Restoration of Bathroom Renovation

 In my previous blog post, I mentioned that we were having some work done upstairs, and that I would write about it when it was complete. 

To introduce it, I need to backtrack six years, when we employed a local builder to remove the old-fashioned bathroom from our house and instal a new one, with an extractor fan, better lighting, and an altogether more modern appearance. We were very pleased with the result. 

Anyone who is curious to read more about it can check the lengthy post I wrote at the time about our bathroom renovation. 

However, about a week after we had been using the new shower regularly, I realised that a couple of the tiles around the tap didn't look quite the same as the rest. I thought I was imagining it at first. Then I wondered if we had somehow bought a box of tiles in a slightly different shade but hadn't noticed at the time. This theory was disproved when a third tile started changing colour. And we found some water on the floor. It wasn't just shower water that had splashed over; this was behind the bath, where there shouldn't have been any water.

And then we noticed some of the paint starting to bubble on one of the walls. We contacted the builder - I don't recall the time-frame, but it was probably some months after the renovation. He came back, and said that the bubbly paint was possibly due to the plaster not having dried out fully before it was painted. He was more concerned about the water and the different shades on the tiles, and he managed to find a joint that wasn't quite right. 

He said he had employed a plumber who rushed his work and had made some other mistakes. So he fixed this leaky pipe joint, and said he would talk to his brother - who is a plasterer - about getting the bubbly paintwork dealt with. 

Time passed. Not months but years.  If we were away for more than about a week, we returned to find that all the tiles were the same colour, but a couple of days later, with regular shower use, the ones around the taps turned back to the different shade.  And the patches with bubbly paintwork turned into large patches of bare wall, including one in the wall outside the bathroom which seemed to be getting worse and worse. 

The builder and his brother did come and look at the bathroom a couple of times, where the walls were getting worse, and said they would come back some time. But they're very busy with other work, and it didn't happen... and we didn't know anyone else who would be able to do the work. Word of mouth is the best way to find skilled handymen here, but unfortunately most of the people we knew with experience of this kind of thing had been disappointed (or worse). The people we used were some of the best locally. 

A young friend who had done some other work for us suggested that perhaps the sealant around the bath was causing the tile problems, and added some more. It looked good, but didn't seem to make any difference to the colour of the tiles. 

More years passed, with the pandemic stopping everything from happening, and finally we talked to another young friend, whom I will refer to as L, the son of some close friends who has worked with a builder in the UK, and did some excellent plastering for us downstairs. He doesn't particularly like working inside - his passion is horticulture - but he said he thought he could fix our problems working just an hour or two per day for a couple of weeks. 

This is what the wall outside the bathroom looked like when L had removed the radiator, and chipped away the loose plaster. He said the wall was very damp, so clearly there was a problem inside the wall, one which he could only tackle from the bathroom side. 

This was what the wall inside looked like: 

And this is the wall opposite, where plaster had fallen away but it was no longer damp, and it had stopped getting worse. The problem that caused this was that the exterior wall had been sucking in water; a year or so ago L had painted the outside wall, which stopped any more damp getting in.

A couple of days later, the tiles around the taps looked like this:

In pulling away the worst of the tiles, L discovered others that almost fell off the wall. 

The timing worked well, as there were no visitors in our guest flat during May, so we were able to go downstairs to shower. Not ideal, as the guest flat stairs are outside, but we were thankful to have that option while the bathroom was unusable. 

We were also very thankful to have discovered an almost-full box of the tiles. That meant we didn't need to try to find matching tiles, or - worse! - replace all the tiles. And in feeling around the plumbing, L found a place that was wet - a joint that had never properly been made, which was the cause of the leaking. At least, he hoped that was the only cause. He managed to fix it, and then we had to wait for everything to dry out. 

All seemed to be dry a week or so later, so he started plastering. First he used the mixture commonly used in Cyprus that looks to us more like concrete:

He plastered the other walls too, and then we had to wait for those to dry out. May was a good time for this to happen; it was warm but not yet humid, and we were able to use a small upright fan to help the process. 

Over the course of the next few days, further plastering happened. Then there was a big leap forward in terms of appearance ,when L called in his brother J to help with the tiling. 

Alex, who appears sporadically in this blog, assumed that the dust sheet was put there for his comfort, and tried to persuade us to turn on the taps to give him a drink. He was rather annoyed when we refused, not wanting any excess water until everything was complete. 

The walls opposite and outside were also being plastered, and sanded, and skimmed, and looked better than they had in years.

