Project Green Tea - A newly glamorous washroom after the dreaded Dry Rot

I spent the afternoon at Green Tea yesterday with the girls and made time to get some photos of the finished washroom. We’re all delighted with the finished room and even though there is the same tiled floor and sanitary wear, it looks completely different and I hope you agree just a wee bit more stylish.

Even this tiny space tells the Green Tea North East China story: the charcoal painted panelling and picture rail echo the linear coal from the region, the mother of pearl wallpaper a glamorous reminder of a local legend helping to bounce light around the small room and the elegant crystal drops of the chandelier reflect the famous stalagtites dripping down from the cave ceilings around BenXi. The photographs of the spectacular maple leaves have worked well in the main dining room and hallway and even the hand cream smells of Green Tea

Looks easy peasy doesn’t it? Just a click of the Moregeous fingers and the room was transformed…. but you KNOW it didn’t happen like that! First of all it looked like this and the initial idea was just to strip the wallpaper and redecorate….

The architraves around the window looked a bit manky to me and even though they were all painted and solid looking, they just seemed a bit uneven and I wasn’t happy with them so recommended we fit new ones. Some subconscious niggle of instinct must have kicked in, because when the lads took off the architraves, this is what we found. Large cuboidal cracking all the way up the left hand side of the frame…..

A completely rotten window cill and rusty nails…..

Strands and webbing called mycelium (similar to extra thick cobwebs) covering the brick work behind the plaster below the opening….

We took out the window to find even more evidence that the frame had been eaten alive by dry rot, serpula lacrymans, and one side of the once solid timber was now a shrivelled, cracked mess

All caused, can you believe, by the most simple thing – blocked guttering outside. Leaves and detritus in the poorly maintained gutter had forced rainwater to pour down the wall below, constantly hitting the external timber window frame (bottom left but in this image we’d already installed the upvc one) and slowly but surely the seals around the window had washed away, allowing water to get inside the building. Dry Rot will only spread when it has a source of moisture and this wasn’t just a source, it was a deluge. Lesson for you – check your gutters and make sure your home is water-tight, you do NOT want to end up with windows like this one!

So all of a sudden a lick of paint turned into a need for more exposure works and chemicals, and we soon had our very own Toxic Box – the name for a contained space where the treatment to eradicate the dry rot is taking place. And yes, there were many jokes made about us girls having a Toxic Box.

The idea for fixing timber cladding to the walls had sprung from the Green Tea girls eventually wanting bench style seating against the walls (cladding will protect the lower wall areas), so after the dry rot works were done, the new upvc window installed and the walls re-plastered, this cladding was carried though into the washroom and undercoated:

The cladding was knotted and painted in Dulux Night Jewel 1, the walls Dulux Light and Space Frosted Dawn, the picture rail was fitted to frame the Akoya mother of pearl wallpaper, the sanitaryware re-installed, the tiled floor stripped and grout lines cleaned, and the John Lewis Ariella chandelier and  Spa range accessories fitted. All done. At the click of a finger

And if that wasn’t enough, there are plans afoot for some fabulous little Green Tea videos, to be expertly filmed by two of my ex-colleagues from Channel M, Hannah and Michael. We worked together on the Homesmine show and since the channel’s demise, these two talented peeps have  set up their own production company Zemap and also work on vintage style wedding videos, but can pretty much turn their hands to anything. Xiona and Jennie are going to work with the film crew and Didsbury Life to stream on-line videos of them cooking some of the delicious Green Tea dishes. I think I’ll have to volunteer my services as chief taster……

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