Replacing our bathroom....

It's coming up to ten years since we moved into our house in Cyprus. It's more than ten years since we first saw it, and pondered, and prayed, and decided that it was the right house to buy. As, indeed, the past decade has amply demonstrated.

But back in January 2006, we didn't know what to expect. We didn't really know what we were looking for although we had a few important criteria. At first we tried to find a four-bedroomed house, but they were too expensive in the area we wanted to live. So we started looking at three-bedroomed houses... only to have an estate agent take us a three-storey house which had three bedrooms on the ground floor, which is a separate flat, AND three bedrooms on the top floor, as well as a good-sized room off the living room which could be used as another bedroom.

We fell in love with the kitchen immediately, we saw lots of potential in the main living area, and although the bedrooms seemed a bit small compared to the ones in our rental home, we knew they would be fine.

But we really didn't like the bathroom.

It's not that it was too small, but there was a huge sink unit that seemed to take up almost half the floor space, and there was mould growing around the bath sealant (although everything else was scrupulously clean):

We really didn't like the colour, either. And whereas we could easily repaint other rooms (and did so before moving in) it's a lot more difficult to change bathroom tiles.

Thinking about the bathroom almost put us off the house entirely, but we went back for a second viewing. When we saw it again - and I took the above photo - we realised it wasn't as bad as we had remembered. We still didn't like the style or colours, but it was quite adequate; a great deal better than the one in our rental home (of which I don't think any of us ever took any photos).

Besides, with the amount we sold our UK house for, we had some 'change' when we went ahead with buying this one. We used some of it to buy important items such as a large freezer, and an electronic piano, and a television (since our previous one had quit some months previously), as well as a few extra bookcases. But we promised ourselves that once we'd settled in, we would do something about the bathroom.

Time, as it is wont to do, passed.

Richard replaced the sealant around the bath.

A few years ago, he managed to cut down the shower doors which were a bit broken and somewhat mouldy.

But it's continued to cause frustration. Nothing major, in the scheme of things, but it gets very damp, and the condensation turns to mould on the ceiling and wall tiles. I clean them regularly, but it grows back, and we don't always notice black on the ceiling. We could keep the window open, but it would be VERY cold in the winter. What it needs is an extractor fan... but that's not an easy thing to install without taking the bathroom apart.

The radiator, too, is extremely rusty. Each year it looks worse, and we wonder if it's going to leak. We muttered that it would be nice to have a heated towel rail...

We're not good at getting around to doing things, and time continued to pass, but we seriously needed a new shower on the ground floor (which we use as a guest apartment). The doors have been wonky since we moved in, and are getting worse. There's mould there too. And we have been given money specifically for the upkeep of the guest flat...

So at the end of last year, we started looking at new showers, and other bathroom fittings, curious to know what was available, and what the likely cost would be, and whether we would even be able to find anything suitable.

Finding a new shower for the guest flat wasn't too difficult, but we also wanted to know what might - theoretically - be possible in our main bathroom. We discussed having only a shower with no bath, to make it feel bigger. But occasionally we both like to take a bath, and it's important to have one for visiting children.

Visiting the bigger DIY stores was discouraging; nothing was inspiring, and we'd almost given up when we decided to look at a local bathroom supplies place. There we saw a corner bath, the kind of thing Richard had always rather craved, which would take up rather less space (or less awkward space, anyway) than our current bath.

We saw a sink we liked too, and Richard said he would be able to build a small, neat shelved unit to go around it.

I didn't think we needed a new loo; this is our current one:

But they're not expensive, and this one has a lot of scale (and needs a new seat lid anyway)... so we thought that if we were buying the rest new, we should go ahead with that, too.

We contacted the builder who has done some other work on the house, and he gave us a quotation for doing the entire bathroom - removing all the tiles and old units, plumbing in the new ones to our specifications, re-painting the ceiling, doing any necessary plastering, putting up tiles... at least a week's expert work. It wasn't cheap but not unreasonable either.

