Retirement!
So that’s it then. I’ve finally gone and done it. After thinking about it for over a year, I’ve actually plucked up the courage to jump a sinking ship and set sail on my own!
I’ve heard other people say that when they retire they don’t seem to have any spare time, and so far that’s been pretty much the case with me. Mind you… I did decide to completely revamp the bathroom, and that turned out to be something of a nightmare.
I chiselled off two full walls of old tiles, removed the skirting and practically everything else. By the time I had finished the bathroom was just a shell with the toilet and sink covered in dust and debris.
I then got brother Harry in to do a fresh skim over the area that I intended to paint. There would be new tiles in the shower cubicle.
Tiling Day 1
When I first moved into the house, I tiled the kitchen and bathroom myself. Despite it being my first attempt I was proud to say that I made a very good job of it, so I was confident of tackling the relatively small shower area. ‘It’ll just take a couple of hours,” I confidently told Jill. That confidence quickly disappeared with the first tile cut. The cutting machine that I had used all those years ago was well past its best; and I’d stupidly put the adhesive on the wall before making the cut and testing the fit. The tiles were also bevelled, making them more difficult to cut, and they needed to be applied in a brick-like pattern.
I went into panic mode and suddenly doubted my ability to do the job. I sat around for a while trying to get my head straightened out, then gave myself a good talking to and got stuck in. It went much more slowly than I’d hoped. The machine kept sticking, and my lower back was really starting to hurt. Jill offered to help, but I didn’t really see what she could do. It took me the full day to do one wall, but it looked pretty good. I was pleased with myself and almost looking forward to finishing it.
Tiling Day 2
Jill had gone out for the morning as I set to work on the second wall. I was now in severe pain with my back, and despite taking pain killers I was yelping out at times, and having to step away to slowly straighten up. At least it would get easier the higher I got.
I’d got about half-way up when Jill returned. She stood in silence for a while, summoning up the courage to tentatively ask, “Do you know the tiles aren’t meeting in the middle?”
I thought she meant the small gap in the corner which would be covered by a plastic strip. But as I straightened up and stepped away, I saw the disaster unfold. I’d been in that much pain despite it being right under my nose. I hadn’t noticed that the lines were getting slightly higher with each row, to the point where there was a very noticeable difference. Play was abandoned for the day.
Tiling Day 3
Despite the previous day’s disaster, I approached the task full of determination and pain-killers. This time Jill was going to be on hand, and I have to admit she should have been there from the first.
First job was to remove the errant tiles. Thankfully the adhesive was still soft. They came off and were scraped clean pretty easily. I did however, have to send Jill out to get another tub of adhesive.
I took the tiles back to the point where the joints had begun to part ways, and began to rebuild. As I worked my way up, I realised that I also needed to remove more tiles to the left in order to create straight lines. Jill worried that I was taking away too many, but I was determined to make the job right.
When it came to replacing the tiles, work progressed much more quickly. Jill realised that if she put a little side pressure on the guide as I was cutting tiles, we could get through them without it sticking. And as she passed me up tools and spacers, it meant much less climbing up and down for me. I pumped the air with my fist as the last tile was laid.
Painting & Papering
Once the fresh plaster was dry, it was time for lining paper and paint.
I completed the small area next to the shower so that I could replace the large towel radiator. The one with the loose pipe that tried to disappear into the floor boards as soon as any weight was put on it. This made balancing and re-mounting the radiator more than a handful. But after three attempts and several leaks, a small victory had been attained.
It was now time to start on the big stuff.
Did you know that if you emulsion a wall that’s been treated with PVA, that the paint starts to bubble up and dissolve? I didn’t until now!
I was just going to paint the sink-side wall as it was pretty sound. But then I decided to put backing paper on to match the other walls. It bubbled up quite a bit so I took it off and put paint on instead. That reacted with the PVA and ended up a horrible sticky mess. I scraped it off, washed it down, and put extra thick backing paper on. It looked okay and I managed to get the first coat of emulsion on.
So now I’d gone through 2 rolls of paper, 2 tubs of adhesive, 2 tubs of paint, and a mini bout of abject depression.
But then it got worse!
The window wall had been badly affected by rainwater from a leaking gutter some time ago. Due to not having a cavity, we didn’t know about it until I discovered water running down the interior wall. The lining paper I had put on that wall was also starting to bubble. When I peeled a bit back to consider replacing it with thicker stuff, the plaster came with it. I spent several days trying to come to a decision, but after a chat with Harry I decided to pull the paper off and hope for the best.
