Skeletons under the floorboards …
Now I’m actually good friends with the guy who built the extensions on and subsequently sold me the flat, but his work tends to focus on the creative rather than the practical. We were thinking of trying to rescue the floor tiles in the shower/steam room, but in the event we realised we’d need to rip them up to fit in all the new bits and pieces. Thank goodness we did.
It turned out that at one end, the shower had been so badly fitted that it had been leaking water onto the underlying floorboards and joists for around a decade and a half, and at the other end some particularly dodgy plumbing around the washing machine had done a similar number on the flooring there.
Only the fact that the damp had spread up the adjoining wall saved the joists that end from a similar fate.
In addition the leaky washing machine plumbing was inches away from the mains outlet. It also turns out that most of the house was running on one electricity circuit. Our electrician said that it’s a miracle that we haven’t had a fire before.
One of the pipes had been fitted rather rustically whereby instead of using an elbow to go round a corner it had simply been bent.
My friend’s enthusiasm for renovation projects knows no bounds however, and he has since moved on to demonstrate his own peculiar approach to carpentry and plumbing to the French. Vive la différence!
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February 1st, 2009 at 4:43 pm
I think the technical term is “cowboy”
February 2nd, 2009 at 9:40 am
John wayne strikes again!!
And British builders wonder why the customer is turning to our european cousins when they need the job done properly!!
February 2nd, 2009 at 11:42 am
Pistol Packin’ Patrick!
February 4th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Hmm! Bad plumbing, Im shocked.
Send in Harri, Patrick need some love.
February 5th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
[...] File this under things you wish you’d said at the time you spotted the problems under the shower. [...]
February 15th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
[...] to the flat under the auspices of (or possibly by) the same enthusiastic chap responsible for the shower room plumbing. The mortar seemed to be more sand than cement and wasn’t tied to the walls either end [...]
March 7th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
[...] concerned that our neighbour might have applied the same techniques to his bathroom that he had to installing the shower in our place. We have suffered the odd indoor water feature in the room below that houses our [...]