Richard was eager to go ahead, but I was still resistant. Partly because I have an inherent dislike of spending money on myself (part of my Scottish heritage, perhaps) and also partly because I find it extremely stressful having builders in the house, no matter how friendly and efficient they are. There's inevitable noise, and dust, and chaos... I really, really dislike it.

But I'd been wanting to spend a couple of weeks in the UK visiting relatives, as it's over a year since we've been, and so the idea formed that I would go on my own, and Richard would get the bathroom done in my absence.

The vague idea turned to more concrete plans in the past month. My flights and other travel arrangements are booked, and one of our bedrooms is currently full of bathroom fittings and fixtures. We've chosen tiles and paint, and the builders are booked for this week. They're going to replace the guest flat shower first, and that should have been happening today.

This morning Richard had a message to say that they're going to start a day late. They're still finishing a previous job that took longer than expected.

I can't say I'm unhappy about that. That means they'll do the guest flat shower tomorrow, and probably won't start work on the main part of the house until Wednesday, by which time I'll be a few thousand kilometres away.

The only slight problem is that the heated towel rail (to replace the rusty radiator) was not in stock when Richard put the order in, so had to be ordered from abroad. And last week there was a port strike in Limassol. I gather it's now been called off, so we hope that shipments will be unpacked and will make their way to the relevant stores in time for us, and for the many other frustrated customers awaiting bathroom and other parts.

Tomorrow morning I'll take my last shower in the present bathroom. I don't think I'll have any regrets... it's served us well for the past ten years, but I'm not going to miss it.

A Cyprus style damp proof course

When we first moved to Cyprus, someone explained to us that the older houses - and some of the newer ones - suffer from rising damp. Because of their construction, the kind of damp proof treatment that we knew of in the UK was not possible. However, we were assured, it wasn't a huge problem. With the long hot summers, everything dries out nicely, and it's easy enough either to rub down and repaint each year when damp showed in the walls, or to have a kind of hardboard layer in front of the walls to stop it showing.

That was all very well in the house we rented, which we knew would eventually be pulled down. And those were the drought years in Cyprus. But then we bought our own house ten years ago, and there has been more rain. Moreover, since we use our downstairs floor as a guest flat rather than living in it all the time, a musty smell developed in several cupboards. Guests in the warmer months have opened windows and doors and let fresh air in, but those staying in the winter have experienced problems with mould growing on walls of one of the bedrooms, and the bathroom ceiling. It was fairly easy to wash off with some vinegar, but we started talking about what we could do to decrease the damp and condensation.

Doing some research online, we both came across the site of 'Dr Damp'. This is a company who claim to do the only reputable damp-proofing in Cyprus, and to have gained a good reputation across Europe. So, at the end of January, we arranged for them to come and do a survey. Richard went around the guest flat with the guy who came, watching the damp meter and learning about the method they use. We were told that we did have a damp problem: not yet a serious one, but it could become one in the next few decades. The system is guaranteed for twenty years and it sounded entirely reputable, if rather expensive.

Since it's Cyprus we wanted a personal recommendation rather than just affirmations on the website, and a friend remembered that some other friends had had a damp-proof system installed a year or two previously. I got in touch, and we were assured that the Dr Damp team do a great job, and are friendly and professional. It all seemed like a good thing to get done, and we inherited money from my mother a couple of years ago... so we booked the treatment for the second week of February, knowing that the flat was going to be empty from then until almost the end of the month.

Despite the company being based in Paphos, the men arrived fairly early on the Monday morning, and the house reverberated with power tools for several hours as they drilled out the rectangular holes that form the first part of the process for all the external walls.  These are what we saw, all around the outside of the house, by the end of the first day:

They don't go right through to the inside so it's not going to create draughts.

By the end of the second day, the special system was in place - here's a different part of the wall, showing how they had to cut away some of the paintwork to install each one.

The men were indeed very friendly - even helping to rescue our cat Alexander when he got stuck up a neighbour's tree - and cleaned up all the mess they had made, roughly plastering over the worst of the bits of wall they had hacked away.