Several days later I had finished chipping off a whole wall of rotten plaster. Harry once again volunteered to do a re-skim, but we had to wait until he returned from one of his many holidays.
In the meantime, I was trying to work out how to fix the new skirting and wall panelling. There was a drop of over 2 cm from the door to the window. I thought about propping the skirting up at one side, cutting it at an angle, or getting a joiner in to do it. I’m normally very practical and a good problem solver. I don’t know whether it was the effect of the previous problems, or advancing age letting me down, but I just couldn’t get my head around what to do. I had a mental block and asked partner Jill to help. After a little head scratching, she came up with the simple and obvious answer. We drew a level line across the wall where the panels should come to, then all I had to do was cut an angled piece from the bottom of each one so that the top would be level when placed onto the sloping skirting!
We then decided that neither of us was happy with the silk finish emulsion so decided to go over it again in matt… after the wall had been re-plastered.
I filled in time priming and painting all the MDF, cutting and mitring the skirting and dado rail, ready for the big push.
The Flooring
Next job was the vinyl floor covering. To make fitting easier, I was going to lay it before doing the skirting, and also chose to remove the toilet and sink rather than trying to cut around them.
I spent quite some time over this, carefully trimming bits from each side to make sure the pattern was nicely centred. It all went pretty well until it came to the PVC covers which hid the toilet waste pipe. I cut separate pieces of vinyl for these, carefully matching the pattern on the floor. It was while gluing the second of these in place when the now freestanding toilet behind me decided to put in a sudden appearance. I hadn’t drained the cistern before moving it, and the weight of water overbalanced the thing. It crashed to the floor, flooding it with the water! Thankfully nothing broke, but it took quite some time and a lot of swearing before I managed to clean up and finish the job.
The flooring did look very nice however.
The Cladding
I’d bought myself a jig saw to facilitate the MDF cutting, and set to with a table in the garden enjoying the good weather. As I’d already prepared the skirting and dado, the first part went quickly and smoothly. For the first time since starting this project I was starting to feel optimistic. There were some awkward bits due to uneven walls, but with the help of cardboard sheets I created templates before cutting to ensure a good fit. It seemed that things were started to run smoothly….
Plumbing
Plumbing is definitely not one of my strongest skills. I’d asked someone working a few doors along to give me a quote for fitting the new sink and toilet; but he took so long to get back to me that I ended up doing it myself.
The sink gave me a few problems, I had a series of leaks and had to redo the joints several times before declaring the job done.
The toilet however, was another matter altogether.
I had bought a new waste pipe, but when I tried to push this into place, I found something was blocking it. There was a strange, thick fibrous growth which proved almost impossible to remove. I managed to cut away a small part of it and forced the pipe into position. It didn’t work; the toilet was now backing up when flushed.
I had to pull the toilet out and attempted to cut away more of the growth. I couldn’t shift it. I took a saw to the waste pipe, cutting it away as close to the wall as I could, replacing it with a new piece.
The growth clearly went all the way through to the outside drain pipe, and although I was now able to reconnect the toilet easily, it still wasn’t flushing properly. I came to the conclusion that this weird thing was made up of layer upon layer of calcified dental floss. Although I had been disposing of this in a bin for quite some time, for many years I’d been flushing it away. Bits had become stuck, knotted together, and the snake got thicker as it disappeared through the bend. In cutting through it, I’d created a wide flat surface that had previously tapered off near the toilet. I was going to have to remove the lot somehow.
Operation Drainpipe
I dreaded to think how much I would have to pay someone to do this job, and thought I might have to replace the whole pipe. But then I thought of a cunning plan… if I cut through the drain pipe part way down, I could push the lower part aside and pull the beast through from the outside!
A couple of years earlier, when having a new boiler fitted, the plumber had pointed out a strange fibrous growth at the point where he had cut a hole for the condensing pipe to go into. It was about four feet from the ground. I cut some of it away with a Stanley knife and thought no more about it. Until now. The first part of my plan worked. But I wasn’t quite prepared for how big the string monstrosity was. I wasn’t able to push the pipe aside, I had to fully remove it.
The Monster!
With the monster exposed, all I had to do now was put on some gloves, climb a ladder, and pull.
