I had hoped to lay a few tiles but, in a way, I knew that this was unlikely.

I headed out to site at the usual time with Linda coming out a bit after 10.00 am.

I managed to knock over the annoying jobs I was unable to complete last week.

Linda went to Reeces for me on Wednesday and brought back an "Inside Pipe Cutter".

This allowed me to trim the shower waste line well below ground level and to attach an 80 to 50 mm reduction fitting.

I then reinserted damp yellow sand in to the void around the fitting, tamped it down thoroughly and topped it off with screeding mixture.

The chrome grill and surround now fit perfectly.

The next challenge was to build the hobb.

This time I managed to remember to bring the bag of mortar.

I have to admit, I have never laid a brick in my life - in fact I think I have a bit of a phobia around cementing and brick laying - but I'm getting over it with my latest stint of screeding.

I had brought some recycled webbed bricks from home.

I mixed up the mortar with water (a bit of a cheat), kept if fairly firm, laid out a right angled bed of mortar and tapped the bricks in to position.

There had been a lot of preparation before hand - trial placing bricks and cutting a few to size using an angle grinder.

There were only 10 bricks involved in the project but I think it took me 3 hours to complete the task.

By the time I was finished it was level, straight and all the webs were infilled.

Meanwhile Linda had a arrived and got busy chipping away any screeding mix that wasn't where it should be. We both kept at this for a couple of hours, culminating in a good vacuuming.

I also finalised the two floor wastes and their local grades.

Around about 2.00 pm, Linda and I started contemplating the tile runs.

We marked centre lines in the laundry and played around with a few scenarios until we were happy with the layout and the positioning and size of the edge tiles.

We also made a few phone calls to experts for a bit of advice.