The old boiler in the kitchen was a fairly recent upgrade, it has had a catalog of faults since its install and leaks inside had ruined all chances of it ever running correctly. During the install of that boiler, it seems that the fitters took several shortcuts meaning the that hot water circled round virtually the whole house before getting to the taps in the bathroom. Not great for efficiency and not great when you come to fit a new system and have to try and work out what is going on where.

In addition as the bathroom floor is tiled, the only access we had to the bathroom was from below, the good thing is that we have the plans for the kitchen so we could take down the ceiling in the kitchen to reveal under the bathroom. Although this looks a mess it really will not take too much to sort out. I will be plastering the whole room following the build anyway and I like me ceilings to be perfectly smooth with no artex which the old ceiling had.

While doing the boiler we did a good powerflush on the system, this took some time to do but it will have been well worth it. The amount of thick black debris that we removed from the system must have been impeding its performance and there is no way we wanted all that flowing through the new boiler.

When we took the old toilet and hand basin out of the downstairs toilet we uncovered the original parquet floor. This weekend I have sanded it back to the unfinished wood and it looks fantastic. I just not need to find something that will best seal the wood and then some form of lacquer to finish it.

The next step for the downstairs cloakroom is to find a suitable toilet and basin. I need to take care when finding these as we need to ensure that they fit into the space available. Then it is a case of a little tiled area and some painting.

Thanks to all who helped on this.

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Although we have long term plans for the kitchen we have put those on hold for the moment due to money grabbing builders who seem to think we are made of money and want a gold lined extension building! We were going to replace the boiler when we did the kitchen but with things as they are we have had to re-think. I will post more about what our plans are regarding the kitchen in the near future.

Currently the boiler is on the kitchen wall, and as we are struggling for space in the kitchen it makes sense to try and fine another location for it. The downstairs toilet seems to be the obvious solution.

The downstairs toilet is very dated and showing its age, however, for not much cost I will be able to replace it and update it, however, in order to get the boiler in as well I will be blocking up the window, which we never use anyway keeping the blind down all the time. This being so it will be a larger job than it should be, something that I will have to do over several weekends. I intend to get the window bricked up next weekend, this will mean having the window out, maybe even the toilet and sink out to give me access.

I will also be taking down the ceiling, firstly because it is artexed and I hate artex and also because I am hoping that I can grab an inch or so to allow extra room for the boiler.

The first problem I have is finding a compact cloakroom suite, maybe even corner basin and corner toilet.

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