The plasterer came round a few weeks ago to plaster the bathroom walls. He said that they’d take a couple of days to dry, then we could paint them before the tiles and bathroom suite were fitted to avoid unnecessary mess.
I got Colin to paint the ceiling. Or rather, to apply some masking tape to the top of the walls and paint the edges of the ceiling using brilliant white bathroom and kitchen paint. He made a start on the ceiling proper, but I did most of it. It makes your arms ache!
I wanted to do the walls next, once the ceiling had dried,
I noticed some patches of the plaster still weren’t dry, so I was reluctant to start painting them. We got a man in to have a look. He came today.
He used a beepy electronic device and told us we had penetrating damp. He said water had got into the brickwork from the outside and couldn’t dry because of the waterproof acrylic paint on the outside of the house. Colin remembered there’d been holes in the external paintwork and the previous owner had had them patched up. The damp man said that was probably the cause of the problem.
He’s going to look into what we can do about it and send us a report. He said we should draw lines to show where the damp is now and see if it reduces any. If it does, we’ll be able to get on with the painting and the tiling.
It’s never simple.