There were some internal walls that were damp too, and they had to be treated with chemicals, so we had to move everything out of the way so they could do that:

If you think that really doesn't look too bad, this is what the guest flat kitchen/dining room looked like by the time furniture and various other things had been moved to enable the damp proofing:

After three days the Dr Damp guys left, and we paid our teenage friend Jacob to do the plastering and repainting, and some other painting that was long overdue.

Here's the first stage, around the new system. Of course it was important not to fill in the holes around the triangular stone things: that's where the airflow, in and out, removes damp from the walls.

Unfortunately, in rubbing down and sanding some of the exterior paintwork and plaster, more pieces fell off, showing that the damp had indeed taken a hold in places. So Jacob worked rather more hours than we had anticipated, but did an excellent job.  By the time he had finished, the damp proof system looked more like this:

Once the sanding and necessary inside painting was complete, we had quite a job to clean the guest flat, which by that stage was covered with a fine layer of dust. So we removed and dusted all the books (only about a thousand of them, but still... quite a task), and I washed every single piece of bedding that I could find, and all the towels and curtains too.  The washing machine was in use at least a couple of times every day - thankfully it was good drying weather - and I also used our carpet shampooing machine to clean all the mattresses.

We swept and dusted and mopped several times, and I also sorted some of the kitchen cupboards, cleaning away any mould that had grown, washing all the things inside, and getting rid of some bits and pieces that had evidently never been used.

And, at last, the living room was back to its usual self, albeit rather cleaner than it has been for a while, in preparation for our end-of-February visitors:

The kitchen, too, was clean and sparkling, the windows freshly washed, the floor reflecting the sunlight:

We were told that it could take two or three months before the damp smells vanished entirely, but the bathroom cupboard - which was very bad - smelled fresher within about a week, and the kitchen cupboards are a great deal less musty than they were, although not yet perfect.

This won't entirely solve the condensation problem: however, Richard is going to install an extractor fan in the bathroom, and we hope that the reduction of damp in general will make the master bedroom less likely to grow mould on the walls too. 

How to stop random birds from nesting on air conditioners...

There are a lot of birds around here - pigeons mostly - and they're a bit of a nuisance. They flap around the rooftops, producing droppings that either mess up the outside steps, or - worse - make a kind of channel in the tiles that can cause serious leakages when it rains heavily, as it does from time to time in the winter months.

They also like to nest on top of the outside sections of air conditioning units. Any time I opened my study door during nesting season, until about six months ago, I'd hear a fluttering and flapping and birds would take off hastily, while bits of stick landed on the ground below. Sometimes the cats would sit at the window, or on the chair below the air conditioner, chattering noisily, trying to protect the house - or, depending on the cat, trying unsuccessfully to fly after the birds.

I know, I know. This is very much a 'first world' problem. The birds don't, as far as we know, carry disease, and we're very blessed to have a house at all, let alone air conditioners. We don't want to harm the birds so we're not going to put out poison, as some locals might consider. And while we talked about putting a kind of netting on parts of the roof, it was complicated to do and would have made it even more difficult to clean if droppings landed anyway.

Then, perhaps eight months ago, Sheila and I were talking to an acquaintance on the Salt Lake trail one morning. She said something about using plastic snakes to keep the birds away. I was skeptical; it sounded like a coincidence to me, and I didn't think birds could be quite so stupid as to think a toy snake was real... could they?

A few days later, Richard and I were in Kleima, a big shop that sells hardware and household goods and some furniture and various other random items. As I was wandering up the aisles looking for something we needed, I spotted a tray of remarkably realistic looking plastic snakes. They cost a couple of euros each, and I recalled the recent conversation. Shuddering slightly as I chose a green and curly serpent, I added it to our shopping basket.

One of the cats saw the snake sitting on our living room table after we got home, and approached cautiously. A quick sniff and she realised it was harmless, so she batted it a little and then ignored it. The others didn't even bother to investigate. I know birds are less intelligent than cats, but even so... surely they would be able to sense that a plastic toy was no threat to them. And how would they know what a snake was anyway....?

