quick catch up

[kareina]

 It has been a busy ten days since my last post...

 

Most of this time has been spent on fixing up the bathroom.  It looked pretty horrid when we bought the house, filthy, with many tiles falling off the wall, and water-damaged wallpaper, and the sink not even attached to the wall (we found it on the basement floor!), so the first week we had the house we cleaned it, replaced the loose tiles, and attached the sink, to make it useable, and have been carefully ignoring the remaining issues since.  I have a daydream of remodeling it completely, replacing the old tub, sink, and toilette with new ones that show less wear and tear, but far more than that I want a second bathroom, most especially a second toilette, so the upstairs bathroom has been pretty low on the priority list, since one wants the new bathroom in place before gutting the old one, and we haven't gotten to putting in the new one yet.

 

However, they recently redid the basement bathroom at Keldor's work, after which his boss was going to throw away the leftover wet room paint and wallpaper. Keldor kindly offered to haul that away for him, and then suggested that we do a partial renovation on the upstairs bathroom, thereby solving its biggest problem: sitting showers.  Since the house was built in 1956, it has no waterproofing at all on the walls. The person who built it installed a bathtub, and never considered that someone in the future might want to shower instead, but the previous owner changed out the bath tap to include an optional flexible shower head, and he mounted a wall holder for the shower head, and, clearly, showered standing up, letting the water run on the walls and down to the tiles (which go only half way up the wall), and behind the tiles (which is why they were coming off).  We didn't want to add to the damage he'd caused, so we have been showering sitting down, taking care to not splash water up above the tiles. This isn't optimal, but it works.

 

So solve this problem we took everything off the walls, save for the medicine cabinet, which is also the source of the only lighting in the room, and painted a layer of wallpaper sealer over the old wall paper. Then we added a couple of layers of wet room paint to all of the walls and the ceiling before adding the special fibreglass wallpaper to the walls, and the extra layer of waterproofing glue over that, before doing the final couple of coats of paint with the wet room paint. We also stripped the paint off of the radiator, and re-painted it with special radiator paint. Perhaps later we will see about repairing the chips in the bathtub. 

 

This took days to accomplish, as we needed to let it dry in between each step. Therefore, last night was the first time we could put things back on the walls, and test the shower. It seems to work--the water that hit the wall just beaded up and stayed on the outside. We are looking forward to the arrival of the shower curtain we have ordered. If you want to see the progress photos, they are over on FB. 

 

In the meantime, I got approval from my boss for my job at Umeå to do a delayed start to that job--instead of starting with them week 36 as planned, I will start a late summer job with Norrbottens Museum as an archaeologist on a dig in the Kiruna area, investigating some hearths. The museum job goes from weeks 35 to 38, and I will start the Umeå job week 39. I had given notice on my cleaning job as soon as I got the offer from Umeå, and when I heard about the possibility for the archaeology job I negotiated an end date that would give me a couple of weeks between the jobs.

 

Since I have to be in Kiruna week 35, I have decided to go to Lofoten and volunteer at the Viking museum there for just over a week before heading to Kiruna. Therefore my plan is:

 

Tonight after Keldor is home from work we drive the car to the shop in Robertsfors, half an hour south of here, and leave it there (and take his home). Tomorrow afternoon I take the bus down and pick up the car after they finish fixing the "drivkunt". Then I load the car (I am already mostly packed) and head to Lofoten. If I am lucky the job contract for the archaeology job will arrive in today's mail (they thought it should have been here already on Thursday), and I can sign it and send it back. If not, I will take the north and then east route to Lofotr, and stop by Luleå on the way to sign a new copy of the contract (I just sent them an email letting them know of this option. Otherwise I will head straight inland and northeast from here, going through Arjeplog to Bodø and then take the ferry. Google says that there is only about 15 minutes difference in travel times, both take around 12 hours driving time (if one happens to arrive in Bodø at the correct time to drive straight onto the ferry) for the two routes, but the intensity of beautiful mountain views happens sooner on the inland first route, and one can rest on the ferry. So I hope the contract comes before I leave.