Repairing the Roof

Anyone who has followed or popped into this blog over the course of the past decade and a half will probably have come across mention of our roof leaking. It's not uncommon in Cyprus to have areas where heavy rain leads to dripping through the roof, and we're thankful that it's only ever been above the stairs. Since stairs don't generally have carpets here, it's annoying but it doesn't take long to mop it up afterwards.

And if you haven't come across any of those posts, and/or are interested in seeing some, this post from 2009 was all about rain, with a photo at the end of our cool box and a yellow bucket strategically placed to catch the drips. In our first few years here, we had two or three people come to look at the roof.  One or two broken tiles got fixed, and suggestions were made, but in the end the regular response was along the lines of, 'This is Cyprus. Roofs leak.' 

The problem was that it got worse each year, or so it seemed. Then in 2010, a couple of Richard's sailing friends took a look at the roof, and discovered a hole, and also a large amount of pigeon mess which was making the rain bounce in an odd direction. I wrote in this post about how they cleaned the mess away, and sealed the hole. And it definitely helped the problem that winter.  

But a year later, there was more torrential rain, and once again our roof leaked. I wrote this post, illustrated again with a photo, except that by then we had moved from a yellow bucket to a blue one. In 2014, we had some loft insulation installed, and another hole in the roof was fixed. And so it went on... each year, we expected rain through the roof when the wind was high and the rain was heavy.

So it wasn't any surprise that it happened this year, when it rained - except that it seemed considerably worse than last year's. Out came the cool box again, although this time it was accompanied by a large empty paint pot. 

But I had to remove photos from the walls, something I hadn't had to do for some years. And it seemed that the rain was coming through in more places than previously. We realised it had been a while since the roof was last cleaned, and we knew there was a lot of bird mess up there. So we called our friendly roofing guy, who eventually came at the end of last week, with another guy, to check the roof and fix whatever problems they could find.

It was important that they came on Friday, as heavy rain was predicted for last weekend, and our roofing friend told us he'd been asked, urgently, to look at two other roofs as well that morning. 

It turned out that there were more problems than just an excess of bird mess. Richard had asked if something could be done to make the problem less severe in future, possibly by moving some of the pipes on the roof. Since I didn't go up there (and have no wish to do so) I didn't entirely understand, but it all sounded like a good idea. 

However, when they moved the pipes, they discovered an entire area of the roof that had never been sealed, with some wood that was rotting away. 

And when they'd replaced the wood and sealed the area, they went over the whole roof carefully. They discovered a couple of broken tiles which they removed and replaced. Here are the broken ones:

I think the roofing guys expected to be here for about an hour, but in the end it was nearly three hours. Thankfully it hadn't started raining, so after cleaning up they hurried off to the next job, hoping to fix another roof before the predicted rain.

Except that it didn't rain. There was a bit of lightning and thunder in the distance, but not a drop of rain. On Saturday evening we had maybe five minutes of light rain, but not the kind that would have leaked through. On Sunday it stayed fine and sunny. 

I don't think I have ever before heard Richard express a wish that we could have some really heavy rain - not because he likes rain, but because we would really like to know if this latest repairwork has actually fixed the problem, at least for this winter. 

There's rain predicted for later this week, and Saturday, so maybe we'll find out then:

Or maybe it will be another fine weekend.  Perhaps fixing the roof is the equivalent of going out with an umbrella, and ensures that it won't rain after all. 

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.