We got out a ladder and I placed the snake on top of the air conditioner, and then pretty much forgot about it. It wasn't the season for nesting anyway, and then when we saw pigeons appearing on our neighbour's roof, I thought it was probably a coincidence that we didn't seem to have any birds on my study air conditioner.

Then, yesterday morning, I opened my study door and heard wild flapping of wings and fluttering, and two birds emerged from my air conditioner. I smiled wryly. They must have got used to the plastic snake, I thought. Or perhaps these birds were a bit brighter than the others. Or maybe none of them had been interesting in nesting there until then.

Later that morning I heard one of our cats making strange noises outside. I peered outside, and he was sitting on the chair underneath the air conditioner, looking up at the birds who were flapping around. I opened the door and they flew away as usual. I went out to talk to the cat... and saw this on the ground:

It had been a very windy night, and evidently the snake had blown down.

The birds continued fluttering to and fro, so later that morning I managed to get the snake back on top of the air conditioner.

A bird flapped around about half an hour later... but then flew away again.

And, this morning, when I opened the door, there were no birds out there. There were several on our neighbours' roof, and sitting on their air conditioning unit, but none at all coming anywhere near mine.

It appears that this method actually works, at least for us. We did wonder if we could get some more of these unpleasant looking toys and put them on different sections of our roof, but we were concerned that they would blow off much too easily; my air conditioner is quite protected by the balcony and it takes a very strong wind to make it fall. But any heavy rain or gusts of wind could blow one from the roof... and we really don't like the idea of random plastic snakes landing on the ground around our house.

Kiti beach, becoming commercial?

When we first moved to Cyprus, we sometimes went out for walks on Sunday afternoons, and a popular location was Kiti beach. It's about fifteen minutes' drive from where we live, an unspoilt location where one could walk along a beach with stones as well as sand, or at the top of a small slope overlooking the beach. It was often almost deserted.

But life moves on, and we hadn't been there for over a year.

Friends were staying last week, and wanted somewhere to go for a short walk. By the sea if possible, and not too far away. We decided to drive to Kiti. I was quite looking forward to seeing it again after all this time.

The route seems to change slightly, every time we've been there. But eventually we spotted the (rather underwhelming) lighthouse, and parked the car. We were a bit surprised to see railings, although the gate to the beach was open:

Here's the lighthouse: that not very tall tower towards the right of the photo below.

There was nobody stopping us from going through the gates and inside, but there was a 'no entry' sign and a big warning notice saying that it was dangerous. While two of our party weren't too worried about that, one of us was decidedly anxious about the thought of disobeying a 'no entry' sign, and I didn't feel entirely comfortable either. Even though it's Cyprus...

So we walked, instead, through the outdoor eating area of the restaurant (which was closed) and onto some steps going down towards the beach:

And then we were stopped by some fencing, and saw the beginnings of a concrete path, which would have been very difficult for at least one of us to climb over:

Eventually it will be quite a nice walkway, we think, but there was no easy way to get to it, or past it:

Then one of our friends managed to scrape her leg on an unexpected pole that was poking out of the ground, and we decided we weren't even going to try going down to the beach from there.

There was a sign lying just beyond the fencing:

It says, in Greek and English: 'This beach has been adopted by Noble Energy in cooperation with Cymera and the Pervolia Community Council. Please keep it clean.'

We didn't know that companies could 'adopt' beaches, nor what it means in practice. Is it still open to the public, if they can fight their way past the wires and ignore the warnings, or does it mean we have to stay away?

We decided to try and find another place to access the beach, so once again we headed back. I felt quite sad that this lovely non-commercial beach is evidently going to be made more appealing to tourists and given walkways and so on. Then again, very few people ever seemed to go there.

We drove back a little way and followed another sign to a beach, only to be confronted by more gates with another similar warning notice:

When we drove through anyway, there was some construction work impeding our way:

So we drove still further back, and followed yet another sign, in a residential area, which led us, finally, to a section of beach where we could walk and enjoy the sunshine and breeze: