What should have taken just one week, took three weeks in the end, due to my builders's complaints about their backs after again not appearing the next Monday and Tuesday. But when they had the opening done to the height of my hand basin, we found that they had their calculations wrong, and the basin had to be shifted to another wall altogether.
It was quite inconvenient, as everything was fitted in so neatly, and I was a bitty sour because I had asked them how many times about the position of the opening in relation to the shower wall and the basin, and I was assured over and over that they do not make mistakes. They were like two schoolboys caught out in doing some mischief, explaining with wildly rolling eyes that because of the huge stones they went a bit off target, but I did not buy that, as when the drew the lines of where the opening should be, I already had my doubts, and told them so.
So they removed the basin, and Jan promised to fix it for me, but that meant that the washing machine's draining pipe had to be moved, and also, with the basin's pipes that was connected to the shower, all the pipes had to be redone! What a botheration, and all could have been avoided.
The next step was to built the steps, as the bathroom and adjoining bedroom. was about half a meter lower than the rest of the house.
But they did finish, albeit after two weeks more than was neccessary, but I was glad when at last they started on the plastering, but had to laugh at the main man's idea of nice. As the house is so old, and was so neglected through many years, and most of the plaster was patched up by me, with plenty of mishaps, said walls were not what could be called a nicely finished bit of plastering.But my builder thought it very nice, and told me that as the rest of the wall was kind of done in Spanish style plaster, he would do the parts he had to plaster in the same way. Sweet!
I was elated when I paid them their last wages due, as I couldn't wait to start cleaning up the mess. The whole room was covered in about three inches of dust from the grinder, and the other room, although not too bad, had also to be cleaned from top to bottom.Only when I had cleaned the floors did I see how they had ruined my floors, but as I knew what a heavy job it was, I just shrugged and started fixing the holes made I suppose by rocks that slipped from their hands. Luckily my floors are all cement, painted and varnished, so the damage was not too severe.