Since we were having all this done, and since our previous shower fittings had become quite corroded, we decided to splash out (so to speak) on new fittings, which improved the appearance significantly: 

I wouldn't have minded too much if we had had to change the colour of the bathroom walls, as the orange used six years ago was rather more vivid than I had anticipated. But when we found a half-full pot of the paint, it was an easy decision to use that rather than embarking on a complete re-paint. Richard and I did the painting (mostly Richard) and at last, over a month since it was started, our bathroom was back to how it was after the first renovation six years ago:

It was very good to be able to take a shower in our bathroom again after more than three weeks of having to go down two flights of stairs (one of them outside). We know we're very blessed to have options like this, but guests were expected for our flat early in June. 

Here's the wall next to the bath:

And here's the one opposite:

The only thing remaining was for L to cut some more skirting board pieces and fit them, which he did a few days later. 

We've been using the shower for nearly four weeks now, and are delighted - and relieved - that none of the tiles is showing any indication of changing colour, nor is any of the plaster bubbling or crumbling. And, as mentioned in the previous post, our Roomba has worked hard at eliminating the last of the plaster dust. L did an excellent job tidying and sweeping every day he came, after finishing, but inevitably there was fine dust that kept falling. 

We hope that this bathroom renovation will last considerably longer than six years, and appreciate it all the more after having been unable to use it for most of May.

Transforming our Side Yard

Our house has no garden or area at the back, but two side yards. Both have carports, and for years we used them to park cars. One of the side yards has access to our boiler room, and a tool shed, and also has the washing line for our guest flat. But the other side yard is narrower, and our current car is too wide to fit under the carport. It was wasted space until the summer, when our grandchildren were here.

We cleared away the accumulated clutter, and swept it, and installed a paddling pool and sandpit, and - when it wasn't too hot - it became a useful space. But very unattractive. When the family departed at the end of August, we both started thinking that it would be nice to make it more usable year-round. Could we lay artificial grass, for instance...?  That's something we both rather despised twenty years ago when we first came to Cyprus. But real grass is very difficult to grow here, requiring constant weeding and watering, and even then it doesn't look great. And we didn't want to have to dig up all the concrete tiles.

Then I suggested I could buy Richard a barbecue for his 60th birthday in October. He quite liked that idea.  So he took a photo of the side yard and played around with it on his computer, and suggested we might do something like this:

I wasn't sure about the bougainvillea; they tend to leave pink bracts everywhere, and aren't too successful in pots anyway. But the basic idea was good. We decided to ask our friend Jacob (of Pallet Studio Cyprus) to build some planters for the far end. We both thought a stone barbecue would be much nicer than any other kind.  So we started looking...

Those are some that we quite liked... but they felt a bit too big, and somewhat pretentious for our little yard.  And they were also very expensive.  And when we enquired about them, they were all out of stock, or couldn't be delivered for another six weeks, or weren't being made any more.

We looked at artificial grass, too, but again there wasn't anything we particularly liked, and it all looked remarkably pricey, and the thought of the effort involved seemed immense. It wasn't just laying the grass, but repairing and re-painting the walls, which were very scruffy.

It was all rather discouraging.

Then, after working in Nicosia for a day, Richard popped into Leroy Merlin, a large DIY store on the outskirts, and saw a barbecue that he liked a lot better than any other we'd seen:

It was nearing the end of barbecue season, and I was concerned that this, too, would be unavailable. So on 25th September we drove to Nicosia. We needed one or two other things in the shop, and wandered around several parts we hadn't seen before. One of the first things we spotted was rolls - hundreds of them - of artificial grass.  Nicer (and much better value) than any we'd seen in any of the Larnaka shops:

We then saw square wooden tiles, exactly what we were looking for to make a path in the grass. They were on special offer, and there were only about thirty of them left. I said we should buy them and take them back with us.

So we chose the best ones, and piled them into a trolley.  We then went to talk to someone about the barbecue. There were only three left, we were told, and they were all damaged in some way. However, one of them was relatively easy to repair, and we were told we could have a hefty discount. We decided to buy it. It would have to be delivered, so we asked if rolls of artificial grass could also be delivered. Yes, they told us, but they charge per pallet for delivery. So it made more sense to buy the grass we liked and take it back with us.

We were told what glue and other things were needed to lay the grass on concrete, and then decided we should buy paint for the walls too. And a couple of plants that we liked too.... 

We spent considerably less on the supplies than we had expected to.  So we decided to ask Jacob if he and his colleague Mike would be willing to take on the whole project.

The barbecue was delivered a couple of days later. There was a slight hiatus when the delivery guys couldn't move it out of the street, as their only trolley was a pallet one, and the barbecue was too heavy. So Richard called Jacob, who came over with his stronger trolleys, and we moved it into the side yard.

Jacob looked at what we'd bought, and a plan that Richard had made, and agreed that it could work well. He gave us a reasonable quotation for doing the work, which he thought would take a few days, although they couldn't start immediately.