The bloody thing wouldn’t budge! The sticking point was the bend where the pipe exited the bathroom wall. The substance was so solid that I couldn’t pull it through. I had to go a little higher, and with brute strength, shove the thing back as hard as I could before pulling again. Fraction by tiny fraction it began to move. I had to stop for a rest several times, but finally I felt I was nearly there, all it was going to take was one last mighty heave.
As I made that last effort, my foot slipped off the damp rung of the wooden ladder. Luckily I had the extension wall behind me , otherwise I would have fallen backwards. But I bounced off and started to fall. My right leg went between the rungs and as my body rotated I felt sure it was going to snap. I screamed as I felt the pain and put my arms out to try and break the fall as I was dropping head first towards the footpath. I managed to reduce the impact, but the top of my head still hit the concrete with a sickening crunch. I’m not sure whether I momentarily lost consciousness, but I was certainly stunned. I didn’t move for a few moments, thinking that I had somehow survived the fall. But as I slowly got to my knees, I saw the blood dripping onto the wet floor. When I tried to stand up, I felt the pain in my back, I felt sure I’d done some damage to my spine. I knew I needed help, and decided to call Jill at work to get her to take me to the hospital. But first I needed to get cleaned up a bit, I had landed on top of the monster that had led to my downfall!
I grabbed an old tea towel to stem the flow of blood, picked up a bandage, and made my way to the bathroom to clean my head. Bandage in place, I struggled out of my filthy clothing, leaving it where it dropped, carefully climbed into clean jeans and went downstairs to make the call.
After taking painkillers, I propped myself up against the sink to wait for Jill. The pain in my back was killing me, I could neither sit nor stand properly.
At the hospital, I checked myself into A&E and was quickly put into a wheelchair. Thankfully I didn’t have to wait long to be seen. The now blood soaked bandage on my head, and the fact that I’d suffered a heavy blow, meant that I was a priority. After a short while, I was checked over by a doctor and given a gown to wear. I was unable to undress myself and had to be helped. Then it was time to wait for a series of tests, grimacing every time a pain shot through my leg.
The first priority was an MRI head scan, followed by multiple x-rays. I was really struggling to walk, I had to use handrails with Jill holding up my other side. At one point my feet actually started to drag along the floor. Miraculously however, my brain was undamaged, and my spine was intact. I did have a fractured and badly dislocated finger though!
The pain in my back was obviously from the impact, there was some soft tissue damage. The scans and x-rays had shown that I had signs of arthritis though, which explained the pains I’d previously been experiencing in my lower back.
My leg wasn’t broken, just badly bruised and there were several chunks of skin missing. It was going to take quite some time to heal.
You’re Pulling My Finger!
So my tests showed that I had escaped major damage, but I still had to wait to have my mangled finger reset. This clearly was not a priority, as by the time it was done we’d been in Hull Royal Infirmary for nearly eight hours.
When the nurse practitioner finally called me through, he made the mistake of explaining that he’d only done this once before, and had been waiting for a doctor to come and supervise. That didn’t exactly fill me with confidence! Several injections went into my hand, but I’m not certain that enough time was left for the anaesthetic to take effect. The doctor held down my arm while the nurse started to pull. I screwed my face up in pain as he struggled to get my finger straight.
“Are you okay,’ he asked me.
“It’s painful but I can take it!” I lied.
Under the doctors guidance he pushed, pulled and twisted until there was a loud crack as the joint clicked back into place. He smiled in surprise saying “Well we all heard that!”
He went to get some ointment for my head, and as he came back in he saw that I was about to pass out. My face had gone deathly white and I was about to fall off the bed. Thankfully, the moment passed, and anaesthetic finally started to kill the pin in my hand.
The last job was to have my head cleaned up. The bandage had to be soaked to soften the dried blood. Then the skin was cleaned up, and treated with an antibiotic ointment. There had been a cut several centimetres long, and lot of skin had been scraped off.
A couple of days later I had to return to the hospital for an operation on my finger. The x-ray had revealed some bone splinters which had to be washed out, so it was cut open, irrigated, stitched back up and bandaged together with an adjacent finger. By the time the bandage was removed, my finger had set with a permanent bend in it. I should have been sent straight for physio, but someone neglected to tell me. It wasn’t until I’d had a follow up at my own doctor’s that the subject of physio was brought up. I did go for a few sessions, and there was some improvement, but a full recovery wasn’t possible. I had to give up eating my stir-fries with chopsticks!