End of week 6 – cantina bathroom is looking good

Work crawls ahead at the moment. The workers have been building the new wall which will enclose the guest bathroom in the basement. They’ve put in a sliding door and it feels quite good, now that the layout of the space is there. We’re still not sure how we’re going to fit a radiator in though! Hoping the plumber will have some ideas.

Meanwhile poor Roscoe has been given the long, boring job of scraping old paint off walls. Just our bedroom has taken over a week.

To give him a break, I’ve taken him with me on tile shopping expeditions (I’m not sure which is worse!). We’d planned to get super cheap plain tiles in both bathrooms and for the floors, but we gave in and got slightly nicer ones. The cheap ones were all so overdone! After much agonizing, we got nice horizontal rectangular ones for the main bathroom in a dark grey-chocolate colour for the detail and beige for the rest. When they arrive, we’ll pay around EUR 22 per square metre, plus EUR 40 per square metre in the detailed bits. Ouch.

Meanwhile we’ve economised in the guest bathroom with a basic cream tile, with a slightly darker border at the bottom. These will cost EUR 12 per square metre.

The floor area to be tiled in the cantina is large – over 20 square metres. But we just didn’t like the cheap tiles (looked like they belonged in a cheap clothes store in 1985!). We feel this level of the house is a bit more rustic, with it’s sloping walls and cavern feel. We want decor to reflect that, so we went for a rough-edged, cotto-like rectangle, which we’re thinking of putting in a herringbone pattern. It comes in around EUR 18 a square metre. I just pray they’re nice!

All in all, it’ll be around EUR 700 of tiles, and we still haven’t sorted the kitchen!

We’ve had a tip-off from one of the builders about someone who is selling some old tiles like our own, so we’re hoping that comes through.

Cost of works to date:

Previous total EUR 7,485

Labour (13.5 days) EUR 1,755.00

Petrol for the truck EUR 40.00

Sand for cement EUR 10.00

Cement, sliding door cage, lintel (for cantina) EUR 233.00

Washed sand EUR 33.00

Art for walls EUR 342.00

Shower cubicle (curved) EUR 193.00

TOTAL EUR 10,091