And so, we were all set for the transformation project. Here's how it looked before any work was started:

The first task was repairing and painting the wall, and also repainting the black paint under the car port. After a couple of days, it was already looking a great deal better:

They didn't come every day, but gradually the grass was cut and laid, the path laid out, the planters started...

Then finally, last Friday, it was all complete.  We moved our swing chair from the patio to the new 'garden'; we were surprised to find that it wasn't just good, the whole area felt peaceful and relaxing, a place we like to sit out in - at least until it gets too cold!

The one thing Richard and I did was to buy earth and plants locally, to fill the planters. Most plants aren't labelled in the shops, and the assistants didn't know their names, so we don't know what all of them are, or whether they're even suited to this kind of thing. But we love the planters, custom designed to fit the space, and we're very pleased with how they look:

On Sunday we had a few friends over to celebrate Richard's birthday a couple of weeks late, and the 20th anniversary of our arrival in Cyprus, and also to launch the barbecue and - as one friend put it - baptise the side yard. Rather literally, by immersion, as it turned out because there was rain off and on including one very heavy shower as we were all eating. But we gathered under the car port, and mostly stayed dry.

It was a longer and more complex project than we had envisaged, but we're very pleased indeed with the result. 

Re-designed Metro supermarket in Larnaka...

It was some weeks ago when Metro supermarket showed signs of redevelopment. Perhaps even months ago. It's our favourite supermarket in Larnaka, and we used to go there weekly. But with just two of us at home, and an excellent froutaria and discount mini-market within walking distance, we now only tend to go to Metro monthly.

Last time we went there, early in March, there was evidently a significant amount of construction work going on. Most of the upstairs was blocked off, and the small space remaining was cramped with stationery, kitchen equipment and the like. The only way to get there was by the stairs at the back of the shop, as the escalators by the entrance were not available.

We guessed that they might be installing a 'travelator' which would enable trolleys to be taken upstairs, rather than having to park them somewhere on the ground floor, hoping that nobody else would take them. And then, just before I went to the UK for a couple of weeks, Metro temporarily closed for the final reconstruction.

It opened while I was away, so the first time I saw the new design was just over a week ago.  I had already learned that, rather than a travelator, they had installed large glass-doored lifts by the entrance.  I didn't think to take a photo when we went in, but this is what they look like from the back:

We took a trolley (Metro are one of the few places that do not require a coin to collect a trolley - a definite plus point in my view) and went in the lift. It was smooth and quite pleasant; I'm no fan of lifts but it wasn't at all claustrophobic, and could easily have taken several people and their groceries.

Upstairs used to have non-grocery items: stationery, small kitchen appliances, cutlery and crockery, mops and buckets, plastic containers, vases, mugs and glasses; also sandals, slippers, bedding, towels, candles ... not as good a selection as at bigger supermarkets, but we've often popped up there to have a look round.

However it now also has items that I'd count as groceries: in particular cleaning products, shampoos and soaps, and cat/dog food and litter. There seem to be fewer electrical goods (though we did see and buy a fan on special offer) and we did not find ornaments, candles or crockery, though they may still be there. Oh, and the entire alcohol section seems to have moved upstairs - there were several aisles with wine and spirits. 

Then I realised that it's not just 'non-food' upstairs, but there are also apparently random items such as flour, nuts, health foods, and some cordials. Probably other things too but I was trying (in vain) to make sense of the layout. We found displays with sandals and slippers in at least three different places, and I'm not sure we went down all the aisles.

Still, we found the cat litter which was our main purpose for going to Metro last week. We went down again, and made our way around the ground floor level of the shop. I very much liked the style, which has much wider aisles than previously, making it much easier to navigate even when there are a lot of people around.

It will take a while to learn where everything is now being displayed, as lots of it is different from the way it used to be. It doesn't seem very logical, either; we found some flour downstairs, but nowhere near the selection they have upstairs. It would be annoying to do a big shop there and have to keep popping up and down in the lift; perhaps they will make it more clearly organised in future.

Still, the fresh fish and meat counters are in the same places, at the far end of the supermarket, and the freezer sections are where they always were, near the entrance (and thus also near the new lifts).

The checkouts are where they always were, too, with the same friendly people staffing them, and a display of chocolate nearby:

It was a quick visit, and my feelings were mixed. It looks good, and I very much like the wide aisles which makes the displays seem lower; the whole place looks more up-market and lighter.  Having to learn a new layout is a bit frustrating but then supermarkets change those from time to time anyway, and I try not to be annoyed by changes of that kind.

However I do hope they'll sort out the upstairs part a bit better, and make it more obvious what is up there.  I imagine we'll continue using Metro rather than any of the other supermarkets, and we'll get used to it. It will be interesting to know whether the new design attracts more customers, or causes some to leave, as it's unlike anything we've seen before in Cyprus.