Weekend Plumbing

– Saturday morning, but unfortunately no sleep in.  Ryan the plumber is coming today to finish some of his work.  A lot of the underfloor sewerage seems done, but the pipe to the toilet needs doing, and he’s going to start on the 1^st fix for all the taps.  He needs to run all the pipes in the walls before the lining boards go on.

He was meant to arrive at 8, so we’re up showered and ready…Then we wait.  Finally, about 9 he turns up!  Grrr.

We let him at it as we need to go out to Parramatta to pick up the laundry tub.  We’ve gone with a fancy black powder coated one.  It’s narrow at about 40cm, but instead of a door it has two drawers.  We think this will be super useful.  Probably twice the price of a regular tub though!

On the way out to Parramatta there is an Electrical wholesalers, who is meant to stock this infrared panel heater I’m interested in.  Justine wants to see and feel the heat, as she’s not convinced.  The builder is recommending underfloor heating, but besides being expensive, it appears it needs to pretty much run 24/7 during the winter.  The only other options really are some pretty crappy fan or bar heaters, none of them really float my boat.

Anyway, we arrive at the Silverwater outlet, and they advise they don’t have them in stock and don’t have them on display.  I knew I should have called to confirm, at least it wasn’t much of a detour our here.  He does let us know that their Chatswood outlet does have them however.

We continue onto Parramatta and collect the laundry tub. On the way we discuss it and think what the hell, let’s go to Chatswood and have a look.  We do of course call ahead to make sure they have them.

I get a call from the plumber, he wants to confirm the details of the bath.  I tell him it’s the 1600mm one, but he needs the width, we agree it must be the 700mm wide one

Finally at Parramatta, we collect the tub which for some reason took ages for him to find and bring to the car.  It’s just small enough to fit in the boot.

Over to the backend of Chatswood, which was damn chaos on a Saturday morning.  We see the panels.  I like them, Justine is still to be convinced.   As decision still deferred.

Back over the Harbour Bridge and we practically drive past home and go to Cass Bros.  Justine has one last loop around to confirm the laundry mixer she’s picked is still the best option and I go looking for the bath.  ….. Baths, what a saga.  Almost all baths these days are Acrylic, our old one was enamel steel and I quite liked it.  So after a while we decided to spend the extra and go for a steel bath.  That does limit the options, which for indecisive like us, might be for the good…..  Anyway, I check out the bath that we’ve picked only to discover the 1600mm appears to be 750mm wide.  Shit, I know we really have the space in the plan, so I quickly call back the plumber and let him know.  Fortunately, he says he’ll make it work.  It’s only 50mm, but I think it will be much nicer.

In the meantime, Justine has found a slightly better tap. She swears this wasn’t here a couple of weeks ago when we last looked, as it a little bit cheaper, I happily agree!

Luckly, we get a sales person right away, as this is one of those places that you can wait a while for someone to be free. 

The sales person is pretty happy as we know exactly what we want down to the part numbers, with the bath she asks if we want the 700,, or 750mm, bugger it does come in both sizes!,   We um and ah for a sec, but the plumber has agreed so what the hell, the 750 it is.   Ordered and it will be delivered next Wednesday.  We’ll need to pick the tap up sometime next week, but as Cass Bros is only the next block up from our office, that won’t be a problem…. Easier than going out to Parramatta!

I’d like to say we’re done, but one last visit.    Beaumont Tiles.   They are only another K along Parramatta Road, again we know what we want, so a last look and we can place the order.

They’ll be delivered Friday……It’s all starting to come together.

Home around 1, and Ryan is still finishing off.  All the sewer pipes are in.  He’s just finishing off the 1^st fix on the taps.   No more copper pipes, they now have this semi flexible piping, more like electrical conduit pipe.  They have these fancy connectors that seem so much easier to fit than the old solder joints I’m use to from years ago.

He’s done around 2, so that’s one more task off the list.  So the builders should be able to get the floor down early next week.

After a bit of rest, I remember the wardrobe in Caitlin’s room.  We were going to keep it and get rid of it at the end of the reno, but Angus thinks it better to get rid of it now before replastering the room.  I figure it can’t be too hard to dismantle and it might save me an hour in labour costs, so Liam and I get into it and about an hour later it’s all in pieces.  Pretty easy in the end.