I’ll grant that it’s not -something insane, but it’s definately in the minuses, and the absence of heating is continuing to be an issue. Paul turned up, as promised, with the Viva’s engine – and we trundled round to the garage, Paul following. Having returned home it became apparent that the Viva had, in fact, coated the front of Paul’s car with oil – it’s been burning so much. But hey; the garage will be swapping head from Brick to new engine and new engine into car. They’ve also said they’ll try and flush the coolant system (particularly the heater) while they’re at it. This will give the car a much needed boost in heating performance.
Hopefully this is the final big expense until the Viva-EV project is sorted.
The cold, however, is having a delaterious effect on bathroom progress. I can’t paint the radiator because the 12 hours to dry only applies to ‘normal’ houses where the temperature is, say, positive. I could and might attack the shower tiles some more after lunch; because, well, then I could put silicone sealant round and that could not dry too. I’m hoping the radiator might be dry enough for it’s third (of two) coats. It does look surprisingly okay though, given the poor job I did of stripping it. I managed to get the edges pretty good, but I just couldn’t get all the paint from the centre bits between the fins. Still, we can but try.
Looking at the space where it’s meant to go though, that’s good. Because it looks quite bathroomy now; just the act of polishing the tiles and painting the skirting’s made a lot of difference. I still have to run the radiator pipe along the wall, and clean the floor tiles, but once that’s done and the radiator’s painted and dry, it can all go together. Oooh, faint stirings of some excitement.
I’ve also been studying the current bathroom cupboard, and, I think whole thing above the water heater – cupboard, doors, shelves. I think it’s entirely non-structural. I’d assumed that it was part of the support for the hot water tank, but no, I think the tank just sits on the shelf. this is good, because it means I can remove chunks of it and then whip away the wall from behind it, and run all the pipework for the boiler without actually having to have the original boiler taken out. ‘course there’s still the small matter of sinking all that wiring into the wall in the kitchen. Ah, there we go, the tiredness at the slow progress has come back :-/
Ach. Well, we’ll see how I get on after lunch.
