The saga of replacing the shower still isn’t over, though I hope I can see the end in sight at last. The plumber has been back to grout the tiles, and has actually done a pretty reasonable job. The new tiles don’t match the original ones, as those are now obsolete. Fortunately, however, I had the main bathroom retiled last year in a very similar colour-scheme, and the left-over tiles from that don’t look too odd a match. I still need to have silicone sealant applied round the edges of the tiles. That’s allegedly only a half-hour job, but needs to wait until the grout is dry, so requires a further visit. I’ve booked that for the end of this week, and then I hope I’ll have a fully usable shower once again.
However, as so often happens with this house, having one job done just highlights another problem that I have to get fixed. In this case, the time before last that the plumber was here, he noticed that my main stopcock was leaking. Not badly, but enough to warrant replacing it. That of course means turning the water off at the water meter outside the property, as you can’t replace the tap otherwise. When he was last here doing the grouting, he had planned to replace it, but it turned out that he’d brought the wrong type of stopcock with him. He’d brought one for a modern house with plastic pipes, not realising that this place is old enough to have copper water pipes. So when he comes back to do the sealant, it won’t be such a quick job as he’d hoped, as he will need to have another go at replacing the tap while he’s here.
I will be so glad to get my shower back! It’s been months……
