay carpet tiles before I had to go off for a farm sit the next morning, my good friend, Grainne, who lives just around the corner, asked me up for a cuppa before I set off home. I gratefully accepted but said I would be a little while yet and about half an hour later I received another text 'I've made spaghetti bolognese, would you like some?' What a lifesaver! I was so tired that I wasn't sure I could safely drive home and a meal and a glass of wine and some catch up time was just what I needed to recharge the batteries. Brilliant!

I just hope that, whatever caused the damp problem in the first place, does not re-occur as I do not want to have to tackle that job again, but at least I have extended my DIY skills a bit more – now, should I tackle roofing next??

The newly-refurbished bathroom - last week!