Shower shenanigans part 2

New Plumber returned yesterday to prepare to fit our new shower tray, which was allegedly going to be shipped directly here. Sure enough it turned up mid-morning, and once he'd levelled the floor beneath and added some support in the shape of a slab of marine ply, we took a tentative stroll across the tray and marvelled at its stability and lack of flex.

Since the trap on the new tray is in the front right corner rather than the rear, some rejigging of drains was required (revealing another dubious practice of Previous Plumber: the use of push-fit joints in areas that would become inaccessible. New Plumber - very sensibly in my opinion - prefers to use bonded/sealed drain fittings in underfloor voids, thus assuring that slight movements will not cause joints to fail) and then it was time to cut the new tiles and fit everything together.

After several hours running up and down stairs (he cut the tiles in the front garden to prevent clouds of ceramic dust flying all over the house) and without a single wasted tile, the job was done. Sadly he ran out time to grout up, which can't be done until the tile cement has gone off, but he returned today to finish that part of the job. This introduced a further delay - silicone sealer can't be applied to wet grout - so we'll have to wait until Monday for that, and then a further 24-hours for the sealer to go off before we can shower.

So it was baths all round again today. Not ideal in this hot weather but at least the end of this tedious saga is in sight. Ironically, but predictably, the revamped shower looks almost indistinguishable from the leaky version, which is irritating in its own way. When you've forked out around a grand it would be nice to have something to show for it beyond the absence of a wet ceiling. I took a small crumb of comfort from the fact that, when we were trying to trace the details of the original fittings, we discovered that Previous Plumber no longer deals with Original Supplier, so we can only hope the incompetent fools have gone out of business.